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.

Meeting up with my colleague for cheese tarts and bubble tea

I had a food perk to pick up on Saturday afternoon. I then met up with my former intern who is now my colleague.

We have been trying to get an application to work on his laptop. Our IT group sucks. We told them right off the bat that it was a profile issue. Well, they finally got around to resetting his profile. Everything works. Finally! We were both elated on Friday, but also annoyed at how incompetent this IT group is.

Anyway, he treated me to bubble tea. It was so thoughtful of him. He placed the order and I went to fetch it, as it was on my way from the food perk place and I didn't mind fetching the order. I wanted to split my food perk with him (I got four Japanese cheese tarts) because they are so good.

He loved the two tarts that I had given him. He loved them so much that he devoured them without taking a photo. Luckily, he saw me take a photo of all four before I handed two to him that I simply texted him my photo.

The bubble tea was amazing. I'm so glad that he recommended this place. I got this blue Curacao soda with small bits of pineapple. It was so refreshing and delicious.

We hadn't seen each other since last August. We see each other on a weekly meeting through video, but it's really not the same. It was great seeing and talking to him briefly yesterday afternoon.

The disaster that is a Windows update

On Monday, after I was done work at 4 pm, I had a Windows update on my work laptop that was pending and had it installed. I left my laptop on for another hour before I turned it off for the day.

I started my workday on Tuesday just after 7 am. I woke up too early. In a way, it was good.

I booted up my work laptop. I could not get Microsoft Teams to launch. I needed it to train the new hire. Rebooting and relaunching Teams did not work. I absolutely dislike whenever there's a Windows update. Ideally, it should work. When it's bad, it's incredibly bad.

At 8 am, I started training the new hire. I noticed that no matter what site I was trying to access, I had to enter my username and password, and my credentials could not be authenticated. I then saw a Windows message saying to lock my screen. I did it. Guess what? I was completely locked out of my laptop. Great.

At work, there's a self-serve password reset. I tried it and couldn't connect to the server. Lovely.

I then called the IT helpdesk. The folks there suck. The woman I spoke to said that she couldn't unlock my account and had to pass it over to her colleague. He would call me back. I asked at what number. At my Teams phone number. Um, no. I have Teams on my locked laptop. You can't automatically assume that the phone number on record is accurate. I gave her my cell phone.

I tried logging in after fifteen minutes. Success! I was able to log into my laptop and train. Sadly, I lost an hour of productivity.

The male helpdesk guy called me half an hour after I had logged in. Such a crazy delay! Apparently, since this Windows update happened, many folks have been calling the helpdesk for assistance.

Such a horrible update!

My friend's passing

My dear friend passed away from Leukemia on Sunday. I got the news last hour.

It's heartbreaking. She enriched my life with her friendship. I am thrilled that I knew her for over twenty years.

Her last e-mail to me was that she loved our friendship. She loved me. She wished that we had travelled more together.

She was the ideal travel companion. We never had a disagreement when we travelled together, be it snorkelling or drinking beer. We knew that we would be travelling companions when we retired.

I have been looking at photos of her. I particularly like the one that I took of her with her daughter at a playground. They are both smiling, with her young daughter hugging her.

I was fortunate to have met up with her for lunch back in December 2019, and January and March 2020. I will remember hugging her for the last time after lunch and waving to her as she drove off.

I am happy that I got to say that I loved her and cherished our friendship. I am at peace telling her what I needed to before she passed on.

May she rest in peace.

Alex Trebek

Alex Trebek, host of Jeopardy! and other Canadian game shows before it, has passed away. 

Cancer sucks. He was 80 years of age.

I grew up watching him on TV. I loved watching him host High Rollers and Pitfall. I then watched Jeopardy! religiously, to the point where I got my parents to watch the show with me. To this day, they both enjoy watching the show.

He always made sure that there was a Canadian question on each Jeopardy! show. I loved that he always had Canada on his mind. 

Such a huge loss. May he rest in peace.

Getting a cold and getting paid early

I feel like I'm getting a cold. It's sucks. My throat is sore and I'm drinking lemony water to soothe it.

I get paid every other Thursday. What I love about my bank is that it deposits my pay on Wednesday night, just after 10 pm. It gives me time to pay my bills at home, rather than waiting to get home on Thursday night to do it.

Little things make me content.

Mac mini issues after a software upgrade - again!

My Mac mini is dead. Yep, again.

I have High Sierra as its operating system. There was an update. I gave it a shot. All I get after the installation and countless reboots is a white screen with the Apple logo, and a grey status bar that does not budge.

I spent last night troubleshooting online with two different support guys. They were great, but I got disconnected from the text chat session.

I will be giving it a try later on tonight. Here's hoping that the connection doesn't die again.

Steve Perry

Steve Perry. Ah, memories.

I grew up listening to his solo work. "Oh Sherrie" is still one of my favourite songs from the 80's. I then went into a Journey phase. and loved singing to everything, especially on road trips.

He has released a solo album. He has been away from the music business for roughly 25 years.

The sad, touching part was that he fell in love with a French-Canadian woman. She sadly succumbed to terminal cancer in 2013. He promised her that he would not go into isolation again should something happen to her.

He kept his promise. Such a moving, sweet story. Wow.

I'm off to listen to his new album.

Crazy Rich Asians

I finally saw Crazy Rich Asians. I loved it.

Although I can never relate to being in a rich family, I get being on the receiving end of prejudice and unfair judgement. I also relate to how dysfunctional families can get and how unreasonable family members can be.

I may go back and see it again. The other movie that I want to see is A Star is Born. I have a feeling that I may have difficulties getting tickets, but I'll try.

My guy is still going through back pain. It sucks.