Animal Planet

Long story which I won't go into the full details but "try" to just give you the compact version.

Early (5:00 am) did a quick one or two Blip and facebook comments but noticed the Notebook reacting slowly and not loading some photos. Went back to bed!  Later at around 9:00 closed all applications down and did a full clean and check to get rid of the caches and the like probably jamming up the system - I do an awful lot of research and jump around all over the Google world, so have good anti-virus systems and firewalls in place..

Restarted and then quickly googled looking for a picture connected with yesterdays carnival processions in Cologne/Düsseldorf and Mainz. Suddenly a tab opened, a very blue filled screen and a very friendly female spoke in German to me telling me my notebook had been hijacked and if I phoned a number in Austria my problem would be sorted. No keys responded, so I quickly simply shut it down.

Restarted, and without me doing anything other than login, up popped the browser and repeated the problem. Again power off and on to the mobile phone to find out more on Google.

Looked like I may just have luck and be the victim of a relatively minor form of ransomware known as a browser hacker. So tried a few things, logging in as Angie and could then see data was still there and started backing up everything important on external drives.

Then left with just Luna for a lovely long walk around the parish capital Sontheim and even walked to the local, still just managing to survive, supermarket and bought two of the last remaining bread rolls at the in-store bakery. It's Fashing Dienstag - Carnival Tuesday in Bavaria and for almost all a half day.

Returned to car and had just gone a few metres when two young (late teens?) girls in very skimpy carnival outfits appeared busy studying their mobiles, probably trying to find where the boys with the car were to take them to one of the processions in the area,  I would love to have blipped them as their costumes and make up were fantastic but I simply couldn't face the idea of their reaction to some sex-mad OAP stuttering a senseless story about "Blip" and would they mind ........!

So you get the animal planet in the grounds of the nearby Dampfsäghall which should be opening next month for the weekly organic food market, the cinema, flea market, music concerts etc season.

Back home the copying of files continued for hours. But eventually, in the early evening, it looked like the point had come to tackle the problem. Just to get some help and reassurance called my technical crutch of the last 30+ years, Nogbad, and we went through some options.

And it worked. At 3:30amI had a safe system. Let the dogs out in the -10°C for a quick "relief" and a few minutes barking at wolves, foxes, polar bears and all that is about at night. And then eventually bed and very "relieved"!

Remember your weekly Back-Ups dear Blip friends!!!!