One can become quite attached to their identity. It’s like an old coat that regardless of whether you even like it, damn well fits and it’s what you’re wearing out.
Until someone else says “Hey, nice coat” and you coyly reply “this old thing?”, batting your eyelids effusively only to discover after an extra long blink that they’ve pinched it and you wake up naked in a pool of your own vomit clutching a fistful of hair wondering who that belongs to.. but now your coat’s missing and is this even your own vomit?
By which of course I mean, they stole my identity.
And what a surgical kick in the dick it was.
*Pictured - What I assume they did with my identity online:
Some sort of Post-apolocolyptic Hitman Jesus.
While I’ve had my bank cards compromised before (let me know in the comments if you want to hear the Bend, Oregon story), this was the first time I had someone making calls from my cellphone number on my behalf.
So how did this dick kicking come to pass? Extraordinary hacking prowess? Government level psy-ops? A rampageous mugging?
No.
I was phished like the dickens over..
..a shirt.
Yes.
A shirt.
The company had their entire website cloned, they cloners claimed there was a sale and boy did I give them every shred of identity I had.
On reflection I wonder how I could have been so dim. I rave relentlessly to family and friends about schemes, scams and fraud, about how they need to be careful.. then I just waltz on in swinging fistfuls of essential details like it’s a lolly scramble.
And so began my week of “inside time”.
I had new bank and credit cards to wait for by the mailbox and a great number of angry phone calls to answer. Given I couldn’t buy food or use transport, staying in seemed prudent.. and I was getting to talk to so many new people.
I tried to look on the bright side, I’d have time to work on my sitcom.. to while away the hours bringing my characters to life.. if I could just iron out these plot holes.. is there any software to help me do that? I wonder if I could make some?
Annnnnnd.. goodbye 6 days of my life.
I may not have done ANY writing (exactly zero, for those judging at home), but I did come up with some script plotting software.. and it works and is good and what the hell?
If you somehow missed that me-mo, the details are right here..
I think this image captures my surprise at having spat out something decent.
Like if I’d made a non-ugly child. By the way, Kevin, stop contacting me.
I blatantly used ai to check the code for errors and help me navigate things I did not know how to do - but the upshot of that hundred hours in a hole is that writers *everywhere now have a new tool to help them plot their stories.
“You’ll make a million dollars!” I hear people cry out, but that sounds like significantly more than the $4.59 it’d actually bring in every year, so for now, it’s free.
*Literally no-one knows this exists. Fill thy boots. Tell thy friends.
But I had much time to kill that week and when I wasn’t deep down the rabbit-hole, I was through the looking hole fossicking in the attic.
For you see our power bill went up. A lot. Britain quite famously now has some of the most expensive electricity in the world ..cause you know, ‘Britain’.
It doesn’t need to be that way and wasn’t before Covid or Ukraine, it’s just that when companies took the opportunity to bump prices up, they never brought them back down - and government’s here tend to have about as many teeth as a jack-o-lantern.
I’d therefore suggested to the landlady that we circumvent this rorty rort weasel and get solar panels ..and BOY have they been excellent. Instead of paying themselves off in the ten years quoted, they did it in three and a half.
The thing is, when our power bill went up, it was put down to changes by the aforementioned ‘useless government’ and not communicated to me. The person who might’ve said, “have you checked the solar panels?”
Indeed, the house batteries had died a death.
How long had they been like this? A week? A fortnight? Try.. eighteen months. And so I now had another hobby to occupy my inside time, bringing those babies back to life ..without burning the house down.. or sending myself to hospital with a new stylish hairdo.
Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.
So when I wasn’t face down, tail up, in code - I was up a ladder with a fire extinguisher trickle charging some gigantic, fat batteries. Eyeing them sternly, daring them to make a move.
This whole process took several days, but gosh darn it, wouldn’t you know I had the time!
Gator clips can fuck off by the way.
Having balanced the batteries and not electrocuted myself, it was time to plug everything back in (because if you didn’t know, the inverter is powered by the batteries and if they get too low the whole system shuts off AND WHO IN THE GOOD GOD FUCK DESIGNED THIS SHIT?!!).. and turn it back on.
To my amazement, everything came back to life and the house is yet to burn down.
I’m sorry, what does that date say?!! *facepalm’s himself through a wall*
Look at all those pretty green lights though.
So despite the fact we’ve been paying five times as much for power for eighteen months (yes, it actually makes that much of a difference), my new bank cards arrived in the mail, the house stopped burning the planet and I finished building my software all on the SAME DAY.. I felt a sense of accomplishment I’d not felt.. since..
…hold the phone, I’m getting another call..
“..a sale? And you just need my credit card number? Ha, I’m not falling for that agai.. TK Maxx you say? I do need a new coat. Sure, it’s..”
~Jez