This car was right in front of my appartment.
NEW YORK BLIZZARD CBS WEATHER VIDEO:
Wow! Talk about Day of Drama- seriously. We knew that there was a storm coming, and were notified yesterday that the New York City public schools would be closed, and our ward temple night was cancelled because they found out the temple would be closed. This was not a good sign. We awaited the text this morning . . . telling us that work would be cancelled . . . due to inclement weather- I couldn’t get out of bed forever. I knew the second I got up and finished stacking on the layers the text would come. It never did. I knew that I would be fine getting to work as it takes about 20 min on the subway from my apartment. The majority of my colleagues live in Long Island, and have to take the trains in . . . and if it snows over 9 inches, the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) shuts down. We knew that going into work we would only have a few inches, but leaving work . . . not so sure. They could all be stuck in the city. I told them they could all sleep at my house! Haha
We all made it into work—everyone was trying to figure out what our game plan would be. Would we wait ‘till noon and head out, or would we wait ‘till it was just late enough that everyone would be stuck in the city?
In the meantime, we tried working. Almost every vendor that I deal with is in the New York area, and they were all closed due to inclement weather. . . The few that remained open were limited on staff, just enough to answer phones; they took our orders, but told us that due to inclement weather . . . they wouldn’t be shipping until tomorrow. There’s definitely tension growing in the office as we receive word of all these other places that are sending people home, and as we listen to the traffic reports of the blizzard hitting New York City that was predicted to continue through the night until tomorrow morning at about 6:00am, at which time we will have received an estimated 13 inches of snow—who knows how they actually come up with stat’s like these—needless to say . . . we were all getting a little bit nervous.
I was reminded of the movie “Miracle on 34th Street”, when that cute little girl looks out her building at the snow fall, (which was ironic because my subway stop just down the way is on 34th street—random!) We could see the snow falling out of the windows of our sky rise—I couldn’t imagine how something that looked so peaceful could be the cause of so much alarm! It was fascinating for me, because I’ve lived a life deprived of snow-filled memories. There are some . . . I confess . . . but, very few—and far between. I love the snow—really, I do. I think it’s beautiful. I just don’t like trudging through it. Most people here have to get from point A to point B one way or another, and here in the city, which is the greater evil . . . trudging through the icy, soppy sidewalks, or trusting a taxi to drive directly through it?
Amidst all the tension rapidly increasing within our office, due to inclement weather . . . my computer decides to start acting up, preventing me from getting ANYTHING done. I try to figure it out all on my own only to discover that my computer has been hijacked—yes, that’s what it told me. It was enough to get me panicking! All of these pop up’s come up—so many—so fast, that I can’t even click out of all of them! They’re scaring me too! All the words that they throw in there. . . Beware! Hijack! Abort IMMEDIATELY! Report threat! This could destroy important documents! Viruses detected! You’re infected! Unable to recover! Must scan Immediately! Scan reported hijacking! Order this antivirus software immediately--- or else . . . ok so I added the or else . . . but that’s essentially what they are screaming at me--all those darn pop-ups. So now I’m like freaking out! I don’t know what to do—my computer is out of control! I call my buddy Craig, who works in our building, to come and help me. He wasn’t answering his extension, so I assumed he was still in the conference room, at the pizza party—Oh yea, they though a big pizza party for us today for working on a snow day—such nice people. Anyways I walked in and saw Craig, just as I’d suspected, finishing up his lunch. I didn’t want to interrupt him, so I made my inquiry quick and right to the point. I didn’t realize how awful it would sound ‘till I said it . . . “Craig, don’t mean to interrupt you . . . my computer is being hijacked. Take your time, eat your lunch. But when you’re finished, if you wouldn’t mind . . .” everyone began giggling. And then I took a second to play that back in my head--- I guess I should have rethought the presentation of my request, before I opened my mouth.
