Hello all you wonderful Playtime readers / viewers.   As some of you may have noticed I started off the beginning of last week doing great with news posting and answering comments.   By the end of the week it was sporadic and haphazard.    

The reason for that is that Ron had to make a trip to North Carolina to pick up his sister and go to the nursing home where his brother is a resident.  His brother is 76 years old (I think 75 or 76) and is in and out of reality.   He is doing so much better in the home.   There reaches a point where people who are alone need extra help to take care of themselves and their age and health break down.  He would have died a couple years ago if Ron and the sister had not taken extreme measures to get him into a nursing home program.  The brother is poor, of course we the public mostly are, and nursing home care costs like six grand a month for those that can pay, for those on social security and SSI, your screwed.   The brother had physical and mental issues that were getting worse because he was not able to take care of himself both medically and physically such as cook for himself or do what he needed to do health wise.  Sorry if that sounds vague but I am trying to respect his brother’s privacy.  

Long story short because of Medicaid rules the brother had to be in a nursing home to qualify to be in a nursing home.  Go figure!  So to meet that requirement the sister had to pay 5 grand for the first month to get him in and then another time to keep things going another 3 grand.  She has more money than most but she is not wealthy.  She is 72, was a single mother who held two jobs at the same time and she has a retirement fund she put into all her life that she drew on to do this.   Later in life she met a grand guy she married who also worked hard and put money away and supported the sister doing this for her brother.  

Under Medicaid / SSi rules (Ron and the sister can tell you all the details, I am only going on what I was told by them) the brother can only have or keep about $30 dollars of his social security income plus he can have only limited if any assets.   So no matter what his social security payment is all but $30 dollars is taken and given to the nursing home.  The government doesn’t care about a person’s bills or dignity.   People that can afford to pay get a private room, the poor like Ron’s brother have to have a roommate that they get no say in having.  Ron’s sister (Diane, sorry I got tired of typing the sister and realized I would have to add another sister to the mix) now controls the brother’s finances as Ron controls the medical stuff for the brother.   Ron, Diane, and one other sister put a set amount into the brother’s bank account to pay his existing bills and cover his needs.  We do not begrudge this even though the other brothers with more funds than we have chosen not to help. 

So that is why Ron left for NC on the 11th of April, to fix a situation that had developed, see the brother, and handle paperwork regarding the brother’s care.   I got a treatment on that same Monday to help with my back spasms which involved 8 or 10 (I forget the exact number right now but that is around the normal number.   It is never less than 8 and rarely more than 16 anymore.  The most I had is 21 but I had lost the ability to walk and was in really bad condition when that happened.)  I took our second vehicle, a 2007 Toyota van still in good shape, and after the treatment I felt great.       The treatment itself is really painful but I have learned a long time ago to shut off / diminish / bear the pain I know is coming. 

For those not aware my body is wrecked, and I am limited in what I can do without severe pain.    I was built on a Monday by those paid on Thursday who spent the next four days in the bars on a bender and were seriously hung over on Monday when they built me.  That and the damage caused by childhood abuse caused my body to deteriorate / deform / decay and by my 30’s I was unable to do things most people enjoy doing without thinking about it that much.  Even my last year in the military to try to march caused me a lot of pain in my hips but because I only needed to do that for a couple special occasions, I did not think of it too much.   I should have, it would have granted me a military disability pension but I was still sure I was a healthy young person back then.     But my husband and love of my life for 32 years has stood by me and as I was able to do less, he simply did more to cover what I couldn’t do.   One of those things is the housework.   When Ron left James stepped up and tried to take over all the household things Ron normally did.   But James is working long hours with lots of overtime and I simply did not want him to come home after working a 16 hour shift to worry about doing things around the house that I felt I could handle for a week.  But every day after he got home he would offer to do anything needing to be done and I would send him to bed as he had to get back up and do his job again in less than 8 hours.  

