I tried to diagnose my sister’s video problems over the phone.  She called me in a panic that they didn’t have anything on their monitor, and the power light just flashed.  They didn’t get the “no signal” message or anything.  I asked her what all they had tried.  She said they plugged in a different monitor and it didn’t work.  They tried a different cable, it didn’t work.  She removed the video card and tried the on-board video and that didn’t work.

Based on that information, I figured it was the graphics card, but I didn’t want her to go buy a new one if that wasn’t the problem.  So, being that I have Monday off work (our Fiscal Year is ending and it was either use it or lose it) I decided to drive out, diagnose the problem, check to see if there was a service contract purchased for the video card, etc.  Almost 300 miles to diagnose a computer problem.  Is that sisterly love or what?

oh, but it doesn’t end there.

I brought one of our extra laptops in case we couldn’t fix it while I was here so they would have a computer.  I brought my laptop so that I could plug her monitor into it to be sure it wasn’t the monitor (can you tell I already didn’t trust her diagnosis?)

I got here last night at about 9:15 pm and they were at a park and were going to a bonfire party.  They gave me directions to get there so I went to the party and decided to worry about the computer today.

This morning, the first thing I did was reinstall her video card and plug in the monitor.  Nothing.

I plugged the monitor into my laptop and went to the video settings and it didn’t see it.

I thought what the hell, I’m going to try the other monitor again anyway in case she was just wrong.  I plugged the other monitor into her computer and voila – it worked.  I called Samsung (her new monitor was only about 3 or 4 months old and had a 3-year warranty) and they are sending her a new one with a return shipper label so she can send back the old one.  For now, she has her old monitor hooked up and working.

I drove almost 300 freaking miles to plug in her monitor.

Is that sisterly love or what?

My two characters were restored, with all gear and money intact.  Very strange.  Someone just came in and deleted my two highest level characters without first emailing the money or high value items to themself.

Why would someone do that?  I can only think of two reasons.

1. They’re just mean.
2. They were Horde (my characters were Alliance) and wanted to get rid of some of the competition.

More likely it’s number 1.  But 2 would make sense because if they were Horde they wouldn’t be able to send themselves anything from my Alliance character because you can’t email across factions.  That would explain all the gear and money still being there.

I’m just glad they didn’t delete Giantessa!  She’s the guild leader!  (Pictured)

Tuesday I was bragging that I never have my security compromised
because I’m careful.  For example, even if you’re my best friend, I’m
not going to open attachments from you unless I’ve specifically asked
for them.  Because for all I know, you have a virus / worm / trojan
that hijacked your contact list and emailed itself to everyone under
the guise of some really cool video.  You would never know unless
someone told you.

I also don’t go to the “FREE MySpace
_______________ [fill in the blank]” sites because they are notorious
for giving your computer things you didn’t intend to get.  In fact, I
have software that will block any site that has been known to do just
that.  So, for example, I don’t go to imikimi because it’s blocked.

I
have been using Allakhazam for reference for the past three years that
I’ve been playing World of Warcraft.  I found it to be more
informative, less cluttered, and easier to navigate than Thottbott.  I
went there Monday several times, and did several searches.  At one
point, I wanted to see something on the WorldofWarcraft site, so I
clicked on the link from Allakhazam.  I had to enter my username and
password.

Last night after work, I checked my email and had an
email from Blizzard saying that my password had been changed, as
requested.  I didn’t request a change!  I tried to log in and it
wouldn’t accept my password.  So I went to the World of Warcraft site
(this time by typing in the URL rather than clicking a link) and
changed it again, to a strong password (letters, numbers and symbols). 
Then I logged in.

Two of my characters – my highest level
characters! Level 70 Mage and Level 66 Mage were
both missing!!  I sent an email to Blizzard’s billing department
because they didn’t have any other option.  Then I went back into the
game and started playing one of my characters that wasn’t deleted.

During
the course of my play, I leveled to 35 so I wanted to get some
leatherworking training.  I decided to go to Allakhazam.com to find out
where the nearest trainer was.  My security software blocked the site,
said it was a known Social Engineering or Phishing site.  (I remembered
clicking the WoW link and entering my Username and password!  DAMN!)

I
decided to see if a Game Master could help me.  I put in a help ticket
and one of the Game Masters eventually came online and said he could
restore my characters.  He said he restored both of them.  I logged off
and they weren’t there.  I closed the program and restarted it and they
weren’t there.  I figured they might take a while so I just closed out
of the game and called it a night (by that time it was past midnight).

This
morning I logged on to see if my characters were there and they were
not.  I opened another ticket and told this game master the tale.  He
said that 66 Mage had been restored but 70 Mage had not.
He went ahead and did the restore.  I told him that I didn’t see Sheryl
when I logged in.  He said I would need to reset my character list.  I
thought exiting the program should have done it, so I asked him how to
reset the list.  He said to just create a new character and that would
reset the list.

I’ll try when I get home from work tonight.

Moral
of the story – there seems to be a reason Allakhazam changed
overnight.  It seems like that site was hijacked and the WoW link I
clicked on was intercepted so that someone could get my username and
password.

I hope they weren’t looking for money.  My Level 70
was broke after buying a flying mount.  My level 66 had about 400 gold so
that will hurt if it’s gone.  I guess I’ll find out tonight.