My hacked account ordeal and its recovery

A few Saturdays ago, one of my social media accounts got hacked. The following Sunday, I recovered it for five minutes. I saw this account get hacked again.

Recovering an account should not be difficult. It is.

My hacker changed my e-mail address and password. I had no choice but to do a video selfie, which compares video me against photos and videos of me on my feed.

It took me nine times to get my first confirmation. Ridiculous. I'm me. I have not had reconstructive surgery!

When you change your password to recover your account, you should get logged out of all app instances. Nope, this hacker was still logged in, and changed my e-mail, password, and handle.

Two-way authentication was on. It complicated things.

David versus Goliath.

I got help from my savvy contact. We planned for a few days. Our plan went down last night - successfully!

My video selfie was approved on the first try. You need great lighting. It helped!

Hacker had an IP address from Italy. My best shot was to recover in the wee hours Italy time. It worked.

When you do recover your account, do these steps:
1. Change your password again. You do it once before you access your recovered account. Do it again.
2. Change your e-mail account.
3. Turn on two-way authentication and make sure that you have it go to at least a text message.

I'm thankful to be back. This particular social medium had e-mails saying that you can click a link to secure your account when an unauthorized change occurs goes to FAQs. Not impressed. Do better.

Hacked social account

One of my social media accounts got hacked on Saturday afternoon. It has been a pain trying to recover it. The hacker decided to change my e-mail address.

I was briefly able to log on Sunday morning after going through a verification process. You would think that when you change your password that this application on all devices would log you off everything. Nope, it didn't.

This hacker's location is in Italy. He (for the sake of using a pronoun) was still logged in after my password change. He changed my account handle and e-mail address. I got hacked again.

I got notification of these changes. There was a link in the message to click if this change wasn't done by me, but it goes to an FAQ page. It doesn't revert the changes at all.

Useless.

I'm still working on getting my account back. It has been a royal pain, to say the least.

I have more to say, but I'll save it for later. Let's just say that it's frustrating.

A jerk of a manager

My manager has tendencies of being a jerk. I got to experience it yet again.

On Friday, he was explaining the vision he had about what I was doing. I agreed. He felt that I didn't get what he wanted. Nope, I reassured him three times that we were on the same page.

I don't know what got into him. He said that he wasn't feeling it. I then told him that I was getting frustrated that I had to explain the same thing now more than three times to him and that he was misinterpreting everything. I was so worked up that I truly did not want to be in this meeting.

He does have tendencies of having a one-track mind and not being an attentive listener. A jerk.

Long week telling people to clear their browser cache

Long week. One more workday. Yay!

I find that working with software testers to be tedious. I'm often defending my work -- that my changes are correct and proving them wrong because they can't do something simple.

The other day, I had one tester tell me to remove a sentence. I told him that I had no idea what he was talking about. He presented his screenshot, which was a snapshot of our documentation from the night before. I showed him what I was looking at, which did not have that sentence. I even went once step further by saying that a particular setting was shown in his screenshot, but it's invalid and removed from mine.

Case closed. Sadly, it's a part of my job to tell people to clear their browser cache.

Short post for a busy week

It's a busy week at work. Last week was highly stressful dealing with yet another incompetent person on my team. I will need a post to describe that fiasco.

I have finally calmed down about the situation. I am so glad. It was highly frustrating dealing with her.

She has finally realized that she has damaged our rapport. I no longer trust her to independently do her work. She messed up and she knows it. I'll elaborate in a future post.

I am working from home on Tuesday. Sadly, I have an early morning conference call. I am in the office for the remainder of this week. It's not bad, but I would rather be sleeping in.

Everyone's needs are so important... NOT!

I do not understand why folks at my workplace think that their needs are so important that they need to hunt me down in a room as I am training.

It happened last week with a software tester. The question could have waited. I told him that I was training and that I would have preferred an e-mail. Clearly, I had my student with me in the room that he barged into. Still, he came over and we talked about it, interrupting my class.

Yesterday, it was the peer who recently joined my team. I was training and she came knocking with her questions. She expected me to drop everything. I had to say that she was training, which meant nothing to her. On top of all of it, I told her that she needs to work on her communication skills. Her e-mail was highly confusing and talking to her confuses me even more every single time.

I hope that tomorrow is a better day. I feel like I need to hide away.

Dealing with an inept colleague while on vacation

The new writer manages to still get on my nerves even when I am on vacation. She has no clue about respect for those who are on vacation.

On Christmas eve, she said that she'd wish everyone a nice Christmas. It seemed like a thoughtful gesture on her part.

We have an instant messaging tool that we use at work. I have it installed on my phone, as I take teleconferences while I am driving into work. I frankly don't like instant messaging apps. I find getting text messages to be a distraction.

