What a World We Live In

I belong(ed?) to the One Skein Knit-Along - a blogspot.com blog where people who knit projects from the book Oneskein, by Leigh Radford, posted about and showed photos of their finished work. I got an email from the moderator of the site saying, "I have terrible news! The One Skein knitalong has been hacked by a porn site and over a year’s worth of archives from knitters in our community has been removed. I don’t know how this happened and I’m awaiting a response from Blogger.com to find out if we can retrieve our team blog and content. I’ve also requested that Blogger.com temporarily shut down the URL until the X-rated site can be removed, but so far they have not responded to my pleas. (Please don’t visit the site – you will be doing what these porn hackers want)."

So you know what happened next. Right? I had to go look. I couldn't just listen to what the moderator told me. I had to look. Geez. It was bad. Really bad. It got worse. When I tried to get out of the site, I had some trouble. It seemed like every time I clicked, the opposite of what I hoped would happen happened. I couldn't get out. When it seemed like I was finally close to getting out, a box popped up warning me of spyware and other scary things that attack a computer when you go places you should never go. I quickly ran my spyware killer program and it found tons of things that were getting me. And then everything stopped. The computer screen just sat there looking at me and stayed that way for a long time. Frozen. Nothing worked. Not even control-alt-delete. Panic.

I pressed the power button and held it down until the computer finally shut off. Made me feel like I was smothering it with a pillow. I waited, breathing deeply, for several minutes and then turned it back on. It made some normal noises, and then stayed on a white screen. Not normal. The spyware killer box came up. Good sign? I ran the scan again. All of the same bad things were found and the scan was finally over. I clicked to quarantine them. Another message. To complete this stuff you need to restart your computer (that's in my own words). I did that. Good.

Bad. My computer started into a cycle of "Windows did not start properly" - "Windows is restarting" - "Windows did not start properly" - "Windows is restarting". A cycle. Many times. After more deep breathing exercises, pressing and holding of power buttons, waiting, and pressing buttons again, I knew the computer wasn't going to pull out of the cycle. Crap.

I sat. I thought. I restored.

I was able to start the computer in safe mode, and then, while battling the ever-popping error messages, I got into the Restore place and restored my computer back to the previous day. BP. Before porn. Happy to report that my computer (which might need therapy after what it has seen) is now functioning properly. Big sigh.

What a world we live in where a porn site would take over the site of an innocent group of knitters who were minding their own business and quietly knitting along. Did they think that some of the knitters would become their newest customers? Hmm. Let's see. I'll order that movie and that one. Ooh. What about that one? Maybe I'll ask for it for my birthday. That and the Addi Turbos.

I thought it was bad when my cat wiped her butt on my knitting. This, however, was a much bigger YUCK.