Monday, April 21, 2014

The Week That Was(n't)

As some of you noticed, this blog was absent last week, as in completely inaccessible as the domain had expired. But it's back. Here's a brief explanation of what happened to those who were curious.

I publish this blog via Blogger/Blogspot which was acquired by Google some year back. Rather than having the blog URL be www.rheothing.blogspot.com, for the low, low price of $10 a year I registered through Google for the domain name www.rheothing.com. I put the billing on a credit card with autorenewal. That credit card however, is the same one that I use to shop at Target with. Target is a nationwide chains of everything-under-one roof store that has local headquarters - an upscale Walmart if you will. My family has been shopping at Target since they first opened in 1962 and we often joke about the $100 toothbrush we get there - you go into the store for a toothbrush and before you know it, you also have toilet paper, laundry detergent, lightbulbs and yogurt, etc. - plus a $100 tab at the checkout.

So when Target announced in January that their computers had been hacked and that 80 million US users credit card information was at risk, I got a new card. But I never updated the Google account until I started getting emails. The emails noted that I needed to login using my admin account. Admin account? What was that? I've been logging in forever and a day with another account and had no idea what my admin account was. Trying to get help from Google for fixing a free account was quite a problem too, but I eventually succeeded as you see.

Compounding all this was a double dose of bad timing. The day my blog went AWOL was the morning that my company started their annual internal showcase event, a massive poster session lasting 2 days with 4000 attendees from around the world. I was fortunate enough to have a poster to present and a killer demonstration (as Michael Martin Murphy sang in "Cherokee Fiddle", If you want to make a living you got to put on a good show). If any one was foolish enough to make eye contact with me, I waved into my division's booth, wowed them with the demo and then passed them on to my colleagues. It was a great show, but exhausting especially for an introvert. I got pumped up with Joe Satriani in the car on the way in and didn't dare turn on the radio on the way home. Nothing but silence.

And then it was the Easter weekend for good measure.

I got a call from a Google rep this morning and everything is now fixed and should be going forward. I'll get back to the polymer stuff tomorrow.



Previous Years
April 21, 2011 - Small is not Necessarily Better (with Plastics)

April 21, 2010 - Visible Light Photocatalysis - Even in the Dark

April 21, 2009 - The Double-Edged Sword of UV Light

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