Guess what she does? While I am preparing fixings in the kitchen on Christmas day, I get a text message on this instant messaging app from her. She's wishing me a merry Christmas. I have mentioned to her in the past that I don't like being contacted through this app. Obviously, this tidbit didn't register in her head, as with most information that my interns and I have relayed to her.

Two days later, I get a status report from her on this instant messaging app, saying that she's "holding down the fort." You would think that this app saying that I have been away for three days would mean something to her. Nope.

I wrote her an e-mail, copying our manager, on instant messaging etiquette. I pointed out that instant messaging is used to contact someone quickly to get a response and when it's urgent. Providing a status report or wishing me a nice Christmas over Skype while I am on vacation is not proper etiquette. I had to spell it out that I do not want to be reached on this work instant messaging app when I am on vacation. I want a work-free vacation. However, writing this e-mail to tell her to stop it and to explain how instant messaging etiquette works wasn't in my vacation plans.

I then indicated to look at our manager's e-mail that wished everyone a merry Christmas. He sent it as an e-mail, not through an instant messaging app. She does not comprehend that instant messages that she sends goes to my personal phone while I am on vacation and she is not. The last person I truly want to hear from on my vacation is this woman.

I got a reply back from her to my e-mail saying that she understood what I had said. I doubt that she truly does. It is so frustrating dealing with someone who seems to be shielded from the world and does not understand what is common courtesy.

Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour

Last night, I went to see Elton John in concert. He is on his farewell tour.

I have seen him in concert at least three times. The last time was back in 2009 when he was touring with Billy Joel. For some reason, I thought that this tour was six years ago. I was so wrong.

Anyway, I had a fabulous time. The only issue that I had was two women sitting next to me. They insisted on chatting through the whole concert. Why? None of us around you paid good money to hear you talk about topics that don't interest us. If you want to chat, do it outside.

What was even worse was one of the woman's leather jacket that she had on It had this pointy piece on it and it kept on poking my right arm for the first hour. I eventually elbowed her a number of times. She decided to switch places with her friend. I got relief.

It's amazing how some folks need a hammer dropped on their head to take a hint in manners.

Why can't medical folks communicate well?

My biggest beef this year seeing various medical folks is that they don't communicate with one another. As someone who needs to communicate with people often, it drives me crazy.

The other day, when I went in to see my doctor for my regular quarterly checkup, as well as for my bronchitis. She asked a ton of questions about my eye stroke. I couldn't answer any of them. I asked if she got the report from my ophthalmologist. She didn't. I know that I gave him my family doctor's name and address.

She asked for the phone number of my ophthalmologist's office. Luckily, I had that on my phone. So, I showed her the number on my cell phone. She called her receptionist and asked to get my report from that office.

"Do you mind waiting for the report?" she asked me.
"Frankly, I want to go home and sleep," I admitted. "I don't know how long it will take."
"You have a good point."

I had already waited for 40 minutes in the waiting room to see my doctor. Why do I need to do it for an unspecified period when I am obviously not feeling well with all that coughing and sniffling?

My doctor is understanding. She said that she would follow up with me once the report comes to her. I just wish that medical folks made my life easier, rather than causing more havoc that I do not need to be subjected to.

Friday craziness and my appreciation that the weekend is here

Friday was quite the day. I am glad that it's the weekend.

Friday was the contractor's last day. She left because she cannot stand our manager. Specifically, she does not like his way of managing the team and felt that it was time to leave the company.

It is a shame because we got along nicely. She stayed longer because she wanted to finish her tasks and not burden me with them, which was thoughtful and considerate. Yes, I am going back to doing the writing tasks that I did four months ago on top of my other responsibilities.

My manager asked me whether I was okay with taking on her tasks. I didn't like the way that various phrases came through on Friday from him, either through instant messages or e-mail. I told him that I wasn't thrilled with being thrown back into filling other people's shoes. I said that I would do it for now, but I need relief.

I am simply tired of being taken for granted and being afforded more work because my manager cannot spread the wealth.

We had a pizza lunch that was paid for by the company. My team consists of two students and the departed contractor. The pizza lunch was to recognize our contributions to the food bank. All four of us felt odd about participating in a free pizza lunch when we all did not contribute to the food bank. The students went out for lunch at Subway. For the contractor's last day with the company, we had lunch at a European place close by and had a wonderful chat over great food. She did not want a farewell lunch, so we made it a casual, extra long one!

The students and I also had a software release to get out the door. We got that done thanks to proper planning.

