Phished

(wow, a new blog!)

From time to time we all get those emails that say “Help! I’m stuck in some foreign country and need you to send me some money”, but I’d never really known anyone who got phished until last week.
It started with an email from my brother that said:

This wouldn’t be as funny if it wasn’t for the fact that I was at his house, on his computer when I read it. Yeah, irony. We all had a good chuckle, and then I suggested he better log in and send everyone a note to say he wasn’t really in Scotland. He sluffed it off for a few hours but, after my aunt called wanting to know if it was true and saying she’d try to find a way to help if it was, he decided that he’d better send that email.

Then the funny disappeared.

Not only had the hackers sent the email, but they changed his password AND his secret question. Yahoo has a handy feature where you can click the “this isn’t my question” link and they will revert to the last two questions only, surprise, he couldn’t remember the answer to one of them. Sure, he knew the answer, but he wasn’t sure how he’d written it. So, we started the ring around the rosies game that is contact yahoo customer service. Let me give you a hint, we never found a contact email for them. We finally had to sign in under my account so he could use the “live chat”. All that accomplished was that she “passed it on to the security team”. Meanwhile, we were now concerned that people might be sending these creeps cash.

After a brainstorming session, we managed to remember his secret question answer, so he was finally in, but it didn’t end there. The hackers had created a secondary email and linked it to his account, deleting the original “back up” mail he’d entered previously. And, the real rub, they deleted his entire address book. All the emails he’s collected over the years are gone, and most of them he doesn’t have written down.

What we initially thought was funny, turned out t be a giant pain and, depending on what kind of email account a person has, could be disastrous. Once the hackers can get into your account, they can change everything and as good as lock you out. So, be sure to keep your address book backed up and write down the answers to your secret questions because no amount of alternative email accounts can help you out.

And for the segment I like to call “Random Things from my Hard Drives”  please enjoy some

random, but cool, character sketches:

Nirel, Kariss, Michael and Elsa

Claudius, Benjamin and Bethina

Adam, Alexander, Arowenia and Ashton

Fav song of the moment – “The Humbling River” – Puscifer

Shadows – Flash Fiction

(originally from August 2007)

 

She woke with a start and sat up in bed. Her eyes peered through the darkness, past the clawing shadows that were splayed across her wall, looking for him. But he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there for so long. It felt like an eternity.

Did he known how much she loved him? Did he know she woke every night, panic fluttering its tiny butterfly wings inside her chest when her seeking hand didn’t find him in bed next to her?  Did he know how much she missed him, how much she’d grown to count on him? He’d always been there, right beside her, warm and reassuring.

Only now all that was next to her was a cold empty space; cold and empty like her heart, like her dreams and her nights.  The space where her heart had once lived ached as she looked forward to another night without him, followed by another day. The sun would rise on a world where she sat without him and then it would slip slowly across the azure sky and sink below the horizon, bringing on another lonely night.

She lay down once more, her eyes drawn to the empty space beside her as tears formed in her eyes, leaking from the corners. She reached out and touched the pillow lightly, fingers trailing across the cool cloth, imagining his sleeping face in its place; his deep, warm eyes smiling at her from under thick brows. A face she’d grown to love more and more and one she thought she’d always see peering at her.

Why had he left her? Why had he gone away? She’d sat straight in the chair, body rigid and lips unable to say the words repeating through her mind in an endless circle. She was so sure that it had to be a mistake. It couldn’t be truly happening – not to her, not now. He would never leave, never. He couldn’t, not when she needed him so.

But it hadn’t been a bad dream. He was gone and she was there, listening to the house breath in the stillness of the night.

She rolled over and clutched the sheet to her chest like a lifeline, a piece of safety to stem the flow of her pain. But nothing could ease the suffering in her soul or erase the feeling of hopelessness that had settled over her. The bitter taste that rose to her mouth when she thought of how he’d left her alone.

The same questions that played through her mind nightly began again. Why had he gone away? Why had she been left here to achingly endure nights and days alone? Why had the universe taken him from her? Why?

But the darkness held no answer to her query and so she surrendered and begged for sleep to take her away from her memories of that day. Away from the misty graveyard and the shiny black box that had born her life away from her and buried it in the dark, wet ground underneath the slab of granite. Lifeless rock that bore only his name and the cold dates – statistics to describe a life. The words “Beloved Husband” carved as a token of her love, a reminder to the world that after all these years she was now alone to trek through empty days and echoing nights until God saw fit to reunite them once again. Alone and sad, longing for his voice, his touch, his glance. Alone in the deep shadows of what had, for many years, been their home. Alone to see the pity in the eyes of their children. Alone.

**************

So? Good? Bad? Indifferent? Kinda sad, I admit. Took me several writes to get it sort of the way I wanted and still not sure I am happy with it, but such is life

And for the segment I like to call Random Things from My Hard Drives, here is some….

It’s the sketch for Silver Blue

Some day I am going to go back and do this as a manga drawing!

Fav Song of the Moment – “Now Comes The Night” – Rob Thomas

TTTC – Chapter 6 Page 2

Now that the Terrible Turtle Conspiracy has it’s own website, I’ll no longer post the whole comic here in one long blog. Instead, each week I will post a link to the newest page, like I’ve been doing on Myspace.

What is the TTTC? It’s a webcomic written by Jonathan Harvey and illustrated by me. we add a page every week, so be on the lookout. Why not visit http://TerribleTurtles.com and subscribe?

For full sized turtley fun, click the image above!

Computer Art VS Traditional Art

(originally from June 2007)

This is my first entry in the HIM art contest… Yeah I know you’re thinking, “Wow, don’t put any effort out!” but this took a couple hours to do – as insane as that sounds. Besides, why waste a day or more on something  when I have no chance anyway? The thing isn’t judged on Talent but instead on who the judges hate the least! And besides, I thought it would be fun, I haven’t used markers seriously since I was 9…….

Here’s the exact same ink line drawing – only filled in on the computer…. now which one’s better? Hmmm……

And this is why I am all for computer coloring! Okay, you miss some of the shading blends you can get with colored pencils – and yes it takes longer (this took two and a half hours AFTER it was scanned in, so adding the drawing time it’s up to three and a half at least.) but I think the smooth results are worth it! And yes, they say you can get the same result with paint – but I never can – and I’ve lost my watercolors anyway……. I also know there are some lovely markers manga artists use that are supposed to provide smooth color – but holy bananas are they expensive!

Okay, ’nuff from me :p

Fav song of the Moment – Fatal Design – Entwine