Craig was finished in no time. It took him about a second and a half to conclude that my computer had in fact become infected with some sort of a virus. I was infected. I felt as though I had tangibly taken on that infection and I was becoming just what my computer had become . . . worthless. I can’t work without my computer, that’s where I think! It’s almost like my second brain—although it has a lot more storage space. I couldn’t call people, because they were either closed or their phones were disconnected—due to inclement weather . . . and now I was forced to sit facing my presently worthless, infected computer for the remainder of. . . well for as long as I would sit there until the weather got bad enough that we would kindly be asked to leave.
The drama continues as one of our stores call to inquire of my colleague expertise. He has the capability of accessing their computer from a remote location, by signing into a program called Log Me In, which we installed onto their computer so that we could access information from that computer at our leisure. It’s kinda fun logging on it when someone else is on, and wiggling the mouse around—unless they’re familiar with the program, it normally freaks them out. We caught someone on Facebook once, and typed out, “COHEN’S EMPLOYEES ARE PROHIBITED FROM FACEBOOK DURING STORE HOURS!” What was even funnier than that, was that they continued to show us their friends, look through picture galleries and just erase whatever we wrote! Haha we ended up calling them, but mysteriously no one claimed to be on facebook . . . right. Well anyway. . . Alan logged in to the Log Me In program to assess the stores computer problem . . . he was surprised to find a video playing of someone getting a tattoo. He called up the store and inquired about the video . . . but they claimed that there was no indication of any video displayed on their screen. What was going on? Hmmmmm. Then Watson started putting the clues together and solved our little mystery. . . Apparently, about a year ago, there was a man that stole one of our laptops from that store—right in the middle of a work day—he just grabbed it and ran! Incidentally he had kept it, or someone had, and we still had remote access to it! Alan started typing. . .” I know you stole this computer!!!” You could just feel the bullets of sweat drippin’ on the keyboard as man on the other end panicked trying to figure out what the heck was going on! He started erasing our messages and kept trying to close out of everything, which he eventually succeeded in, shutting down the complete system. But not before my wise colleague quickly copied down their IP address. With that information, and the aid of a computer program designed to find the exact location of the IP address . . . we were able to receive the latitude and longitude coordinates to locate the specific address of our thief! How cool is that?! We even Google mapped it, and saw that it was a residential area not far from us in Staten Island! We got a close up of the house and everything. That sucker totally got caught—soooo busted!
Wow . . . enough adventures for one morning or what?!!! I just got home as we finally received word that the trains would be closing soon . . . of course . . . due to inclement weather. What a day! Here are some fun pics I took on my stroll home from work ;)
We all made it into work—everyone was trying to figure out what our game plan would be. Would we wait ‘till noon and head out, or would we wait ‘till it was just late enough that everyone would be stuck in the city?
In the meantime, we tried working. Almost every vendor that I deal with is in the New York area, and they were all closed due to inclement weather. . . The few that remained open were limited on staff, just enough to answer phones; they took our orders, but told us that due to inclement weather . . . they wouldn’t be shipping until tomorrow. There’s definitely tension growing in the office as we receive word of all these other places that are sending people home, and as we listen to the traffic reports of the blizzard hitting New York City that was predicted to continue through the night until tomorrow morning at about 6:00am, at which time we will have received an estimated 13 inches of snow—who knows how they actually come up with stat’s like these—needless to say . . . we were all getting a little bit nervous.
I was reminded of the movie “Miracle on 34th Street”, when that cute little girl looks out her building at the snow fall, (which was ironic because my subway stop just down the way is on 34th street—random!) We could see the snow falling out of the windows of our sky rise—I couldn’t imagine how something that looked so peaceful could be the cause of so much alarm! It was fascinating for me, because I’ve lived a life deprived of snow-filled memories. There are some . . . I confess . . . but, very few—and far between. I love the snow—really, I do. I think it’s beautiful. I just don’t like trudging through it. Most people here have to get from point A to point B one way or another, and here in the city, which is the greater evil . . . trudging through the icy, soppy sidewalks, or trusting a taxi to drive directly through it?
