Deeds & Words

Facebook, USA —The state of Facebook reacted angrily this week when its newly elected senator GOP Senator Scott Brown voted against party lines and supported a Dem-sponsored tiny little jobs bill. 

Facebook’s other senator, a pickle that has more fans than Nickleback, was not available for comment.

Republican Scott’s election had taken Facebook-watchers by surprise since in the 2008 elections, the social networking state had gone blue.

Facebook citizens launched complaints against Brown, many of the “I will un-fan you, sir, indeed I will!” variety.  One person taunted, “Hey, Scott, did you get your 30 pieces of gold?” Thirty pieces of gold is the biblical price of betrayal, adjusted for inflation.

 Many of the angry comments posted did center around money, such as, “I spent good money to have you elected!”

Supporters of Senator Brown worry that his action, and the ensuing backlash, will reduce the value of the autographed 8 X 10” glossy photos of the Senator’s nude Cosmo centerfold from 1982.  “We’ve got hundreds of those things,” said someone who wished to be kept anonymous, “We can’t give ‘em away!”

One poster reported that “Massachusetts, you’ve been Barracked!”  “Barrack” is a term used to describe military-style dormitories.  When contacted for comment, Massachusetts said, “Sure, we’d love some barracks.  That’d be wicked cool. Or repairs to the interstate, or some of our bridges.  Even a couple of Pizza Huts.  We’ve got 10% unemployment over here; a job’s a job, y’know?”

It is unclear why Brown, who is Facebook’s senator, would risk the ire of voters by supporting a bill that would help Massachusetts.

Reactions were not uniform throughout the state. Over 1500 Facebookers responded stating they “Liked” Senator Brown’s actions. 

BREAKING NEWS: Disgruntled Facebook activists have formed a third-party movement called This Potato Can Get More Votes Than Senator Brown Naked.

The Sweetness in the Bottom of the Pie

 Alan Bradley

Bantam Books, 2009

(Warning: Spoilers)

“It was as black in the closet as old blood. They had shoved me in and locked the door. . . Luckily for me, they had pulled the gag so tightly into my mouth that my nostrils were left unobstructed, and I was able to draw in one slow lungful after another of the stale, musty air.”(1)

This is the reader’s introduction to Flavia de Luce, the fearless and inventive heroine of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Flavia is the youngest of three daughters in an impoverished aristocratic family in Britain in 1950. She is an eleven-year-old Jane Marple in this Christie-esqsue English-village mystery, and she soon escapes the closet to begin investigating the murder that happens in her own family’s garden. The mystery is completely true to the conventions of Christie and other novelists like Ngaio Marsh. Flavia’s family finds a dead bird—a jack snipe—on their doorstep, with a rare postage stamp fixed to its beak. Shortly after this takes place, Flavia finds a dying man in the cucumber patch. Does the corpse have anything to do with the argument her father, whose hobby is philately, had with a threatening stranger? When the police inspector assigned to the case at first dismisses Flavia as a child, she launches her own investigation.

One delight in the book is Flavia’s character. She is a precocious auto-didact, but still an eleven year old, and is far from perfect. Her love is chemistry and her passion poison. She doctors her vain sister’s lipstick with a distillation of poison ivy, then carefully tracks the results in her journal. (To be fair this is retaliation for several things her sister has done to her—see the opening quotation.) Here is Flavia, a true eleven year old, upon the discovery of the dying man:

“I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had even happened to me in my entire life.” (p 29)

Flavia sets out to discover the identity of both the murdered man and the murderer, introducing the reader to a number of interesting village residents. To Flavia’s surprise, grown-ups are not quite as black-and-white, or as stupid, as she has decided they are. She has several surprises along the way, including this exchange with the housekeeper/cook. Mrs. Mullet periodically makes a custard pie, which the de Luces loathe. In a fit of brattiness, mainly designed to push away an unwelcome sense of intimacy, Flavia advises the housekeeper of this fact:

“And while we’re speaking girl to girl, it’s probably as good a time as any to tell you that we none of us at Buckshaw really care for custard pie. In fact, we hate it.”

“Oh, piff, I know that well enough,” she said.

“You do?” I was too taken aback to think of more than two words.

“Course I do. Cooks know all, they say, and I’m no different than the next one. I’ve known that de Luces and custard don’t mix since Miss Harriet was alive.”

