TMI

Or, Too Much Information for those not obsessed with acronyms. I love acronyms, and drive my family half mad with them. Anyway, I just saw another example of why I am soooo very paranoid. The news just had a story about Twitter, and how some people have had their houses broken into after they posted that they would be out of town for two weeks on the site. Oh wow. That's the equivalent nowadays of putting up a banner that says "I'm gone, the dog is a wussy, and don't forget the diamonds in the bedroom." on your house. Connectivity is great, but like anything, you have to be sure who you're talking to. Eavesdropping has expanded beyond sitting on your front porch and peering at the neighbors through the hedge.
So many people think that your computer is some kind of magic portal that only you and your select friends can access. No no nooooooo.....Every penny ante hacker would love to get their hands on YOUR stuff, if only to mess with it and make your life harder. Everyone needs to practice their hobbies; hackers and phreakers just have the unfortunate need to practice on other people's stuff. And sometimes it's not even necessary to be that computer literate.So much information is posted about people online, of their own doing, that it would be a cake walk to track them, just by joining sites and sifting through their blogs, pictures, profiles and tweets. I periodically google my name and the family's names to see what kind of stuff is out there, to keep track of it all. Try it on yourself someday. If you haven't been a master of disguise online, you might be amazed at what you can find. I once did a friend a favor and followed her husband's footsteps online, no passwords, no access to his computer directly at all. Let me put it this way; if there was a vice, he had it. And I found damning proof of it. I'm not a hacker, not by any stretch of the imagination. I'm very diligent, and know a few cool tricks, is all. And I always wear protection-several layers in fact-when I send the computer online. Firewall, private browser, pop-up/drive by/spyware blockers, all go active. NORAD probably doesn't have the level of paranoia I do. Like my mother always says: Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching me!!

On a different note, the writing is over the hump I created last week. I was feeling very Igor-like by yesterday morning, lugging this great growth around on my back, twisting my face up into a rictus of a smile and drooling a lot. I made myself sit down and push through it later in the day, and came away, well, not exactly smiling, but satisfied with the few pages I managed to put down. I seem to have a strange problem with getting my characters out of or into rooms. It's like they want to stand there for pages and pages, meticulously describing every little minute detail of where they're going and what they feel about it. After putting my hand on the small of their backs and pushing them through, they do just fine, the pace resumes, plot ticks along nicely, conflict and resolution flow and meld. It's almost like it's too much commitment for them to go somewhere else. Or maybe I've made them too comfy where they were. But, through the door they went, and now they are finally FINALLY face to face with the guy that pretty much started the whole mess in the first place. He tried the bait and switch already, and now he's cornered. Or IS he? *cue evil laughter*