Saturday December 24, 2016 Monte Rio CA.
My blog’s been hacked
Yesterday, I found out my blog had been used by spammers and it soon got locked down by my ISP when they discovered it. They do that when they discover a lot of emails are being sent out from the blog.
Unfortunately, when they do that, my readers get an access denied and so do I. I’m locked out too. It would be nice if they let you know that they did that, but they don’t.
This happened to my blog a couple months ago and they helped me get it going again. It’s my responsibility to fix it, not theirs, but they will help out when they get time.
Holidays aren’t a good time to get things fixed
Unfortunately, this time, it’s Saturday and Christmas time, so I think most of their help is off for the holidays except a skeleton crew, so it weights on me to get it going. I did contact them in one of their forums, but so far, no response ,so I need to work on getting things fixed up, with my limited knowledge of this stuff. I’ve worked in computers a lot in my time, but my biggest problem is with my age and remembering all the stuff I’ve learned in my time. I’ve forgotten a lot, especially from not having to do this kind of stuff everyday.
I’ll shorten things up by saying I spent a good deal of time doing research on the web to see how to get things going, which I think I might be able to do and when I can get back into my blog site, I first have to get the bad guys out and that’s another problem as I have to work on their server which isn’t as easy as working on your own computer.
Another problem I need to take care of and I should of done it last time this happened is put in place a better page, than the, access denied one that everyone sees that tried to read my blog. I think that is very confusing to my readers, like did he block me from his site? Last time this happened I lost about half of my readers, but was slowly getting them back.
While trying to figure all this out, I found I could put an antivirus type program on my blog to prevent this and I think I’ve found one which I will try when I get the blog going again. It’s called Wordfence and is a plugin for the Word Press blogs and they have a free one that I’ll give a try once I get back in.
I decided to keep writing blogs and publish them when I get it going again, so after I write this, I’ll be back to working on that.
Steve and I kayak down from Monte Rio
I was to meet Steve at Jenner today to go kayaking. Steve was there when I arrived, but hadn’t put his boat in the water. The wind was up and it was cold, about 45 degrees F.
We talked about it and decided to head back to Monte Rio where it’s never windy, just breezy compared to Jenner that is by the ocean.
Shoveling river mud
I knew the ramp at Monte Rio was real muddy, but I had my flat shovel in the car just for that purpose, so when we arrived I got the shovel out and spent about a half hour clearing a path through the mud to the water on the boat ramp.
Here’s the ramp after I shoveled some mud with Steve ready to put his boat in the water.
The river is still up and muddy from the recent rains. We headed on down the river taking it slow as we didn’t plan to go too far and stopped along the way in any place that was sunny and out of the current.
We are coming into the Villa Grande area here where we stopped before continuing on down a bit further
We hit a good cold breeze just below that and made it down to Sheridan beach and pulled in under the trees, just below those redwood stumps on the right. We sat in our boats.
Steve has lunch
Anyway, we sat there for about an hour and then started back up the river. There’s a little more wind down this way and it was cooler, so I was eager to start back up the river.
With the water up, you can’t just paddle up the middle of the river as there is too much current, so you have to work up the river along it’s edges which has a lot less current. In other words, you paddle up hugging the trees along the edges.
We pulled into that spot on the left for a bit, next to the great blue heron which did not leave, but sat there with us the whole time and even when we left and paddled by it fairly close.
Here’s the great blue heron keeping an eye on us as we passed on by fairly close to it.
Here’s what happens when you don’t take care of business
We paddled by this boat. It’s what happens when you don’t get your stuff off the water before winter. It may end up down the river before it’s over.
This as our view as we paddled back up the river just above Villa Grande, headed back to Monte Rio.
The sleeping fox
We were paddling here just a bit below the boat ramp where the current was fairly strong and we had to work hard at it, when I saw something in the brush. I wasn’t sure what it was, but eventually I realized it was a fox, dead or alive?
I saw it first as Steve was behind me and I said I think that’s a fox and Steve says, no, it’s a cat. You can see it just to the right of the kayak bow, just right of center. I was close to it, about fifteen feet and it wasn’t moving.
Hard to believe it was a fox
Interesting thing was we had stopped about twenty feet below it and were shooting the bull for about ten minutes before continuing on. That’s partly why it was hard to believe it was a fox.
Here’s what I saw at first. It’s got it’s head mostly hidden with it’s eyes closed, but it’s ears up.
I wasn’t sure if it was alive or not, but eventually, it opened one eye in this photo.
And eventually it opened both eyes and I was sure it was a fox.
It never did take off, so we left it and continued on up to the boat ramp and went on home for the day. Apparently it was just sleeping there after a hard nights work scavenging.
I went on home for a much needed nap.
That was my day.