 “But—“

“Why do I make them? My Alf fancies a nice custard pie now and again. Miss Harriet used to tell me, ‘The de Luces are all lofty rhubarbs and prickly gooseberries, Mrs. M, whereas your Alf’s a smooth, sweet custard man. I should like you to bake an occasional custard pie to remind us of our haughty ways, and when we turn up our noses at it, why, you must take it home to your Alf as a sweet apology.’ And I don’t mind sayin’ I’ve taken home a goodly number of apologies these more than twenty years past.”(p 266)

The main mystery is less complex than Christie, but strong enough to carry this book and showcase this unusual new voice. There is a real mystery in Flavia’s life, one touched on several times in this book, and that is the mystery of her mother, Harriet, who apparently died while mountain climbing in Tibet.

Flavia is knowledgeable and intelligent, but Bradley keeps her an eleven-year-old. While her observations are worthy of Sherlock Holmes, her conclusions are drawn from the sensibilities and experience of someone who is still in childhood. Nowhere is this more poignant than the last few chapters, when she confronts the murderer.

I look forward to the next book in this series. I can’t wait to find out more about Harriet, watch the hostilities between Flavia and her sisters escalate, and learn more about the locals of the village. And I want more of Flavia racing about the countryside on her faithful bicycle Gladys, yodeling her name, ruminating on life, and gathering clues.

During Nanowrimo I connected with a Forestville-based writer named Margaret. She was writing an interesting mystery/dark comedy (or a darkly comic mystery) set in the Russian River area. We had exchanged a couple of chapters of each other’s novels and I was looking forward to reading more when my hard drive crashed.

In the crash I lost Margaret’s e-mail.

She mentioned once she had read my blog, so I’m putting out the call. Where are you? Are you still interested in reviewing work? I know I am. I also left a message on the Nanowrimo website on the Sonoma/Marin forum page.

If any of you know Margaret, please let her know I’m trying to reconnect.

Wish me luck!

On Valentine’s Day I stopped at the Mendocino Chocolate Company shop in the village of Mendocino to pick up a truffle for the Sig-O.  We don’t actually observe Valentine’s Day, but I said I’d blog more about chocolate, and here was an opportunity.   It was a tough choice of truffles with all the flavors, but I narrowed it down to marzipan enrobed in dark chocolate (the Sig-O likes marzipan) and the Santa Rosa truffle, a classic dark chocolate truffle with a dark chocolate coat and a red icing rose.  I ended up getting him one of each.  

Many of the truffles have local names, like the Fort Bragg or the Santa Rosa, descriptive names like the Seamist, or whimsical names like the Angela, named in honor of Angela Landsbury who used to hang out in Mendocino while it stood in for Cabot Cove, Maine, the fictional location of Murder, She Wrote.  The Angela truffle has a tiny orange icing rose on top, because orange roses are her favorite. 

The Mendocino Chocolate Company also sells creamy fudge, milk chocolate and dark chocolate bars and molded chocolate.  They have two locations.  Their chocolate kitchen, with a storefront, is in Fort Bragg, and they have the small “showroom” here, one block east of Lansing Street on Ukiah Street. 

Their base chocolate is Guittard, made in San Francisco, so they are very much a northern California product.

 I thought I had a nice picture of their Mendocino shop, but I can’t find it anywhere. The woman who waited on me on the Saturday before Valentine’s Day was not the owner—there’s a surprise.  She told me the current owners have had the business about six years.  She said she thought it was mistake that they had moved from a location on Lansing to this address.  They’ve been east of Lansing since I’ve known about them, and that’s been about four years.  She said tourists don’t always find them, since Lansing is the north-south main drag and also hosts the building with the tower and the intriguing statue of Time and The Maiden.  She said they had moved because the owner didn’t like “all those homeless people.”  I think she was referring to the Mendocino panhandlers, who are numerous and proficient.  I might question just how homeless some of them are, but I also know, from the time I worked in an office in downtown Santa Rosa, how exasperated merchants can get with panhandlers and homeless folks.  Mendocino is smaller but basically no different. 

Anyway, wherever you find them, their chocolate is very creamy and rich. I prefer dark chocolate and their dark truffles have nice layers of flavor.  The Sig-O pronounced each of his a hit, so there you go.

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the side exhibit room at the Gualala Art Center was Saddle Ceratops; a triceratops head with a saddle tree used as the base.  Every piece in the show, “Wine Country Saddle Trees of Middletown” features the armature or “tree” of a saddle. I don’t know what inspired Karen Turcotte, who curated this show, to think of it.  Well, maybe I do, because it’s in her artist’s statement, and clearly, once the girths, stirrups and skirts are stripped away there’s something familiar and evocative about the shape of a saddle.  It’s like a viola or the sound box of a guitar, or the human female figure, or a landscape. And, certainly horses and humans have a partnership in history that goes back a long, long way.

