It wasn’t my fault!

I got up this morning to find this site, and my hosting service, unavailable.I don’t know what the problem is or when service will be restored. Hopefully it won’t be long, but who knows!

[Update at 5:50 a.m.: The blog itself is now loading, but isn’t allowing me to update it or check email. Coming soon, I hope.]

Following my comments here yesterday, I’ve heard that the issue of legislative pay raises hasn’t actually been raised directly in the House Majority Caucus yet. Apparently some concerns had been directed privately to the speaker by House members who felt his public comments put all members on the spot and should have been discussed internally before being offered publicly.

I see that Senators Akaka and Inouye were both among the Democrats voting in favor of the auto industry loan package, which died last night in the Senate.

Last night, an email came in that appeared to be from an old friend, Gene Stoltzfus, one of the founders of Christian Peacemaker Teams. It appeared to come from his email address and had a plausible message.

How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn’t inform you about my traveling
to Africa for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is NIGER , South Africa and Ghana . It as been a very
sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain.

I am really stranded in Ghana because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me.

Of course, it then went on to ask for a quick loan.

Luckily, Gene is, among other things, someone who writes, and it was clear that this wasn’t really from Gene. The giveaway was the request to use an alternate email address “because gmail service is very bad here in Africa.”

Despite that, it was one of the more sophisticated con attempts I’ve had come my way. It appears they were able to access Gene’s gmail account and send these messages out to his friends. When I reached him at home in the middle of Canada, Gene said Google had closed his gmail account and his blogspot blog.

“Got to go rebuild the house,” he said.

I guess its appropriate that the week also saw a new report with recommendations on cyber-security.

I’ve never dropped my cell phone into the toilet. But last night I picked up my laptop to move it and forgot that I had a little Western Digital “Passport” USB drive plugged it with about 125 GB of photos. When the little drive hit the floor, I realized what I had done. That sound was not good.

I picked it up. The plastic case wasn’t broken. There was a brief delay when I plugged it back, but then the status light started flashing and data began flowing. It still worked!

That’s a tough little drive. Lucky me.

Finally, who said fat cats can’t fly? This Feline Friday leads off with Ms. Wally caught in mid-air on her way to the kitchen counter. So just click on the photo for more of cat energy to end the week.