November 99 November 98 November 97 _________________ Saturday 20 November 99

12 10 am est I got a fantastic e-mail from a woman named Jennifer.   Sometimes I am saddened that it is so difficult to communicate emotions in e-mail [without little smiley faces like ;-)], and sometimes I am stunned by how profoundly moving a stranger's words can be.   I asked Jennifer to tea when I reurn to NY, and I do hope she accepts. I am excited about going home for the holidays, but I will be a bit sad about missing the wonderful Christmas transformations of this city.   Each day I watch in wonder as the seasonal spirit unfolds on the streets.

3 36 pm est So I got hacked... twice.   Well, sort of.   Last night I looked at the refer logs to this site (URLs that people used to get here) and I saw several hits from the same page, which usually means that someone linked to me.   Instead, I found that someone had copied my diary site.   Copying code is one thing, and copying images is another, but this person took my code and my content.   She left the title of the site as "Rachel's Daily Diary" and she left the greater portion of my site the same, such as my counter code (which is how I found the page) and my ALT tags for images, and then changed a superficial amount of the text.   Here is an example from our two home pages (where she left up all of my quotes and everything): Mine: Chapter 26, in which Rachel makes plans to return to California (probably from Thanksgiving through the New Year, with some time spent in LA and some in Berkeley with her beau) and has to seriously think about her future. She ponders where she wants to live after the New Year and what kind of career she wants to have. She is daunted by the idea of applying for jobs... Hers: Chapter 26, in which Noi makes plans to return to  Chiang Mai  and has to seriously think about her future. She ponders where she wants to live after the New Year and what kind of career she wants to have. She is daunted by the idea of applying for jobs... Granted, I was more grouchy than I might have been, because I was a bit ill from my evening of debauchery the night before.   I grabbed a copy of her code and then sent off a message about it to one of my diarist mailing lists.   The rally of support was impressive.   I took off to visit my aunt at the video shop (and she gave me a stunning silver menorah* for Chanukkah) and when I returned several people let me know that they had e-mailed her and told her what she was doing was wrong.   One person had explored the rest of the site (it is on Geocities) and found that it was a porn site.   I checked it out, and there are indeed myriad pictures of nude Asian women, with e-mail addresses that request mail from American men looking for wives.   Of course, by the time I had returned, the diary site had been pulled, so I was very pleased that I had pulled my own copy of it [I copied her copy!].   So, for your viewing enjoyment, here is a mirror of her homepage and one of mine, as well as a mirror of her "about me". Ah, but I said twice.   Today I woke up to an e-mail from my newest client asking, "What does if mean if my site has been hacked?"   My god, was that an adrenaline rush.   I made the last updates to that site at 2 am last night, and she discovered it at 11 am today, so at the most it was sitting there for 9 hours.   But the really funny thing is that the site had zero traffic, since we haven't released the address yet (though I did stick it in my entry yesterday).   So her and I are the only two people who saw the site, and while I copied the page, I will not give the dork (who referred to himself as "the master of binary code") the satisfaction of me mirroring his ridiculously lame page.   I will give you this sample (in the color that the page was changed to): Hey b0yz, heyz g1lz! seems like we were hacked! HERE WE GO! He also left this comment in the code:** I aint no fucking hacker! i'm just a guy in a white suite! I'm guessing he meant "suit" and not "suite", but I guess when you're so busy hacking traffic-less sites, you don't have time to reread what you write.   Actually, when I read it the first time, I thought it said "white shirt". Anyway, I scrambled to recreate the page, since the lameass deleted it, and got it all taken care of in less than an hour from when I was notified that there was a problem. * A menorah is the type of candelabra that Jews use for the eight days of Chanukkah (also spelled Hanukkah). ** When you write HTML code (the code used to make web pages), you can leave comments to yourself (or others) in the code that won't show up in the webpage, but will show up if someone reads the actual code for the page.

5 25 pm est I am having a bad day.   This whole hacking business has made me seriously grouchy.   I was ready to dismiss the whole Noi's Diary incident, but now that I've had this second run-in with a pathetic human being, I will probably get vindictive and have her Geocities account cancelled (since I'm pretty sure porn is prohibited on their servers).   As for the actual hack, I don't know if there is someone you are supposed to report this nonsense to (besides the administrator of the server), so I have to go inquire about that...   What a waste of my time!

7 06 pm est In my fit of grouchiness I called Matthew and told him that he had to cheer me up.   He made a concerted effort to do so, but was heavily distracted by the two college football games he was consuming (one on tv and the other on the radio).   I talked to his new roommate Steve for a while, and told him that he had to be in Berkeley for at least part of the time I was there or else he would be in trouble.   He always teases me because I call Matthew "Peach Pie".

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