Hackers really raise my hackles...

This is what a squashed slug I am on the information superhighway. Every year or two I go to Aberdeen, SD to visit a poet friend and do a poetry reading & student workshop. I usually go in March, but this year, hoping to avoid the usual freak blizzard that hits while I’m there, I went in April. Of course, a freak blizzard hit just as I was finishing the reading. The highway east to I-29 was snowed in, and I-29 from the there to just south of Watertown was closed—a rarity, since we hearty South Dakotans will drive 75 on a iced-over deer trail. I thought, cool, I can get some grading done & catch up on my email.

Imagine my chagrin when I tried to log into my Hotmail account and was locked out. I spent the next two days stuck in an Aberdeen motel room (my friend was buried in Comp papers with a grade deadline fast approaching) with bad motel coffee and a huge bag of Cheetos, waiting for the Interstate to re-open and embroiled in non-stop email correspondence with Hotmail “security specialists.” Turns out my account had been hacked, my saved mail was gone, and Hotmail now identified me as Mu Sen Peng. Even the treacherous bobsled drive home was more fun than divulging my bra cup size, the girth of my thighs, and the pattern of freckles on my right elbow in order to get that Hotmail account restored. Good times in Aberdeen.

Then yesterday, when I tried to log into my Ebay account to replace my cracked Birkies, I was locked out. More non-stop correspondence, both by email and phone, revealed that back in April when Mu Sen hacked my account (from Portugal), her/his nefarious purpose was to hack into my Ebay account, where she/he had been selling Samsung TV’s and sticking me with the fees.

Mu Sen’s on her/his own now. I’ve bagged the Hotmail account, I’ve been reimbursed for the fees, and I’ve decided to keep Mu Sen’s name (technically mine now, since it’s on my account) as a nom de plume for anything I write that borders on lascivious or cheesy.

My brother, the network guy who’s constantly warning me about on-line security, is probably having a good yuk. I don’t have time to worry about his gloating, though; Mu Sen Peng is hard at work on a book of ebonic limericks based on the bodily functions of a 13-year-old videogame junkie boy named Fester. The book will have a well-publicized launch in Portugal, then keep an eye on the NY Times best-seller list...