Long story short because this is turning into a novel, the first several days I felt great and maybe over did as the steroids coursed through me.   But I was handling it I thought.  then towards the end of the week I did something really stupid that I knew not to do.  Everyone can yell at me for it, I already am paying the price.   I went grocery shopping, got the few things that we ran out of while Ron was gone and the two local Publix stores had a bunch of the soda I like for a great price.   Now the price is normally over a dollar but they had a get 5 for $5 and most importantly they had the amounts to sell, which normally they only have like three or four.  I got 20.   Yes twenty 2 litter bottles and I thought I was a king.  I got a few other things like a gallon of milk (gods are cows in short supply or something?  $5 for a gallon of milk?  I am going to need to use water for my breakfast cereal) I was so proud of myself for taking care of the house and getting supplies.  Here is where I screwed up.

Before I left I separated and started laundry.   I normally do the laundry, but Ron takes it out of the dryer so I don’t stress my back by bending over and we put the stuff on our bed to fold / hang up and Ron helps, or does it himself when my back is hurting too much for me to bend over to do it.  Ron was not here and I was about to screw up badly.  

I got home with the groceries and the 20 bottles of soda.   Ron normally keeps reusable heavy bags in the car for groceries so we don’t use as many plastic bags, and he puts like five bottles of soda in a bag and carries them in.   He refuses to let me carry them and I felt I had a chance to now prove to him I could do it also.   I was wrong.   Boy James was upset when he got up for work.  More on that later.   

So seeing Ron carry five bottles at a time in each arm and James just picks up  armfuls of them like whatever amount is there and carries them like nothing.  Must be nice to be 30 and have a body that still works.  I filled two bags with five each and started into the house.   To reach the kitchen the shortest route is through my office from the driveway and then through the open concept living room / kitchen to the actual kitchen area itself.   I did not make it through my office.   I set one bag down and struggled with the one five bottle bag.  I set it down, went and got the second bag of five.    Then I went out to get more.   This time I took three and only one bag.   I was down to one bottle in one bag before I was done.   The milk nearly made me burst into tears.   I took extra medication.   But I still had the laundry to do.  

After resting and letting the medications work, morphine is my best friend and I am resisting going to Fentanyl as it scares me what I hear about it, I took the stuff out of the dryer, placed them on the bed, and took care of them.   That evening when James got up for work he realized something was wrong, he kept asking me if I was ok.  Of course, I told him, I just had a busy day, no problems.   That night I got some sleep and the next morning I started doing more laundry.  When James got home after a long shift he asked what he could do for me.   He wanted to know if any housework needed to be done and he took the trash out to the end of the driveway.   No I lied to him, everything is fine, I think later I may do some stuff but all is good.  He went to bed.  I did several loads of laundry.   I am not sure if that is the day I tried to vacuum the floors or not, but whatever the point is I over did.   My back gave out.  Over the weekend I could hardly walk, I couldn’t sit in my chair at my desk for very long and stopped trying to do any of the normal work like putting dishes in the dishwasher.   I was in so much pain at times my back would spasm and it would cause me to catch my breath because it was such a sudden pain. At night I couldn’t sleep even with medication the muscles in my back spasmed and the nerves in my spine where either pinched or pulled causing either sudden shooting pain, constant burning feelings, or my feet to suddenly try to force my toes from my body.  

Needless to say I was miserable.  I could barely walk and was using my canes in the house something I normally don’t do.   James noticed and he was really upset.   He took it personally, refusing to understand I thought I could do it myself and just misjudged.     He refused to go to bed until he went through the house doing everything he could think of that needed to be done including making several meals up for the day.  He kept asking why I had not asked him to bring them in?  When I said he was working and I simply should have tried fewer bottles he did not buy it.   First he said he wouldn’t have minded getting up to do it and then that they could have stayed in the van until morning when he got home for him then to carry them in.  Hard to argue with him on that point, the guy is smart.   Needless to say all weekend and today when James woke up, he comes out of his room to see if I needed anything.   He has repeatedly told me he is getting me a different desk chair when he can afford to as he thinks the chair is hurting my back.  Thinks I need something called a zero gravity gaming chair.  

