The last couple of weeks, including this week, are more hectic than usual. When two people out of seven are out, scrambling occurs as each of the remaining of us grab more hats to wear.
And this week, our newspaper is the largest it has been since we bought the paper. Thank you to all the advertisers and readers who support our hobby of putting out a community newspaper. We’re still here after nearly four years because of you.
So, since this column is the last thing left on my plate to get the printer to bed this Tuesday afternoon, I’ll just throw some snippets your way …
If you don’t believe the Russians are hacking or trying to hack, take a look at the attempted attacks we received this week on our website from the Russian Federation. Russia is targeting U.S. news, even at our level:
“The Wordfence Web Application Firewall has blocked 103 attacks over the last 10 minutes. Below is a sample of these recent attacks:
“May 20, 2017 5:25pm 31.184.194.90 (Russian Federation) Blocked for Directory Traversal - wp-config.php in query string: arquivo=../../../../../wp-config.php”
And it listed another nine occurring at either 5:25 or 5:24 p.m. I don’t know what the Russians want with us …
Last Wednesday afternoon, Jack and I traveled to Santa Monica for the California News Publishers Association’s annual Press Summit. The meetings of the Board of Directors, of which I’m a member, and the Government Affairs Committee, of which we both are members, were being held concurrently starting at 2:30 p.m. and ending at 5 p.m.
Because Jack delivers the newspapers most of the day and I label the off-Hill subscribers’ papers all of the morning, we knew we would either miss the meeting or teleconference in the car.
Our Subaru has Bluetooth capability, allowing us to communicate by cell phone through the system. We decided to teleconference. It all sounded good.
When 2:30 came, I called into the meeting. But, of course, none of the codes worked and CNPA staff scrambled to sort it all out. Ten minutes later, all was working when I called in again.
However, what Jack and I didn’t take into consideration was the interstate noise surrounding us and the distance from the mic of the directors in the conference room. I got maybe every other word and he got nothing because his ears don’t work well anymore, even with hearing aids.
I tried to locate the mute button so we could talk about what I was hearing. I saw one on the Subaru screen and pushed it. A small green light lit up to the left and I thought we were good to talk. So we did.
But we weren’t. Unbenownst to us, our conversations were coming over the speaker in the conference room — even Jack’s explicatives at other drivers. Another director texted me but I didn’t read it. Eventually, they decided to cut us off. I walked into the conference room at the end of the meeting and heard all about it.
So, Dr. Browning, we both had an embarassing moment last week …
I’ve pulled “Do You Know?” because it lacked enough feedback. Also, I’m concerned that it may have been what caused the bear to appear …
Lastly, in last week’s column, I referred to the Blast to the Past event at Idyllwild School as Back to the Future. That’s evidence that it’s been a hectic time.
Becky Clark, Editor