Amidst all the tension rapidly increasing within our office, due to inclement weather . . . my computer decides to start acting up, preventing me from getting ANYTHING done. I try to figure it out all on my own only to discover that my computer has been hijacked—yes, that’s what it told me. It was enough to get me panicking! All of these pop up’s come up—so many—so fast, that I can’t even click out of all of them! They’re scaring me too! All the words that they throw in there. . . Beware! Hijack! Abort IMMEDIATELY! Report threat! This could destroy important documents! Viruses detected! You’re infected! Unable to recover! Must scan Immediately! Scan reported hijacking! Order this antivirus software immediately--- or else . . . ok so I added the or else . . . but that’s essentially what they are screaming at me--all those darn pop-ups. So now I’m like freaking out! I don’t know what to do—my computer is out of control! I call my buddy Craig, who works in our building, to come and help me. He wasn’t answering his extension, so I assumed he was still in the conference room, at the pizza party—Oh yea, they though a big pizza party for us today for working on a snow day—such nice people. Anyways I walked in and saw Craig, just as I’d suspected, finishing up his lunch. I didn’t want to interrupt him, so I made my inquiry quick and right to the point. I didn’t realize how awful it would sound ‘till I said it . . . “Craig, don’t mean to interrupt you . . . my computer is being hijacked. Take your time, eat your lunch. But when you’re finished, if you wouldn’t mind . . .” everyone began giggling. And then I took a second to play that back in my head--- I guess I should have rethought the presentation of my request, before I opened my mouth.
Craig was finished in no time. It took him about a second and a half to conclude that my computer had in fact become infected with some sort of a virus. I was infected. I felt as though I had tangibly taken on that infection and I was becoming just what my computer had become . . . worthless. I can’t work without my computer, that’s where I think! It’s almost like my second brain—although it has a lot more storage space. I couldn’t call people, because they were either closed or their phones were disconnected—due to inclement weather . . . and now I was forced to sit facing my presently worthless, infected computer for the remainder of. . . well for as long as I would sit there until the weather got bad enough that we would kindly be asked to leave.
The drama continues as one of our stores call to inquire of my colleague expertise. He has the capability of accessing their computer from a remote location, by signing into a program called Log Me In, which we installed onto their computer so that we could access information from that computer at our leisure. It’s kinda fun logging on it when someone else is on, and wiggling the mouse around—unless they’re familiar with the program, it normally freaks them out. We caught someone on Facebook once, and typed out, “COHEN’S EMPLOYEES ARE PROHIBITED FROM FACEBOOK DURING STORE HOURS!” What was even funnier than that, was that they continued to show us their friends, look through picture galleries and just erase whatever we wrote! Haha we ended up calling them, but mysteriously no one claimed to be on facebook . . . right. Well anyway. . . Alan logged in to the Log Me In program to assess the stores computer problem . . . he was surprised to find a video playing of someone getting a tattoo. He called up the store and inquired about the video . . . but they claimed that there was no indication of any video displayed on their screen. What was going on? Hmmmmm. Then Watson started putting the clues together and solved our little mystery. . . Apparently, about a year ago, there was a man that stole one of our laptops from that store—right in the middle of a work day—he just grabbed it and ran! Incidentally he had kept it, or someone had, and we still had remote access to it! Alan started typing. . .” I know you stole this computer!!!” You could just feel the bullets of sweat drippin’ on the keyboard as man on the other end panicked trying to figure out what the heck was going on! He started erasing our messages and kept trying to close out of everything, which he eventually succeeded in, shutting down the complete system. But not before my wise colleague quickly copied down their IP address. With that information, and the aid of a computer program designed to find the exact location of the IP address . . . we were able to receive the latitude and longitude coordinates to locate the specific address of our thief! How cool is that?! We even Google mapped it, and saw that it was a residential area not far from us in Staten Island! We got a close up of the house and everything. That sucker totally got caught—soooo busted!
Wow . . . enough adventures for one morning or what?!!! I just got home as we finally received word that the trains would be closing soon . . . of course . . . due to inclement weather. What a day! Here are some fun pics I took on my stroll home from work ;)
You have be super careful walking up stairs like this. . . they get really slippery!
This is what I found when I came out of the ground from my subway. . . I'm sure you can imagine my anticipation of my trudging walk home:)
Why did I just find out about this?
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