Yesterday, twenty-one different people or machines tried to login to my blog as administrators. Only one of them was me. It was a typical day on the Internet. The twenty others were roving predators, looking for access to host servers and sites. They are not targeting me specifically, as far as I can tell. I use Wordfence for WordPress to try to keep them out, otherwise I would never know that they were trying to get in, or if they had succeeded. They are the “no seeums” of the internet environment. Of course, if one of them really, really wants to spend some time to get in, they will get in. But there are plenty of unprotected sites out there that offer easier access and greater invisibility.
Yesterday one of these machines or people, through a server at 491 HuangLong Road, NingBo, ZheJiang, in The People’s Republic of China, tried to login, first as ILoveYou, and then as SuperMan. Kinda creepy, kinda funny, and it probably represents that entities’s standard attempts to infiltrate unsuspecting blogs. From his/her/its perspective, what’s not to love about a blog writer who does not bother with security! I sure hope the human at the initiating end of this particular attempt isn’t offering candy to children.
Attila was supposed to work this weekend, but a mix up in the schedule resulted in the company finding someone else to take the weekend shifts. Attila will be working nights next week, after working afternoons this week, and the weekend shift would not provide the required number of hours off work between shifts. Phew! Yes, we need the money right now, but given the choice, I would rather tighten the belt than lose time with Attila.
I have learned something new, again!
The white enamelled kitchen table we have been using here at Mist Cottage, over the last few years, is beautiful to me. I love to look at it. But what I found out, after using it all winter last winter, and again now that the weather is turning colder, is that it sucks the heat out of any body part that touches it. Usually, by the end of a meal I am feeling chilled. While this is great for cooling items just out of the oven, it does not make for relaxing meals.
The white enamelled kitchen table was a find, it was being thrown out, and I rescued it. The bottom of the legs had rotted off, and the original lead paint was flaking and chipping all over the place. We sanded it outside, on a tarp, wearing a mask, painted it, sawed the rotten ends off the legs, attached casters to it, and voila, a beautiful little table. It cost nothing but a coat of paint and four cheap casters to restore to usefulness.
But it isn’t a good choice for a northern climate kitchen table, not when comfort is considered.
There are several other disadvantages to the metal table as well. One is that it is the space between the legs, on two sides, are too narrow to accommodate a chair being pushed in. This is serious for us, because we live in such a tiny space. A chair taking up all that space in a traffic area is just not practical. Also, it is rectangular, so that we must squeeze past it to go through the door, we often bump into its edge.
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I have been looking for a practical table for daily use for years now, and then suddenly, last week, I found one at an extremely reasonable price. The reason it has taken this long to find one, is that I wanted a solid wood table, no pressboard, or veneer, and I wanted it to expand into a dining table that could be used when company comes to call.
Yesterday the table arrived by UPS courier, in a 51 pound box. The driver was going to leave it on the porch, and he was backing out of the drive when I came to the door, as it took me a minute or so because I was on the phone with a government entity. He must have seen me struggling with it, as it could not be left outside, because he stopped the truck as he was backing out, jumped out, and carried it into the house for me.
Today, with stormy and cold weather, Attila and I spent the day indoors. So Attila moved the metal topped table to the basement to be used for storing flour and other dry goods. Then the new table was unpacked and assembled. It functions perfectly for us. The chairs fit under it, so that they are out of the traffic area, there seems ample room to set the table for a meal, and a second leaf folds out to accommodate four diners. When both leaves are folded down it is light and easy to carry into the living room, where it can be setup for card games, or a meal with company.
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Worldly Distractions
Weather
6°C
Date: 9:00 AM EDT Saturday 24 October 2015
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.4 kPa
Tendency: falling
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: 5.9°C
Dewpoint: 1.1°C
Humidity: 71%
Wind: SE 13 km/h
Quote
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 – 1948
Hurray for the new table that fits! It’s beautiful! I can see where you’d really enjoy sitting there.
I know how you feel about the kitchen floor. While our kitchen floor is still in okay shape, our bathroom floor is a big problem. I’m talking, you step out of the shower and if you leave the bath mat and stand on the floor when you go to move the tiles stick to your feet and move with you! Yes, that’s how bad it is, the tiles don’t stick to the floor at all.