 Karen invited various artists to interact with the saddle tree, and the resulting show, although small, piques the imagination.   Next to “paleo artist” Larry Williams’s Saddle Ceratops, which looks convincingly like a rusted triceratops head, architect David McMillen’s “Mask” resembles the helmet and face of a Spanish conquistador.  McMillen also has a stylized piece near the door, called “Nude Reclining,” which looks like a naked woman, resting on her elbows, if that shape were reduced to its basic components.  Both of his pieces focus on shape, not function.  His is not the only female nude in the show, although “Blue Lady—Undone #1,” by Jeanne Marble Tennison, with its ivory skin tones, soft pinks, and ruffled bits of denim, could not be a more different take on the female form.  Just beyond them, Crystaleen Loren’s gryphon-ridden saddle probably moved me the most.  In Karen’s statement, she mentioned the discovery of ancient Scythian saddles decorated with gemstones and precious metals.  Loren’s “Last Scythian” embraces that, with a resin gryphon dyed to resemble polished bronze, curled over the cantle and seat of the saddle tree.  The rest is studded with polished stones that look like amethyst and smoky quartz.  The piece is intricate yet primitive looking at the same time. The detail of the gryphon alone kept bringing me back to this one.

 Like “Scythian,” Turcotte’s own piece springs from the function rather than the form.  I liked the whimsy of “Horse Sense,” as a horse takes its ease on the top of the saddle.  Trucotte has festooned the saddle with various leather belts and buckles.  Some are plain, some elaborate; one is gold-colored with a golden buckled etched with a design that suggests a secret society, like the masons, or maybe the rodeo.  The piece made me chuckle, then it made me come back to look at it more closely.

 Like “Undone #1,” Glinda Addington’s shadowbox “Birth” sees the form as a female one.  She uses the saddle tree, black leather and the vertebra of some large animal against a painted shadowbox to create a piece that’s textured and contained.  Julia Regina’s “Waterfall” goes in the opposite direction.  The saddle is nearly completely hidden; mounted on a mirror, draped in strands of shimmering beads that represent the falling water.  Here is saddle as landscape.   Reba Burrows’s “Pegasus” uses fabric, feathers, glitter and paint to create a lofty and colorful fantasy.

Turcotte’s carefully chosen quotations adorning the walls resonate with the pieces.  She uses one of my favorite quotes, from Stephen Lea; “He flung himself onto his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”  This show runs madly off in all directions, in the best possible way.

 This exhibit space is small, but even so, I wish the show could have been bigger.  I’m just greedy.  There was so much imagination and variety here that I wanted more.

 The show is up until February 28.  The Arts Center is open seven days a week, 9:00 to 4:00 pm during the week and noon to 4:00 pm on weekends.

46501 Gualala Road
Gualala, CA 95445
(707) 884-1138

Well, I’m sooo-oo-ooo glad that I made changes to my blog so that comments are easier for everyone now!

I’m being sarcastic. Can you tell?

Since I made that change I have been pelted with comments and pingbacks. A whole raft of them look like they’re in Greek. Some of the English comments have offered me the latest best secret stock deal, easy ways to refinance my house; they’ve advised me that Obama wants me to go back to school (I checked, he doesn’t); and five or six have offered me even easier access to porn. That’s so convenient, because around New Year’s I was wandering around the house thinking, “What’s the one thing I need to feel truly whole and fulfilled?” And the answer was “Easier access to porn!” Isn’t that amazing?

Some of the English comments are fake comments, obviously. I know how susceptible to flattery I am, but even I begin to wonder the third time I’ve gotten this exact comment, from different people, “Very insightful posting! I found you on Google and I will return to this interesting site.” Especially when the “insightful posting” in question was titled “Announcements.” Oh, and those comments came from “authors” with names like Ambien and Risperidol.

So, my new, more open approach has given me more time-wasting chores, such as cleaning out my e-mails every day, because only a fraction of these go into the Junk Mail folder. One thing it hasn’t brought me; genuine comments. It’s pretty clear I lost on this deal all the way around.

 I checked into the Breakers Inn on Friday, then I walked up to The Four-Eyed Frog and bought two novels, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and The Godfather of Kathmandu.

