Over the last cal-three weeks, I’ve received quite a few emails from readers expressing concern over the recent spate of those irritating “Cloudflare” bloggus interreptus pages demanding that they establish their bona fides as actual human beings before being allowed to proceed to the CF main page. “Is this Cloudflare twipe legit,” most of my correspondents have asked, along with other such queries as “has the site been hacked,” and “is this malicious?”
Well, most unfortunately, after this weekend I can now assure you that this Cloudflare incursion is indeed malicious, and must therefore urge everyone: do NOT cick on any links, nor C&P any code urged upon you, nor comply with any other seemingly innocuous instruction presented by these imposters. That second diabolical stratagem is how they suckered me, resulting in the complete crippling of my trusty old iMac, which now won’t boot up at all—not into Safe mode, not into Rcovery mode, not nothing.
In short, my beloved iMac, along with every file stored thereupon–from blog-database backups, to archived emails, to registration/unlock codes for software I bought and paid for years ago, to all my locally-stored music, to my vast stockpile of memes going back several years–has now gone the way of the dodo thanks to the suckers of dead donkey dick behind this fecking great shower of shite, which malefactors I would cheerfully throttle with my bare hands if only I could.
I’m now stuck using a MacBook Pro laptop given to me by friend Chris a while back, whose whopping fifteen (15) inches of screen real estate is a far cry from the 27” monitor screen my elderly eyes are accustomed to. As you would probably assume, having to continually lean waaaay forward and squint to see what the fuck I’m doing has already become a real pain in the…back, neck, and shoulders, actually.
So again, I caution you all: Trust not in anything under the guise of “Cloudflare” trying to interpose itself between you and this site, or any other online destination for that matter.
In happier, albeit unrelated, news: thanks to the fine folks at OPC in Pineville, NC, (that’s Orthotic and Prosthetic Center to y’all non-cripples), looks like I might be up and walking again in another month or thereabouts. More on that as it develops…












- Entries
Unless the bastards encrypted your drive, your files are recoverable. You can boot your system into Linux and see.
Ah yes, a fine idea indeed…IF I had a disc with a bootable version of Linux on it, or IF the MacBook was new enough to support a bootable Flash drive, or IF the MB had a built-in disc burner in which I could create a bootable Linux disc, or…you begin to see my dilemna here, I imagine.
As it stads, the former iMac/current overpriced doorstop begins the boot process, gets almost t the end, and then…just…stops dead, the end, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dollars. Bastards is right, Tom.
Huh. Won’t boot from USB. I’ll be darned.
I’d still save the hard drive, you could always plug it in to something else. I’m used to super-cheap desktop computers, it’s easier to swap stuff around like that.
I’m with Tom, it’s unlikely your hard drive is dead and all the files are recoverable. You just need a hard drive reader to plug in to your laptop. Send me an email with you address and I’ll order it for you from amazon. Halloween gift you know, trick or treat 🙂
You have 3 hours and 55 minutes from this post to get it tomorrow…
What version of mac? Can it be opened with ordinary tools or only with special drivers?