Paddy has malware, I had no electricity, but hey, at least I have the flu!

By GottaLaff

Paddy posted a headzup earlier. Here's one more. I think I'll be able to post a few today, but I now have the flu, which was not helped by freezing through 9 hours of electricity outages yesterday, last night, and again at 2 a.m.

I live in Southern California where we are/will be deluged by heavy rains for the next 5 days. Hence, the outages.

Paddy's computer was attacked by malware, so we're in real good shape.

Please be patient. I'll try to post as long as I feel well enough to sit up. Don't try to talk me out of it (I know my Twitter pals!), because I don't see the difference between lying around feeling like hell or sitting up feeling like hell.

I promise I'm drinking tons of tea, taking vitamins, contacting my doctor, and will rest when I feel I should. (Thank you, Twitter pals, for all the advice... my dad's a doctor and I worked in doctor's offices for years, so I'm up on all the remedies)

Paddy's working hard to debug her computer.

SoCal Edison sucks, by the way. This is a perfect example of infrastructure needing fixing. Our power goes out with every storm. Their response? We're well aware of the problem, and it should be fixed within the quarter.

So by April, we'll be fine? After the rainy season is over? And if this has been a years-long ongoing problem, why hasn't it already been fixed?

Infrastructure.

To quote Rachel Maddow, "Grrrrowwlll, sexy!'

***ADDED***

I'm back but slow catching up. And let me just say that my very first experience with overseas tech help was a joy. He couldn't have been nicer or more helpful. It just took freaking forever. Now let's go see what's making news.- Paddy

White House press office hit by e-mail outage

By GottaLaff

Blackberryless in D.C.:

President Obama has his blackberry — but his tech-savvy press operation has been without e-mail for most of the day, and it’s not yet clear when they’ll get it back.

Obama press staffers had just made the leap to their official White House e-mail addresses Monday morning when the Outlook server went down. They weren’t the only ones affected by the crash, which also hit the first lady’s office and other White House offices.

I deleted Outlook from my computer. It caused all kinds of problems, and once I got rid of it, my computer ran more smoothly. What I'm trying to say here is, this outage doesn't surprise me.

An apologetic Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at 1:30 pm press briefing that the server meltdown was responsible for the delay in responding to their e-mailed questions. But late Monday, nearly six hours since the server first went haywire, staffers still can’t use their official e-mail addresses — and a press aide could not tell CNN when the press office might be able to start sending and receiving messages again.

I can't even imagine how frustrating and worrisome this would be for them. Maybe they could all just Facebook each other? Sarcasm.