Opinion : When computer code rules, sometimes you lose

For the past few weeks the Tech Guy and I have been biting our nails, well I have been, he's been scratching his head, and we've been comparing notes.

At one point I told him I was sure that he was hallucinating because he kept telling me that the website was working, but for me, it was not. Then I found out that I had "misbehaved" and the website said, "Oh, huh uh, this lady is NOT going to get access to me!"

There is a term called "whitelisting" which is necessary when the website "thinks" that someone is trying to hack it, so it throws up a barricade to keep you from accessing it. In order to get back on the Tech Guy had to "whitelist" my IP address which gave me access again to the website and basically told the site to take a chill pill. (everyone online has an IP address... it is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network.)

I somehow had become the bad guy. I made a huge mistake.

We learned that the website was reading my articles and thought another word put in front of the word "f r o m" was a command. In another life and definitely a few decades ago waaay back in the 80's, I had learned how to type in DOS commands, so I was somewhat familiar with what he was telling me. This week it was the word, "s e t."

Being the obedient website that it is, it said, "Yes ma'am I will do as you are commanding!"

We don't know why.

The Tech Guy is trying to figure it out.

But we have called it our "from problem. "

All of these little tidbits of tech gibberish are useless for you to know, probably me too, but hey, you might get on Jeopardy and need to know terms like "whitelisting" and that computers use commands that include the word "f r o m."

It's been among several other issues we've faced this last month, but I wanted to say, "F R O M me to you, thanks for your patience as we try to sort this out and return to some sort of normal!"

Today's news will be light..something about the website eating an article 3.5 hours in the making.

I must say, in the world of computer code, ours has been around for more than 10 years, so while it's frustrating right now, in computer years this is pretty impressive.

We are in the process of a rebuild right now, so that soon I won't have to worry about rewriting.

Have fun tonight and stay safe everyone may 2020 bring a ton of good things to everyone reading this!

Happy New Year!