After wandering around Gualala photographing the awesome waves, I checked out the TV in my room. At first I thought that Breaker’s Inn no longer offered the Syfy—or “Siffy”—channel. This was a big disappointment. I had hoped to get to watch some science fiction shows; Doctor Who, Sanctuary, or especially Caprica. On Sunday, the Sig-O showed me all the channels in the 300 series that I hadn’t known about, including not one but two Syfy channels. So exciting! Eagerly I flipped to the Guide station to see what was available.

One Siffy channel had a show in progress. The other was just starting a movie called Boogieman. Here, roughly, is what the Zap2it Guide had to say about Boogieman:

Released in 2005, it stars Barry Waterson and Emily Deschanel; “a stylish thriller about a man who, as a child, may have been terrorized by a supernatural creature that lives in his closet”. . . or was he?

“Stylish thriller” means “better than we expected,” in the sense of writing, art direction, acting and so on. “Stylish” does fit this film. So does “slow,” since the suspense is largely psychological. Did the monster in the closet really snatch six-year-old Tim’s father, or did Dad just leave the family? Is Tim hallucinating during waking hours as well as suffering bad dreams?  (Spoiler alert—there is a boogieman.) I liked the non-linear time-and-space connection with the closet doors, but I didn’t really understand the ending. Why does he have to break all the toys he used, as a kid, to keep the boogieman at bay? Didn’t they protect him before?

After we came back from dinner I seized the remote. Sanctuary? Caprica? Doctor Who? Yes, Doctor Who! Only, no, sorry, it’s on BBC America which we didn’t get. On Siffy 1 is a movie called Lost Voyage. The other channel had. . . Boogieman.

Lost Voyage was released in 2001, but I’m guessing that it was made in the early 1990s and sat on a shelf for ten years. It’s a Bermuda triangle story. Has anyone done anything new with Bermuda triangle in the past 20 years? In this one, a cruise ship went into. . . a hell dimension! And it came back thirty years later! The usual assortment of troubled people flies out to the ship and boards her. Later some stuff happens. The Sig-O dosed off about fifteen minutes in, awakening only for the thrilling finale. He said he couldn’t understand it since he had been asleep. I told him I hadn’t been asleep and I couldn’t understand it either. He summed up the movie this way; “If evil calls, let the answering machine get it.”

I still had hope for Monday morning. Perhaps it would be a marathon day. Maybe Hangar 13? Maybe The Dresden Files? When the Sig-O got up I checked the guide channel again. Why, yes, Siffy did have something special, very special indeed; a V marathon—the original V from the 1980s, in which reptilian invaders take over earth by disguising themselves as aerobics instructors.

Pathetic TV, but a couple of great books:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley. This is a 1950s-era Christie-style English mystery, and the intrepid village sleuth, Flavia de Luce, is eleven years old. The youngest daughter of a quirky, impoverished aristocratic family, Flavia loves chemistry above all else, and poisons above all other chemistry. Intellectually precocious, Flavia still has the sensibility and experiences of an eleven-year-old. Whether she is engaged in clandestine warfare with her two older sisters, racing about the countryside on her faithful bicycle Gladys, or surreptitiously searching the murder victim’s room, Flavia is observant, acerbic, honest and refreshing. The puzzle of the mystery is just complex enough to keep us interested, but Flavia’s life and her strange household grips us and makes us eager to read the next book in the series. As a role model, Alan Bradley is outstanding. He retired from his “day job” and published this in his seventies.

Godfather of Kathmandu, by John Burdett. This is the fourth in the Sonchai Jitpleecheep series, which began with Bangkok 8. The third book, Bangkok Haunts, terrified me. Somewhere along the way—it might have been with that book, but I think it was sooner—I got the impression that John Burdett secretly hates the Thai people he writes about so compellingly. I’m not sure what caused me to think that. It is certainly not that Sonchai is a stereotype. Sonchai, half-Thai and half-American; part cop and part crook, wannabe monk and genuine psychic, is an authentic character with a powerful voice. Still, I couldn’t shake this deep sense of dislike from the author. I picked up Godfather with some trepidation, but it carries none of that feeling. In this book, while Sonchai is reeling from the most devastating loss a parent can face, he is expected to help his boss, Colonel Vikorn set up the biggest heroin deal in Thailand’s history, and solve the bizarre death of a Hollywood movie director. The drug deal takes him to Nepal where he meets a Tibetan mystic turned freedom fighter and Tara, a woman who practices Tantric Buddhism.

Somehow, the flawless balance of Bangkok 8, the clockwork intricacy of comedy, mystery, danger, psychic phenomena and oh-wow mysticism is back, completely in place, in this book.