So that is why I have not gotten to the comments nor done my normal posting for a few days.   I have been posting things that do not take so much mental effort and been slow on the comments (which I love) because when I am in this much pain even thinking is hard.  Even when in bed trying to get my back to release it is hard to concentrate when in this much pain.  If I take enough medication to cover the pain more than I normally do, I cannot think due to the medications.  To write this I have had to go lay down twice.  It is easier to read news on my phone or pad and to watch videos that don’t take a lot of thought than things I normally like to consume and share.   

Anyway Ron is home, and when he got in he could hardly walk.  It was a long trip even though at my insistence he took an extra day on the way home.  As crippled up as he was, he refused to let me carry anything heavy and only let me have a few light things to carry in as he had heard from James what I had done.  I am sure that when he gets up I will hear about it.   Good thing I made a really good spaghetti red sauce a few days ago.  That will put him in a good mood because he loves my cooking.  Plus James went to work and won’t be here to tattle on me.   Ok my back burns like someone has a blow torch on my spine so I will do a few comments and then go lay down again.   Best wishes to everyone.  Scottie

Yesterday morning I got up at 4:30 AM, fired up the beasts of burden that are my computers, and got set to do the first roundup in nearly a week.   I was excited to see how it would go together.   I had spent the last few days before then updating and fussing over settings and getting things the way I like it and catching up on comments.    If you remember I had to go back to the old router that was infected but a few days after I took it offline it cleared itself.   I set it back up and I had total control again.  Yea!!

I use two browsers on my computers I use routinely for my daily browsing and stuff.  I normally use Chrome for everything.   However I use Firefox for the roundup.  Why do that?  Because of the way I can get the cartoons and put them in the post I am creating.    See Chrome won’t let me right click on a lot of the sites, and so I cannot copy and paste the cartoons.     On some cartoon site neither browser will let me copy the cartoon and have it display correctly so for that I use the “take Screenshot” in Firefox.  That allows me to save the cartoon to a folder and then add it to the post with WordPress software.   One reason the roundup takes time is it is not a simple thing to get hundreds of cartoons / memes / tweets from the source to one page in WordPress.   

Now one other step I set up in the morning when I start the roundup is to open one Chrome window with no tabs along with any leftover Chrome windows that were full of open tabs.   This gives me a clean set of windows / tabs to look up information when I am doing the misinformation right wing media section.   With Chrome all set up, I opened Firefox to my blog and went to sign into it.  That did not work like normal.  Instead of signing in it simply took me to the page I started from.  Thinking I had just goofed something I tried again.  Same result, instead of signing in I returned to the regular blog page.    It was like I was not even trying to sign in.    That set off alarm bells in my head.    I turned to the other computer screen and tried to sign into my blog though Firefox.  Same result.  I click log in, put in my information, returns me to the same screen not signed in.   Now I really knew I had an issue.    But what was it.  

I checked the WordPress status to see if there was a problem.  Nope.   So I went to down detector.   That site refused to let me in claiming I had unusual traffic on my network.   Now I get that sometimes on Google and other sites due to my VPN.   I run Nordvpn and I like it, but sometimes the VPN can make it seem like unusual traffic.   Normally simply disconnecting the VPN from the internet and putting it back on the internet again normally fixes that.    This time it did not.   

