I was one of the lucky recipients of the latest hacker email scam – the friend who went to Spain and lost all his money and would so appreciate it if I, one of his 750 email contacts and somebody he barely knows, would send him €2,124 so he could get back home, pleez-k’thanks.
Once again, hackers have baffled and disappointed me. I am in awe of their superpowers and technical abilities, but find it impossible to believe that they aren’t narrowing their focus a little bit.“Get a life,” I’ve heard people say to the invisible hacker who can’t hear them, but it’s a wonder they don’t, for all the yelling and screaming that’s going on. We honest, hard-working people can’t understand how anyone can have the time to figure out how to get into our computer files when even we have a hard time remembering what our passwords are or how to copy and paste in Word.
Let me tell you, if I was able to hack into someone’s email account, I would use my powers for – well, for evil, but for specific, targeted evil, to those who deserve it.
You can’t tell me that hackers don’t have a high school math teacher or an HR guy at an old job or an ex-girlfriend or somebody that he would want to see suffer electronically and digitally, as opposed to the masses of people they’ll never meet.
Apparently hackers get more satisfaction out of the broad scope of their destruction, and choose not to hone in on the actual people they hate.
I, on the other hand, if so armed with the ability to create a virus or get into someone’s email to ask for money, would bug the bejesus out of a very specific list of people. I’m not a vengeful person and I don’t hold a grudge for long. So for now, I’ll limit my list to what’s bugging me now.
The person whose idea it was to pin clothes to mannequins so that it looks like it’s tailored way differently than it actually is. The whole purpose of putting one shirt onto a mannequin is so that the average shopper can see what that shirt will look like when it’s on her own personal body. I’ve totally gotten over the angst over the fact that they put a Size 0 or 2 on the mannequin. That’s OK. I can still see how the shirt is made and how it will fall on me (mentally adding a few lumps here and there, a half a yard of fabric here, a half a yard there). But now the shirt is pinned in the back and sometimes on the sides, to make it appear to be form fitting or extremely tailored. “Oh, I see, this shirt comes way in at the waist,” you think when you see the shirt on the mannequin. WRONG. Put it on and it’s a big old blousey thing that billows up and could carry you away in a breeze. Whoever had that idea needs to have computer problems.
Reckless Florida drivers. I don’t drive like an old lady, by the way. But some of these Florida guys are taking their mid-life crisis death wishes right onto the road with them and they’re ticking me off. If you want to die in a fiery crash, go to the Everglades or something, but don’t involve me and my teen children drivers. I would come up with a virus that was particularly financially draining for these guys, so they might have to sell the Corvette and get an embarrassing Chevette. I figure if I was smart enough to know how to create a computer virus, I could probably figure out how to get their email addresses from their license plates.
The anti-virus people.Because anti-virus software is the most cumbersome, least effective thing about owning a computer. There’s a measure of satisfaction in the irony of Mr. Norton or Mr. McAfee getting the mother of all computer viruses.