I also seem to be a surrogate team lead for a couple of folks in Brazil. Their team lead seems absent and is often unresponsive. They had a fairly simple update to make, but they spent over an hour. Luckily, I was away for most of it. I cringe working with them.

Back to my manager... he stopped me in the afternoon in a corridor about whether I knew that the contractor was handing her laptop to me. I had no idea and his line of questioning was odd. Why not talk to her instead of me?

I then got a fury of e-mails from him. I deliberately didn't respond to an e-mail that he had sent on Wednesday because I was logging off for the day. I have been busy this week, which included making sure that the contractor's unfinished tasks were passed over to me. His concern isn't mine. He resent the same e-mail twice. Excessive? Yes, under the circumstances.

Off to bed. I love weekends. I can sleep in and call it a week.

Frustration with a contractor - ugh!

I enjoyed blogging this past weekend. Frankly, I miss the weekend already. I was relaxed, happy, and cheerful.

All of those sentiments faded away when I got to work on Monday. I have to vent. 

It has been a while since I have felt so perturbed over a co-worker's actions that it makes me feel sick.  I felt tension in my neck and forehead. I could feel heartburn creeping in. My stomach has been queasy. I have felt this way for several hours now. Luckily, a nice, relaxing warm shower has got me in the mood to write.

At work, we recently hired two contractors. The first one is male. The second one joined a week later and is female. I don't have an issue with the latter.

The male is problematic. He constantly yawns throughout the day. He doesn't take notes. I actually had to tell him to take notes. Funny how professors never truly tell their students to take notes. It's implied that you do. 

He isn't a quick learner. He doesn't do what I have asked him to do and his work suffers. He takes constant breaks. The list goes on and on.

The first incident happened last Thursday. I came in to work and he attempted small talk. He asked me whether I was thrilled about not having a 07:00 meeting. It was an uninteresting one-liner, but I give him credit from trying. I simply told him that these meetings are part of the job.

I still had my coat on. I still had my lunch bag strapped across my body. I had yet to take my laptop out of my bag. He started asking me work-related questions.

I don't work that way. Let me settle in. I told him so. He is 27 years of age. He doesn't act it.

I finally got my coat off and started logging on to my laptop. I grabbed my mug to get some hot water for my tea. Apparently, my bluntness wasn't effective enough. He started again with another work-related question.

"I am getting hot water. Are you serious? Let me settle in. Your question can't be that important, can it?" I asked him, practically rhetorically.
"No, it can wait."

As much as I like helping people out, I don't like starting my workday with countless questions and have yet to sit down to do work. Let me answer my e-mails and log in to all applications that I need. Let me breathe.

Then, there was Monday. I met with him to see how he was doing with a fairly straightforward writing task. Well, I thought that it was straightforward.

"Did you start a [documentation] build?" I asked him.
"No, I forgot," he replied.
"We need to start a build, so we can see what the documentation looks like from a reader's perspective. Often, I will catch issues that I don't see in our editor," I stated.

Well, my words of wisdom backfired on me. I asked him to start a build. I had yet to review his work.

My manager and this co-worker had a one-on-one meeting Monday afternoon. They came out of the meeting with my manager asking that all three of us talk about some work items that they had discussed.

It turns out that they reviewed the documentation build output that I had yet to review. Sure enough, this co-worker managed to make a guide that is supposed to have the same content in two different software products look completely different. He messed up bigtime.

I pointed out that it was the reason why he needed to build our documentation -- to review it. My manager also asked him the same question.

I was probably more perturbed that I had to explain what he was doing to my manager. This guy obviously cannot communicate what he is or was working on.

I also wasted even more time talking to him. As usual, he has a bunch of questions and does not try to retain any answers that I have given him on countless occasions. I sound like a parrot. I don't get any treats, though.

Oh, did I mention that we have a deadline for this Friday to have all our documents completed? It's not going to happen with this incompetent contractor.

I was steaming in frustration for the remainder of my time at the office. I haven't felt like that in a while.

My working out helped. So did the shower, as I have just mentioned. Blogging does, too. It's therapeutic.

I do wish that my guy could be with me right now. He's always good at hugging me, kissing my forehead, and telling me that things are going to work out. They always do. 

He's right. I just miss that reassurance from him.

Work frustrations, but Friday ended on a positive note

The last 2.5 days at work have been crazy. It ended nicely on Friday, though.

Late Wednesday morning, I got an instant message from a co-op student, who happens to be a software developer. He asked me whether I have time to do some documentation updates. He isn't good at explaining himself.

It turns out that this particular team of developers has been working on a major software enhancement and failed to let me look at the design document, let alone tell me in advance that I would have to write something about it. I was livid.