Television managed to redeem itself on Monday. It wasn’t Syfy, it was TNT, which hosted a Supernatural marathon. Those Winchester boys—some brains, some brawn, a muscle car and cool leather jackets. Yeah, and with the episode “Hollywood Babylon,” you almost won me back.

I have two managers who report to me.  I’ll call them Joy and Declan.  Those aren’t their names.

The other day in a staff meeting we were talking about some upcoming vacancies and possible promotions, discussing the people we have, and whose skill-set best fits where (and how we can talk them into applying). 

Declan mentioned one person who has very good program knowledge but lacks confidence and is tentative in giving answers.  “Doesn’t really have the command presence,” he said. 

I said, “Well, I don’t have command presence and I’ve done okay.” 

He immediately said, “You’ve got plenty of command presence.” 

Joy, who comes from a military background, said, “Those epaulets positively gleam sometimes.”

Sonoma County’s 2-1-1 system, information and referral with a phone call, is one year old today!  Happy birthday!

2-1-1- is also available online, but from within Sonoma County all you have to do is dial/punch those three numbers to reach a helpful human who can direct you to services, whether you need food, basic shelter, information about health coverage, income tax preparation assistance, counselling, or activities for your teenager. It’s available 24 hours a day.

211 came up just as the economy was tanking, so it’s no surprise that the majority of their calls in 2009 were for what we call “basic needs:”  food, utilities, shelter, and medical needs.

The economy teeter-tottered on the cliff-edge of full-out depression, and we managed to rock it back, but it’s not completely all-four-wheels on the road yet.  One of the best ways to get cash into the hands of every day working people is to help them apply for their tax returns, especially people who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit.  211 is the contact number for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program.

Maybe you’re doing fine, and you want to help or give back.  Contact the Sonoma County Volunteer Center and click on Human Services Information and Referral, or call (707)573-3399.

I recently suffered a digital disaster.  In January, my PC stopped booting up.  I thought I had a virus or a corrupted file.  I had something worse.   The diligent help of some technical folks and friends helped me survive this ordeal. 

A paean of gratitude to Debbie Hepper, for good referrals and a lot of help.  Debbie is a tech par excellence, interesting conversationalist, witty movie reviewer and a great photographer.  She co-edits an online motorsports magazine and you can see some of her Nascar work here. 

Thanks with chocolate sauce on top to Andrew and the support group at Sonic.net, my ISP.  As well as being a local company with a great origin story (two Santa Rosa Junior College students started the company) Sonic.net is one of the most helpful and patient internet service providers ever.  More on them in a bit. 

I’d like to give Best Buy’s Geek Squad a big shout-out too.  I’d like to, but I can’t.    I have no complaints about their technical expertise.  I have plenty to say about their communication, and not much of it is good. 

The original problem was this; I’d power up and the laptop would try to launch Windows.  The Blue Screen of Death would flash past for about a nano-second and then a black screen with a flashing cursor would appear.  That screen gave me a lot of text choices about how to bring Windows up (safe mode, last best configuration, etc).  No matter which one I chose, the same circular dance would occur.  I took the machine to the Geek Squad, where a tech named Kevin helped me.  He suggested a data recovery process and then repair/cleaning of the hard-drive, because he thought I had a virus.  He quoted me a price that included the cost of an external hard-drive for the recovered data.  The price was not cheap but it was reasonable especially including the external drive, and it didn’t seem like I had any other good choices. He also said it would be about three days before they would get to my PC.  In fact, it was five days before they called me.  I went down after work on a blustery twilight with stinging rain hurtling out of the northeast.  I waited in line.  After about 20 minutes a guy I will call Nameless Guy called me over.  He looked at my receipt and read some notes that were “in the system.”  Then he went away for about five minutes.  I amused myself by studying the store and comparing it the fictional Buy More from the TV show Chuck.  He came back with my laptop and a box that had the external hard-drive in it.  “Here you go,” he said. 

“Can we boot it up to see if it works?”  I said.  

He powered it up and around we went; Blue Screen of Death, black screen with flashing cursor.  “It’s not fixed,” I said. 

“Hmm.”  He fiddled with his paper file for a minute.  “Oh.  Here it is.  We never agreed to fix it, just to do data recovery.” 

“That’s not what you told me you were going to do.” 

“I’m sorry you’re unhappy,” he said.  “You have your data.” 

“I don’t have a computer.” 

