What a pain in the whazoo.  Sorry for the down time folks.  We are back on line.  Here is the deal as I understand it.

I am not a good wordpress site administrator.  My son usually does that work but he actually has a real job so I have been taking care of updating our web page. Apparently some Malware attacked our site, attached itself to some files, and caused our site to be blackballed by several security software programs – like McAfee and Norton.  If a person tried to go to our site and their computer was protected by any respectable security software then our site was blocked.

I called our server host, Bluehost, and they referred me to SiteLock – a ‘…global leader in Website Security and malware remover”.  That is right folks, we went right to the big boy!  We are talking GLOBAL LEADER!!!  We don’t mess around when it comes to being blackballed by some robotic software.  Now we pay a monthly ransom of about eight bucks to protect us from the marauding gangs roaming the streets of the internet.

The implication of the last statement is that there is organized crime on the web and they break out your store windows and then charge you protection.  The Italian Mafia of early New York perfected the protection racket – but they are nothing compared to the modern era of information tracking.  There is nothing to do but sit up all night with a shotgun or pay the monthly ransom.  I should qualify these nasty remarks as being unfounded, except for the facts.

The ‘fact’, as reported to us by Bluehost and SiteLock, is that some mischievous vandal threw a rock through our window just for plain old orneriness.  One might imagine Tom Sawyer skipping rocks in the pond and one accidentally skips through Aunt Jemima’s kitchen window.  They report that the malware that attacked our site had no purpose other than vandalism.   They even suggested one could simply search, find, and download such malware so you can break windows too!  What fun.

Sadly, this does remind me of my youth.  In the old days, before everyone owned a motor vehicle and people lived in ethnic neighborhoods, we walked to the neighborhood market for a pound of bologna and a loaf of bread.  These were neighborhood storefronts with an apartment above – usually occupied by the store proprietor.  The storefronts generally had large plate glass windows.   I remember driving by my old neighborhood grocery when I was in my mid twenties (1970’s) and found the store was out of business.  The plate glass window was replaced by a piece of plywood spray painted with the epitaph: Closed due to vandals and thieves.

Maybe he should have paid the eight bucks a month.