SteveMcluuf

Being in the IT industry, I tend to use computers a lot and have for over a decade. Personally, I like to IRC chat (which is part of why I haven't been posting much to this forum) which if you don't know what IRC is, it is kind of like AIM but older and purely text based. Anyway, I was chatting with some folks and I won't go into full details b/c it doesn't matter but we were talking about religion and so I posted this ASCII art: (((:-o)={|||||||||||||=B and said it was the prophet Muhammad. Well apparently, this was offensive and word has gotten around and I have received some veiled threats. I'm afraid if they are serious, they are going to start trying to track me down via Google stalking. But my question is, don't you think they over reacted getting all upset and "yelling" (typing in all caps) in the chat room? Honestly, I though ASCII would be OK since it is, well, just text and not binary. I mean, the word "Muhammad" is ASCII, right, so why get all upset over a few parenthesis, pipes, equals signs, etc.?

As an IT person, I can't but help be disappointed in what has happened this week. LDS.net was down for multiple days. Seriously? Have you not heard of redundancy, RAID, backups, hot spares, etc.? Even at the house I employ RAID 1, on and off site backups, and I even have backup hardware in the closet if I need it (and I have). Clearly this is not an enterprise site and appears to be more of an amateur endeavour. (Read: looser hack in his mom's basement.) Very sad to say the least. I hoped for better from this site but what do you expect... Can full details on the outage be shared with the lds.net community? Thanks.

Today I was leaving the house and to my surprise, a snake slithered in! I only got a quick look at it (it had red and black bands and some yellow ... I don't know if it is a Coral or King snake) and man was it fast. It went into the other room and I pursued it but did not see it. I checked behind all the furniture with no avail. My question is, is there any type of snake trap or bait I can lay out to catch it? I fear it may have gotten into the duct system and is using that for transport. I really need to get this out of here before my wife comes home because she will freak out.

Happy Black History Month everybody!!!! This year I'm really excited because I did some research on one of those ancestry web sites and I've discovered that my great great great (etc.) grandfather was black and he was involved with the underground railroad. Very cool.

I am not in the witness protection program (well, if I am, I couldn't tell you but I'm not) and clearly people are embellishing me. I do like my privacy but is that so wrong? Just to follow up, I took the money and signed the NDA so I can't really get into any more details. Please everyone trying to cyber-stalk me because in addition to it being a little creepy, I don't want any more details coming out and me violating the NDA and getting sued and losing my $$. As for the privacy toolbar/proxy thing ... you can be assured I know what I'm doing. Even if I do online banking thru a proxy, it is still encrypted and the browser is going to check the digital certificate and verify that it is signed by a trusted Certificate Authority and alert me if it is not. You run the same risk when logging on from anywhere ... you could be ARP poised on the local collision domain and/or get Man-In-The-Middled from an upstream hop. Don't understand what I'm talking about? Maybe that's why I work in IT (or did until recently) and you don't. Look it up, I'm legit, despite what all the doubters say.

Yea, at one time I thought Pam was a bot since she always replies so fast, day or night. Wait, maybe she is a replicant like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner....

This is great news, Pam! Congrats! Did he ask you out online (email/PM/etc.) or did it happen in person? Keep us updated plz.

It's just b/c of the toolbar my browser uses: EarthLink® Software & Tools - Do More You can set privacy setting and other security stuff (popup blocker, anti-spyware, etc.) and with all the badness on the Internet, you can't be too careful. I had a close friend get his identity stolen and after that I've been more careful (my wife says, "parinoid" but she is wrong) on the Internet. I'm not trying to be sneaky or anything, please don't argue that I am :). Once my bank called me because the toolbar routed me thru Russia and they flagged it as suspicious! Nice to know they are watching that stuff though.