I asked him to demo the enhancements. He told me to come see him. I told him that I work from home on Wednesdays and that an online session was needed. After much reluctance, he agreed. It also took some nudging to get the design document from him.

I flat out said after I had completed two parts of this enhancement (there are ten in total) that there was no way that I would be done by Friday, which is the deadline. That raised a lot of eyebrows. Good.

For several months, I tend to scramble to get my work done for this particular team, because they cannot communicate that I have work to do. They don't bother telling me what they are working on. I can only ask so much as to whether their work impacts mine.

I have raised this issue a number of times to both my manager and the project manager responsible for this team.

Technically, I work at a decent clip and understand things fairly quickly that I could make the Friday deadline. I wanted to make my point that I should not be killing myself because folks are horrible at communicating.

Sure enough, one of the developers raised the issue to the project management office. The project manager that I work for asked my manager if another writer could help me out.

My manager is understanding. We had a talk. I told him that this team had three weeks to work on this feature. I get 2.5 days to work on my part? Ridiculous.

My manager decided to cancel our weekly team meeting so I could work on this feature. He ended up doing the following:

• Raised this issue with his manager about this particular team and how it operates
• Indicated to the project management office that we do not have enough resources to have another writer pitch in, especially when one just quit this week
• Pointed out that this team does not follow process properly and that the project manager needs to watch this team like a hawk
• Defended me when I was accused by another project manager that I was "jeopardizing both teams" that I work for

I don't understand that last point. She is a jerk, so I don't really take her comments seriously. According to my manager, she accused me of failing to make this team complete everything on time for this work period. My manager told her that I am not to blame. It's a team issue for not completing everything on time. Specifically, it is everyone on the team but me who failed to help me out.

I am fortunate to have an understanding manager. He knows how I tick.

Sure enough, pulling extra hours to finish this work allowed me to finish by late Thursday. I sent out my reviews that evening and early Friday morning. I got some feedback and incorporated everything.

Yes, I completed my work under the circumstances. I have yet to not meet a stupid deadline like this one.

I wrote an e-mail to my manager, the two project managers (the one that I work for and the jerk), and the manager of all those software developers, indicating that my work was done. I also firmly, but diplomatically, indicated my position. It helped.

I got to talk to the software developer manager, who first thanked me for putting in extra work to complete this work. He also knew that our writing team is stretched thin these days. 

He is shaking up things on this team, which includes moving them out of a room that they have been occupying for over a year and moving them to where the rest of us sit. He also wants to make sure that I am involved in all stages of development. Finally, my request to have a retrospective meeting came true. I can finally voice my concerns to everyone.

The project manager then spoke to me. He also thanked me for my contributions and apologized for not being as supportive as he should have been.

Friday turned out nicely with these conversations. I also managed to take a 1.5-hour lunch break with the two co-op writing students. They asked me to join them for lunch. I drove them over to the restaurant and we had a good chat over decent food.

It has been nice to relax so far this weekend. More on that later.

F is for frustrating Friday

Software releases are a major event at our company. Everyone scrambles because project managers and those who think that they are in charge of things cannot plan for beans.

Thursday and Friday were days in which my entire writing team had booked a meeting room and worked on our deliverables for this Friday's release. Some of the writers that I work with and supervise are not swift.

A writer that has been with us for 1.5 years got on my nerves on Friday. I asked the entire team three times whether their work was checked in, so I could go ahead and generate manual PDFs. I frankly think that this exercise is far more complicated than my manager makes it, but whatever. I have stated my case many times. Our writing tool has its limitations.

Anyway, this writer comes back after a training session (I don't think that she learned anything) and asked me whether I had generated the PDF that corresponds to her work. I was annoyed. I told her that I did an hour ago and that she didn't speak up when I asked whether I could proceed. She apparently had a change to make.

This writer was also the same person who sat in another meeting room on Friday morning for at least a half hour before she figured out that she was in the wrong room. She was a part of the discussion on Thursday saying that we'd be in the same meeting room for the next two days. My boss also had sent an e-mail to the entire team.

Then, there's the second newest writer. He created a new branch (version) for our documentation release. He messed up the settings such that all PDFs had for-internal-use-only watermarks in them. He insisted that it was the correct setting. Another writer, my boss, and I all disagreed. I basically had it and said that I had wasted two hours manually generating the PDFs. The other writer was kind to help fix the setting after seeing how frustrated I was becoming.

To add insult to injury, the female writer who got on my nerves earlier said that she had noticed the watermark. Really? And you decided not to say anything. Ugh!

So, I got to work at 08:45 and left at 18:40. At least the weekend is here. However, I have a sore throat, which is never a good sign.

I'm off to rest up, to prevent myself from getting sick and from going insane.