Just one of the many projects that we need to get to. I’d still like to get that entry way done first, though. Unfortunately, the fence took up so much of our time during the summer that was all we could get to. But maybe we can start on the entry way once we get back from our trip. We have tile that was left behind by the previous owners, so that’s a start.
Too bad you are sooo far away. We have an antique drop leaf dining room table that someone was thowing away- got for free. Its coming with us, when we gwe to move. In November now.
Before I saw the new table, I was going to say, why not just turn the little metal table 90 degrees and each sit at the long sides, and put a small pretty tablecloth over it? We have a table now that was a big hunk of wood that Paul put legs onto… and I use it either bare or with a tablecloth in colder weather. We have it going the long way out into the room so we can sit at the long sides and it doesn’t take up much wall room.
But you’ve found the answer… good for you.
https://flic.kr/p/dti1C6
Teri, owing a home is a lot of work isn’t it! What I like about it though, is that you can go ahead and get the work done yourself. When I rented I had to wait for the landlord to get around to fixing things, and sometimes they didn’t feel things needed fixin’, when I figured they did.
Have a great trip! You should be well rested after three weeks, a project might be just the thing.
Lee Ann, your table sounds great! I had been keeping an eye open on Kijiji, but hadn’t had any luck finding just the right one, so I feel pretty lucky to have bumped into the one we ended up with. The older tables are great though, almost always solid wood, and if there is veneer it is thick and well applied.
Wishing you very good luck with your move. November now, goodness, that is a long time to be living in a semi-packed house, particularly with your kitchen packed up!
Bex, turning the table would have been a perfect solution… but… the room is so small that if we turned the table there wasn’t enough space between it and the stove on one side, the kitchen counter on the other, to get to the chairs. This little house is very little, so we are going with super small furniture. The metal table is happy down in the basement, it holds our extra dry goods, so we will be using it all the time, it won’t be lonely. 🙂
P.S. Thanks for the pic!
Maggie, you might want to put your dry goods in glass, just in case you have any more tailed visitors. Glass is the one thing they can’t get into.
That is an excellent point Teri. Most of our dry good are in glass, having lived in the country in an older home for the last 11 years taught us the wisdom of that precaution. We also have some food grade plastic buckets, and I would be interested in any experiences people have had, related to rodents gaining access to those. When we did have mice, they did not manage to detect food in those buckets, and they didn’t bother with them; there were easier pickings. 🙂
Hi Maggie,
“Yesterday, twenty-one different people or machines tried to login to my blog as administrators”. This is frightening! Why would they want to login? To try and steal your identity? I’m clueless.
I adore your enamel kitchen table. It’s wonderful. Glad you are happy with the new one. I like the two windows right there above the table giving you a view into the world while you dine.
Hi Nora,
I don’t really know what hackers do once they gain access, but it isn’t good. When I setup a Windows LAN in the 90s for Terra and her friends to play with, I doing a clean install of Windows on one of the machines when Attila called me away for supper. When I got back to the machine a hacker had already setup a server on the machine and was illegally serving files through my bandwidth. I had to wipe the hard drive and start over, this time getting the firewall up and running right away. Whatever it is they are trying to accomplish, it can’t be good, and I imagine the hackers have a rainbow of different agendas.
I really like the enamel table too Nora, but I think it is better for people who live in warmer climates than we experience here, or as a work table only, which I don’t have room for on the main floor of the house. I LOVE the windows beside the table! The windows look over the garage and face the house next door, looking straight into their third bedroom. So the bottom panes on our windows have a patterned film on them for privacy. We can look out the top pane at the tree tops. In the summer we say to heck with it, open the windows and watch the trees on either side of the garage, neighbours or no. They have an orange tabby cat that sits in the bedroom window and watches us when the windows are open, kinda cute. 🙂
Hi Maggie, I’m tech challenged so really was not able to follow what you wrote about hackers but understand the bottom line. It’s not good. I wish a hacker would write a book and clue us into why they do what they do. Nothing is sacred!
I understand about the table but for me just looking at it reminds me of apple pie, warm chocolate chip cookies, spring flowers, tea with a close friend. It’s so lovely. At least you can keep it.
The tabby sitting in the window reminds me of a painting. So cute.
I got a similar feeling to Nora’s with the enameled table. Goes back to the tablecwe had in our kitchen during my childhood, though the edges of that table were rounded up so nothing could spill off the table.