I guess. It is some privacy tool that does a bunch of things and one of them seems to be make it look like I am coming from some other computer. Make sense? Like, I'm in Chicago but it appears I'm coming from a different location, right? Steve

I use a privacy toolbar that proxies my web traffic thru servers around the world. It's something my ISP gives me for free. Check out my login history and you'll see me coming from all over. Happens all the time :)

I'm flattered by everyone's effort to identify me and my birth mother but you know I can't tell you or give you ANY more information (the amount you have been able to deduce so far is frightening!). I'm not trying to be mean or anything it is just that I think I'm going to take the money don't want to jeopardize that and violate the NDA. If you don't believe me then fine (even though it IS true) ... all I'm trying to do is be part of an online LDS community. That's it.

OK, so you won't believe this. After what seems like a hundred phone calls and dozens of hours on an emotional roller coaster, I finally tracked down my birth mother. Turns out ... she is a famous movie star! I'm not going to reveal her name here but let's just say if I did, you would recognize it. I talked to her for about an hour last night. She is nice but made it clear that she really isn't interested in forming a relationship. I'm not sure how to feel since I never knew she even existed until last week and she didn't raise me. Her agent (also her lawyer maybe, I'm not sure) contacted me today and they want me to sign a non-disclosure agreement not to reveal the truth that my birth mother, who is now famous, had a child out of wedlock and gave it up in an "under the table" adoption deal. I think they are afraid if the truth comes out, it could severely impact her career. They are willing to offer me $250,000 to keep quiet. I'm really thinking about accepting it since I do need the money since I lost my job and have been forced to take a significantly lower paying job and the payments on the new house aren't cheap. Do you think there are ethical/moral issues in taking the money? Of course I intend to tithe on it if I take it but I can't but feel that this is a providential blessing sent to me in my time of need. Ah, so many emotions I don't know which way is up anymore....

Sometimes when life gets nuts, it really gets nuts. Recently I was let go at my job (see previous post) and in the process of applying for a new job, I realized that I couldn't find my birth certificate. I asked my parents about it and, long story short, it turns out that I'm adopted! I had no idea! I know, it's crazy but for some reason my parents never told me and the truth only came out b/c of the birth certificate mayhem. Apparently it was an "under the table" type adoption because my parents didn't have the money to adopt and my birth mother (a friend of a friend, according to them) was also poor and did not have the resources to raise a child. So there is no official paperwork although they did manage to get me a birth certificate and a social security card (how, I don't know -- my dad refuses to go into details but I think he got one of his government working friends to pull some strings). Anyway, I'm thinking about contacting my birth mother. I have a lot of questions. My parents do not know what happened to her but the friend that connected them is still alive I think (although they haven't spoken to her in over ten years and last we heard she was living many states away). I'll try to keep everyone updated although I'm still trying to wrap my head around all this!

Thanks for all the responses and prayers. Sorry for not responding sooner but things have been crazy with me scrambling to find a job and some other craziness in my personal life (more details in a new post coming soon). I've decided to turn the other cheek and not take action against my past employer. Fortunately, for the time being I have found work at a local Blockbuster and while it isn't 100% what I'd like to be doing, at least I have a salary and health insurance. Plus I'm glad to be rid of my old boss. Once when I didn't respond to a message on the Blackberry within 10 minutes, he got all upset even thought it was like 10:00 at night. I think he has had it out for me for a while. At least I get free movie rentals now :)

I could really use your prayers right now. This morning I was let go from my job as an IT administrator. Apparently my boss wants to "spy" on his wife (I don't know if he suspects infidelity or not but he was pretty closed lipped about it) and asked me to install a keystroke logger on her laptop that he brought with him to work today. I wasn't comfortable doing so and felt it was dishonest and when I refused he threatened to fire me. I objected but about an hour later I was trying to figure out what to do (I was thinking of talking with another manager about it) and my boss walks in a fires me. He had two security guards with him and they escorted me out after I gathered my stuff. Very humiliating! I keep playing the situation over and over in my head and I still think I did the right thing but maybe I could have been more tactful about it. I don't know. My wife is going to kill me when she gets home. I hate Mondays....