Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Hacked!

I just discovered that one of my clients websites has been hacked. Needless to say, I am most displeased. How did this happen? Pretty simple. The client had a pretty easy to guess user name and password. Do YOU change your passwords regularly? Are they a combination of letters and numbers? Do you use the same user name and password on lots of sites? I bet a lot of you do.

Luckily the damage was minimal. They tried to redirect paypal payments to a disposable email account. A pretty unsophisticated hack. I immediately changed the user name and password to something much harder to guess, then I password protected the admin page itself with a different password. I then changed the FTP password. Then I tracked down the little bastards I.P. range. He's somewhere in Brazil most likely so I can't just drive to his place and mess with him personally.
My clients are my friends. And I don't like people fucking with my friends.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Did I mention the tornado?

When we left for Michigan on Friday we were running late. It always happens. You forget stuff, the phone rings the cats need to be fed. Whatever. We weren't worried because we set up the tent at Camp Jellystone near the Michigan Ren last week and all we were going to do at the site was drop off more stock.

As a result of leaving late we caught the Detroit traffic and by the time we'd gotten past it we ran into the "Thunderstorms" that weather.com had said we would experience. What this turned out to be was a blotting out of the sun and a wall of water that slowed us to a crawl for a half hour. This was actually a good thing. When we arrived at the campground it appeared that a tornado might have strolled right on through. Power was out and trees were knocked down everywhere. Several camping trailers had been hit by falling trees and half the tents in the little rennie camp area had been destroyed or knocked down or flooded. Honestly, it looked a lot like Biloxi again. We rolled in just as people were coming out of hiding to check on things. Luckily, no one was hurt, which is amazing as several people rode out the storm IN their tents. Our tent was hit by several branches which bent one support and tore a small hole in the rain fly. But we were still standing and dry.

People at the camp wasted no time. Chainsaws appeared and limbs were dragged into huge piles. Everyone chipped in. Within an hour our area was relatively tree-free. I was also a filthy mess. I offered our tent to anyone who needed crash space and we spent the night with our friends Monkey and Diane near Detroit. Power was still out at the camp on Saturday night but we stayed there anyway.

I took a few pics with my phone camera but they just don't do the damage justice.

The fair opened despite the weather, having suffered no great damage from what I saw. And we proceeded to have one KICK ASS weekend in sales. The vibe at the shop was great and the team worked very well together, including a new minion named Michele.