14. February 2012

For my overseas readers who may not celebrate St Valentines Day. I should explain that it is dedicated to love and is often observed by exchange of greeting cards, flowers and chocolates. I’m sorry to say that this was the first time in our 49 years of marriage that I have failed to produce something appropriate for’ my lovely’. I think last year I had a bouquet of flowers delivered to her.

Why don’t I know for sure, as I could, in the normal way, just refer to 14 February entry last year from my archived diary, but, horror of horrors yesterday someone hacked into my blog and completely destroyed. it. I only discovered this late yesterday morning when I tried to publish yesterday’s entry and was presented with a complete blank, where the blog should have been. In checking out the computer and great big red warning came up informing me that there was a severe threat from a critical worm (virus) and there was a box which said something to the effect To remove this virus press here. Being aware that, some instances,  by pressing the delete virus but you can actually activate it and depending on what it is, it could destroy the entire data files, I did nothing except to telephone my good friend Paul, who very kindly agreed to pop round another look at it for me. He carried out various checks and then set me up for a full scan the result of which showed that I had a Trojan.win/sisproc worm virus which I was able to remove using Malawre software, but the damage had been done. My entire blog, over four years of work had simply disappeared.

I immediately got onto my Webmaster and friend, Richard Morris, who set the whole thing up for me in the first place and left messages for him on his e-mail and mobile. It was not until the evening that Alice managed to track him down and now Richard is on the case. Realising what had happened he had  already spent some hours trying to reconstruct a every single code which had been overwritten and it would take him all night trying to sort it out. . I got the old thing was a bit of a mystery as Richard is very security conscious but, as he says , if a hacker is determined to get inhe will . (remember  the hacker who got into the Pentagon files). Just what that means, as I write this , I have no idea whether I would ever see my blog again in its old form.

Why would anyone want to hack into my blog?. I asked Richard. He said, just because it’s there and perhaps because it has become so popular, someone just decided to be malicious and wipe it out. Howver, Richard was very surprised that all the security safeguards he had in position when he had created this site had not protected it, because, as I said , he is very security minded

As I write, mid-morning I have no idea what Richard managed to achieve overnight or even if this current entry will be able to be posted. The only consolation I have is that from the very beginning. I have kept three hardcopies of the entries; one for’ my lovely’ and one each for the two children to this means that they have the essential diary but none of the fun Anecdotes; Videos; Jokes or Photos. Those were not desperately important but they certainly did add to the enjoyment of what otherwise might have been a rather boring diary.

In a hopeful anticipation, and now how clever Richard (Morris) is my Webmaster I have included some the appropriate for St Valentine’s Day. Click here to see the husband of the year .