“I think there is something we can do.  We have a super-diagnostic program and we can run it to see what’s wrong with your drive.” 

Several words in that sentence, such as “we,”  “diagnostic program,” and “a” were probably true and accurate words.  None of them was true in relation to me, though. 

I waited again while he scurried around doing something.  I think I was probably drumming my fingers on the counter by that time, because he flashed me a nervous smile and said, “How’s the rest of your day going?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I hope we can make this right for you.” 

“I hope so too. How long will this take?” 

“About three days.  If it can be fixed.” 

“Okay.  How much is it?” 

He gave me the quote, which I was expected to pay right then.  Including the previous charge, we were edging toward the border of Unreasonable, but I wrote him a check and requested my receipt. 

“I’m sorry you’re angry,” he said.  Well, of course he was.  I was making him feel uncomfortable.  His “sorry” had nothing to do with my feelings. 

I got my receipt, left the laptop (again) and drove home through the rain.  When I got home I had a phone message, from much earlier in the day.  It went sort of like this: “Hi, Marion, this is Kevin at the Geek Squad.  I have bad news.  We attempted data recovery on your PC but you have a dead hard-drive.  Basically it’s toast.  Please call me so we can discuss alternatives. Okay.  Have a nice day.” 

Hmm.  Nothing about super-diagnostic programs or data already being on the external drive I purchased.  I called Kevin back. 

Kevin said the PC’s hard-drive was DOA.  He recommended purchasing a new hard-drive, bringing in my CDs and having them reinstall the software.  As an alternative, for an additional $300, they could send the dead drive out to another lab that could try to pull data from it.  That seemed excessive and unnecessary.  I asked Kevin if he thought I should just get a new computer.  His answer surprised me.  “No,” he said.  “Your PC’s in good shape, you just need a hard-drive.”  We agreed to go forward with this.  He told me I would need to call HP and order a Recovery Kit from them, since they do not provide back-up CDs for their systems. 

After we had agreed to all this, I told him I had been in his store less than an hour earlier, and been given very different information.  I explained about the data recovery, and the super-diagnostic thingie.  There were several seconds of silence.  Then Kevin said, “Well, I don’t think that’s possible.  Do you have the external drive there?  Has the box been opened?” 

I pulled it out and looked it at. It hadn’t even been unsealed.  I told him that.  More silence, presumably while Kevin read through the notes on the system.  “I, aah, I see that one of our clericals was working the counter, and maybe he just got confused,” he said, because really, when in doubt, blame clerical staff. 

The next day I called HP and ordered the recovery kit.  I got it three days later, and took it to Geek Squad yet again, and left it along with my other software disks, and four days after that, my PC was ready to collect.  They also refunded me some money on the second (imaginary) transaction I had paid for, and I kept the external drive.  So except for that whole part in the middle where Nameless Guy was just making stuff up, it went pretty well, if we factor out the three weeks with no computer. 

Terrible service?  Not really.  A nightmarish experience?  Hell, yes. 

When I finally picked up my rehabilitated machine, the guy behind the counter read the system notes.  His eyebrows went up.  “Wow, what a siege,” he said.  I responded with something witty like, “Um, yeah.” 

Then, the first day my PC was back and operational, an evil, evil Trojan horse virus hi-jacked my blog.  I didn’t know what this meant until I saw it happen.  Here’s how it worked; I would open my blog and try to navigate within it.  Instead of getting the Site Admin page, or a previous posting (whatever I was clicking on) I’d get a page that said, “To read further, Click Here.”  If I Clicked Here, I did not get taken to anyplace in my blog, but to some commercial site.  These seemed to rotate; once it was for a Motorola mobile phone application, once for something like “Doctoredu.com.”  I frantically called Sonic.net (see, I told you they’d come back into the story).  Andrew checked it out while I was on the phone.  He said an “exploitive” application had found a vulnerability in my WordPress software.  He tried to fix it, then put me on hold while his supervisor tried to fix it.  He came back on the line, apologized, and said it was going to take them longer to correct the problem.  They would call me the next day.  Based on my recent experience, I thought, “Yeah, right.” 

They did call me the next day, to tell me that WordPress was fixed, and the evil exploitive hijacking application gone.  They followed it up with an e-mail to confirm.  I was a happy camper. 

To sum up; rainbows and unicorns for Sonic.net and Debbie H. And for Geek Squad? Perhaps a pretty cloud and a show mule.  They need to work on that communication thing.  And guys?  If you don’t know something, don’t just make things up.  It makes us angry.  And you won’t like us when we’re angry.