Restoring Faith

Winding the warp for my student - cheat sheet posted above the board, ticking off each stripe as it is wound because distraction level has been particularly high today....see text below

Warp was wound in two sections, each of which will be weighted separately - warp is ready to be passed under the breast beam, over the valet and weighted

Yesterday my webmaster discovered that a hacker had broken into (if that's the word) my website and was using the contact form to send out spam via my website. The only way he could figure out to stop this 'thieving' was to shut down the contact form altogether, so he did that this morning.  This is not only irritating, it is terribly inconvenient because I routinely receive one to several emails a day via the contact form.

I understand why such people do these things.  They want something for nothing and hope that people will respond to their spamming and maybe benefit them in some way by so doing.  I just wish these people would be less selfish and not make life difficult for people who are honestly trying to earn an income, paying their bills, even possibly helping others.

And then I read Yarn Harlot's .blog.  I have been reading her blog for a couple of years now - I enjoy her writing, her sense of deprecating introspection, her commitment to being a creative person with her knitting and writing.  I also admire her fund raising efforts, especially her participation in the bike ride to raise funds for people with HIV/AIDS that she will be doing in a few short weeks (perhaps days, now.)

She helped restore my faith in the goodness and, dare I say it, niceness of most people, most of the time.  Thanks, Yarn Harlot.  I needed that.

But in the meantime, the contact form on my website no longer functions and will probably remain that way.  My apologies but I cannot condone or enable spammers to continue to 'steal' - bandwidth from me, possibly money from others.  My contact info via phone and snail mail still currently exists on my website - see 'contact information' to the left hand side of my website, and of course I can be PM'd on Facebook, Weavolution, Ravelry or emailed directly using my first name at my website address.  Hopefully that is opaque enough that spiders will not figure it out.