Rant #1,585: Hack Attack

This is a solemn anniversary for the Ranting and Raving site, one I hoped to avoid talking about but invariably, I am going to devote today's column to.

I don't know if it was actually today, but it was this week a year ago that the original Ranting and Raving site was hacked.

I have no idea by who, of course, but it was hacked all right.

Each time you went onto it, it brought you to another site, which I am not going to mention so as to not give them some free advertising.

I tried everything to reverse the attack, but it was there, and it was not going away.

Google, which runs these sites, was absolutely no help at all--I tried everything, and then I had to make a major decision.

Should I simply give up Ranting and Raving entirely, through 1,300 posts or so since 2009, or should I simply pick up my britches and continue on with the blog?

I did the latter, and that is why this blog is named Ranting and Raving II.

I put in a few more safeguards--this blog isn't advertised as much as it used to be on the search engines, and if you want to read it, you really have to find it yourself--and these actions might have worked, because the blog hasn't had any such problems since.

I don't care if there are 20 versus the former hundreds reading the blog each day; if at least one person reads the blog each day, that is fine with me. I don't need the masses, and no, if you were wondering, I clamped down on the advertising, too, so I don't make one red penny from this blog at all.

So, some 200-plus posts into this blog--and more than 9,000 hits later--I am happy with the blog, and happy that I decided that a hacker wasn't going to stop me from doing what I enjoy doing.

What's more, in case you did not know, the Classic entries that I post each day are all from the original blog, and one day, they will all be up here, and I will be able to finally close down the original blog.

Please do not go to the original blog yourself, as it is still infected, and I don't want anyone to have any problems because they went there.

It is sad, really sad, that people have nothing better to do with themselves than to hack a site like this.

It is bad enough that major corporations have had their sites hacked, but why hack mine?

What purpose does it really serve?

Well, I guess people have to satisfy their jollies, and hacking my site was one of them.

I was just very disappointed with Google, which didn't take much of an interest in the hacking.

As usual, if you want to get anything done, you have to do it yourself, and that is the situation I found myself in a year ago.

So I did it myself, and I am happy that I did.

And thanks for coming to this blog. Again, as I have said from day one, you don't have to agree with one single thing that I say, but as long as we can have a civil discussion about it, that is great.

If it gets really nasty, there is no purpose to it.

But if you are going to spew, I can spew with the best of them, so watch out!

Anyway, thanks for visiting and hearing me out for these nearly 1,600 entries, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Hackers beware!