I wondered if the router was infected after a few clear days.    Yes it was.   I couldn’t change the same settings as before and couldn’t do the firmware updates.    Damn.   James got up and I told him that it was infected again.    He said he had been having trouble with it on his phone and computer when he was playing YouTube or other videos.  The videos would stop while they buffered.   So I turned on the traffic monitors and other investigation tools and James and I spent several hours trying hard to figure out what was really going on.   First thing we noticed was that my computer was not showing having any traffic even though I was playing a YouTube video.    Every other device was showing traffic.    So we worked on that, and suddenly my computer was showing traffic again.   But James noticed something I missed.  A device would have a steady in / receive traffic and a steady normally much lower out / transmit traffic, but for a few seconds that device would show a surge in outgoing traffic.   Then a different device attached to the network would do the same thing and return to normal.  Then another device on the network would suddenly spike its outgoing traffic for a few seconds.       I knew how they were doing it now and why my security was not catching it.    They were mimicking the devices attached to my network, pretending to be legitimate members of the network.  All our phones, pads, computers,  even the printer, all the IOT (internet of things which is the internet connected appliances, TV, stereos what ever) so the router thought it was that device sending out these packets of data.  I read up on it and it is a common way bot networks worked now.    That is why James and Ron were getting buffering when they watched YouTube, and why my computers were not affected.  I have a lot more ram and page swap file hard drive space than their phones.  

 So what to do about it.   I couldn’t clear the old router, and I was not sure if my computers were infected as the anchors.   What was bothering me is that at first my main blogging computer did not show any traffic when it clearly was passing traffic.  But that could have been a glitch of the router.    So I looked at what was the solution and that was binding the mac addresses of the device with their network address / IP.   It is not fool proof but better than what I had.   The problem is that the old router did not have that or a few newer protocols that are designed to stop these malicious software bots.   The new router I disliked did have them and did have the binding capability, but it did not have some features I liked on the old router.   While the new router has some good points it still had until April 6th until that adult nanny parental controls for adults working that I couldn’t shut off.   That is where under the guise of security they run all your traffic through their servers checking the IP address of the pages you go to against a list of known sites with malware or were dangerous to go to.   Plus they also monitor content to check if data is malicious.   Both of those things I hate.   All that information about you is sold to marketers and other groups that build databases on individuals.   But I either use that new router and put up with the parental controls for adults until April 6th or I go out and buy a new much more expensive router.   I don’t have much choice do I.  

I am sure some want to know how I keep getting infected with what is clearly a bot malware.  It could be from Russia, North Korea, or any other country.  It could be companies trying to break into large corporation’s computers to steal their intellectual property secrets.  Thing is if you look at the threat maps more computers are infected than not.   Even large businesses that have big security budgets cannot keep their networks from passing through traffic.  The larger a network the more attractive it is for these nation state hackers.   But how do they infect your computer I hear someone asking again.    By going to your favorite website.   Yup that is all you need to do.   I bet most of my viewers are infected with the same bot network malware and don’t know it.   By the way the old idea was that porn sites were full of malware.  But reputable porn sites are scrubbed clean and very secure of malware.   After all porn is big business, maybe the biggest money maker on the webs.   So they keep their sites clean of bad software.   Even the sketchy porn sites are more likely to have the old ransomware or password stealers.    Not the real powerful well designed nation level malicious software.        But don’t you need to download something I heard yelled from the back?   Nope.  When you go to the website it is sending your computer the page, how to display it, what is on it, what links are there, and more.   The data is flowing into your computer.    Now virus software like the old trojan information stealers, that kind will trip your anti-virus software and firewalls.  These nation state level hacks are designed to get in without setting off the alarms, they mimic legitimate data, programs, or devices.   So what these hackers look for are popular site that might not have as great a security or do security sweeps on a schedule.   Like news sites, or cartoon sites.  I am sure right wing media web sites are full of these malware programs trying to get into your system.

So late yesterday afternoon I dumped and wiped the two computers (just to be sure) and set up the yucky new router.    Then I set about installing all my programs and updating Windows.   Hours and hours of work.   I was only started when it was suddenly late and I was tired, so about 8 PM I went to bed.    Remember that I had gotten up at 4:30 that morning.    

I woke at midnight and couldn’t sleep so at 2 AM I got up again to work the computers.   I got the updating done and now I am just reloading files.   I tried to take a nap but I couldn’t sleep, my mind full of desire to want the computers up and running.    I will start the roundup again tomorrow morning.    If I can stay uninfected.   Maybe next time I will just leave them to it because until the Firefox the hack did not bother me or interfere with what I was doing.    Best wishes.  

