Not the best weekend ever – computer crashes and porn hacking

There were a couple of wonderful things that happened this weekend. I keep trying to remember that. The taxes are almost done and I started taming the file cabinets. We played a marathon game of Planet Earth Monopoly with Number One Son and his girlfriend, who shall now be named The Real Estate Mogul because she trounced us.

And we had an adventure Saturday morning that wound up with the purchase of a magic window. Which I will show you tomorrow.

But two very frustrating, irritating, enraging things happened.

The hard drive on my two-month old MacBook Air died Saturday. Completely died. I’m thinking it was a massive stroke. There was no way to recover any data or email. Most of it was backed-up, but I’m sure some things will slip through the cracks. If you are waiting to hear from me about something and I don’t respond by the end of this week, please mail me again.

Apple is replacing the drive without any problem. But I lost a day of work and will lose more time getting the replacement.

The second thing was worse. A pathetic loser hacked into the UNOFFICIAL LHA fan page on FaceBook and emailed all the members a link that took them to a porn site.

I would like to see that person flogged, but the police say I’ll have to settle for less.

The page that was hacked had no connection to me. It started by a high school student a couple of years ago. She has since left the group and don’t think anyone else stepped in to be the admin, hence the problems. A member of the group emailed me about the hacking and and I contacted FaceBook. I think they may shut the page down.

FOR THE RECORD….. There are 3 “official and approved” LHA pages on FaceBook:

1. My personal page; open to family, friends, and readers of my books. Send a request and I’ll friend you. URL: http://www.facebook.com/people/Laurie-Halse-Anderson/571139598.

2. An official”fan” page, for people who care only about my books and are a little sick of hearing me talk about snow and tomatoes. The URL for that is: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Laurie-Halse-Anderson/21437339487.

3. The official Wintergirls page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wintergirls/47142907401.

These pages, as well as my presence on LiveJournal and MySpace and Twitter are all monitored; you’re as safe as a person can be on the Internet if you stick to the monitored sites.

I apologize to everyone who received the email from the skanky creep. I am very sorry and angry someone highjacked my name. I would love to meet up with that person and express my discontent face-to-face, but that’s what my lawyers are for.

SO! That was my weekend. How was yours?

I promise a return to unabashed perkiness tomorrow. I am very stoked about the magic window and can’t wait to show you pictures.

As the tummy turns

I feel much better today, but am still hovering on the edge of the crud. (note – I originally misspelled that as “xrud.” I think it works better that way.) BH has had it worse than me. I think another 24 hours of solitude and we’ll be all set.

I am feeling just xruddy enough that I have even less focus than usual. So this will be a random and disjointed entry.

Angela wrote to me on my Facebook: What do you think of the new AmazonKindle and the virtual road down which books have now turned? Do you think this is really the end of the printed word, like so many techies do? … cannot imagine not having an actual “book” in my hand to read…. Troubling, I feel. Your insights would be much appreciated.”

I think that Amazon should give me a Kindle so I can really explore this. They gave one to Neil Gaiman, but then they took it back. That was rather ungrateful of them.

Will Kindle-like devices take the place of paper-based books? Yep, I believe they will. But do not rend your garments or gnash your teeth. The concept of Story isn’t going anywhere. It is encoded into our DNA. It’s just that when technology changes, the vehicle for Story changes and that makes some folks uncomfortable for a while. And then we adjust. I suspect that the need to preserve forests combined with a generation of computer-friendly kids will make paper-based books into historical artifacts. If it helps bring the planet back into balance, I’m all for it.

A note from a Hungarian reader living in Malaysia came in the other day. Yeah, that’s what I said. A Hungarian reader in Malaysia. How cool is that? She read SPEAK and was finishing up PROM for her English 10 class. She wrote ” I loved Prom, too, though for entirely different reasons. To me, it shed some light onto the lives of “ordinary, everyday” teen-life in Philadelphia. You wouldn’t believe the ‘bubble’ I’m coming from! :)”

Congratulations to the Fayetteville-Manlius girls cross country team for winning Nationals for the second year in a row!!!

Middle school teachers – you want to read this review of Teri Lesesne’s new book, ” Naked Reading: Uncovering What Tweens Need to Become Lifelong Readers”.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic SPEAK at Nottingham was fabulous.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic In large part, because the director, Ginny Fennessy, and the cast and crew put so much energy into it. Thank you!

NB: A number of teachers have written asking for information about putting on SPEAK at their schools. Steve Braddock, the playwright, and my publisher will be working out the details of this soon. I expect to post information about how to obtain the proper rights and scripts by the end of January.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Last, but not least, The Creature With Fangs (who now has an album on my Facebook and her own Dogbook account – sigh) completely killed the toy Meredith bought her at Thanksgiving.

The CWF hates to chew hard things, even though she has great teeth. Fangs. She loves to chew soft things. Problem – soft things are easily destroyed. Does anyone know about an indestructible soft chew toy for large beasts?