Thank you to everyone, all viewers of my Playtime.   It has been a struggle these last 4 days with computer issues.   Maybe the most frustrating thing was not being able to read and answer the comments.   Sadly I have had a long day and I am quite exhausted right now.  Thankfully I have Ron looking out for me who insisted I stop long enough to eat a short time ago, which will keep me from getting sick or having a blood sugar issue.   My eyes are clearing finally, and I can see things more clearly and without the shifting blurriness I have fought all day.   I hope it gets better so that these new glasses won’t turn out to be a problem.   However I have reached my limits.   I cannot sit at the computer any longer.   So I will take my last evening pills I have forgotten to take until now ( don’t tell Ron as I am normally the one that has to remind him and … well you know ) And I am off to bed.  I am not sure when in the morning I will get up.   I may sleep in, something I don’t often do if my body will let me, if not I will be up between 4:30 and 5 AM.   Night and best wishes.   Scottie  

The situation with the routers I thought was solved.  I was unhappy but about to get even more unhappy.   I opened programs and started adjusting setting on them.   And hit a road block the size of a tank.   On my browser I got the message that a third party organization was now in control of my browser settings.  If you know me at all you know I cannot tolerate not having full control of my computers.    So first I tracked down what the warning meant.   It means a security setting was changing how my browsers were acting and what they would display.   So in this case I had added two new security programs, one on the router I then cancelled but it wouldn’t stop until Apr 6th and the VPN I use had added a safety protocol add on that also was to prevent some of the very things the router added security did.    Again some of that was done by sending all your traffic through their servers so they could monitor the addresses of where you went to make sure they were not on a malicious site list .    I take my web surfing privacy seriously.   To the point I wont let my ad blocker down even to access news / cartoon sites.   I have three anti-tracker programs to block and trackers and then to find and delete any that get through.   There is somethings you have to let happen and get through in order to surf the web, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave them on your system when you are done.   

So what to do.   I clearly couldn’t use the new router until after the 6th of April.   I also needed to shut down the VPN add on.    There was only one way to ensure it was fixed correctly.  Yesterday morning I removed the new router and hooked up the old one.    Hey the Russian hack was causing me less problems than the new router and my own security apps were.    But a weird thing happened.   When I went into the router settings, and I had full control again.  I could set the settings I wanted to set the way I wanted them.   Interesting.   Was the fact that it was offline for several days so couldn’t contract its control network what cleared it?   I thought I had unplugged it several times but maybe I did not?    Or maybe I did not leave it unplugged long enough?   Or was it something on my computers feeding that setting lock out.    I did not know but it is still working correctly even today.   Which makes me happy, but sets up more questions.   Do I switch routers after April 6th?   

So now I needed to reset everything one more time.   So first I put the Windows USB in the video computer, restarted it coming up on the USB drive.   I put the blogging computer into recovery mode / environment and set it up to do the factory wipe and install.  Waited for that to be done on each.  When they were done I went through the settings in the control panel and then the Windows settings menus.   I renamed the computers.   Hours slowly creeped by.  I listened to podcasts while I worked.   Then the going online to update Windows and install all the security and other programs.   More hours went by.   With Windows, between each set of upgrades the computers had to be restarted and the settings checked again.     But late yesterday about 7 PM I had the computers loaded and checked.   I was happy with the installs and the way the programs were working.    But there was still work to be done.  I had to run the defrag program I prefer and not only defrag the programs but the free space as well.  I also had to move files from storage on the hard drives.   So I set that to happen and took my sore tired body to bed.   I got up at 4:30 to write this and get started on some posting.   I have to go this morning to have my eyes again checked.   The doctor was not happy with something happening in my left eye.  So Ron has to go with me.   My eyes will be dilated.  So when I get home my posting will have to wait until I can see again.   I may lose this entire day again.   Sunday through Wednesday lost, and Friday morning will be taken up with the driver’s license renewal.  

And now to start again.