On Writing

It's a shame to borrow from a writer who I consider a prolific and entertaining writer. Still, I'm remiss if I insinuated that his works greatly influenced me.  Yet, I admire his work, what little of it I read. The first story I remember was "Apt Pupil" which disturbed me so much when I learned that a writer could not only get into a reader's head; but, make him think things the one would never have conceived to have thought.  I admired it so much that I read one other, "It."  In it, I searched it for the secret to S.K.'s ability to imbue words with so much power. While I believe I found that secret, I'm not sure I could ever make use of it, and certainly not in the same way.  It is my opinion; however, one other author used similar techniques in a different, more esoteric way. "The Spire" by William Golding.  I'll leave it to the reader to discover the secret independently.

I think it should go without saying that some of the best works of SciFi and Fantasy were by Marion Zimmer Bradley and the "Darkover" novels.  With that said, I'm almost ashamed to admit I've read and enjoyed Piers Anthony.  But, we all have to start somewhere. 

The first Science Fiction book I can remember reading was in the third grade.  I believe it was Isaac Asimov's "The Rings of Saturn."  I was told it was a bit heady for a 3rd grader.  But what I really remember most was how much I enjoyed it.  At the beginning of the year, I remember the school putting me into a remedial reading program, saying I had comprehension problems.  At eight years old, I'm not sure I even had a clue what that was, but I do recall this problem was determined by a test they gave me when I read the poem "Jack and Jill." I made too many presumptions about what was going on in the story; I can almost remember what that was.  It had something to do with what Jack thought about Jill when she came tumbling after rather than only stating the facts.  

Whatever my problem was, after 3 months of intensely reading boxes of laminated and brightly colored story sheets, complete with tests, I had passed, reading the entire course in one school year.  When I finished, I devoured Asimov's "Rings of Saturn" and remember clearly the librarian commenting on my reading at the high school level.   I even understood what she meant!  That was the start of a life of reading that continues to this day.

But, the first book that really made an impression on me was written in green ink, "Shadow Castle" by Marian Cockrell.  There was something magical about it which I later discovered to be Fantasy!  Trying to fuel that, I remember my parents grumbling about how much it cost for the weekly readers and the books the school sold to raise money.  Around the same time, I got a book that almost ruined me.  I still have nightmares about it.  Not often, mind you, but I think it creeps in now and then just to taunt me.  Don't laugh, but "Alice in Wonderland" made an even bigger impression; just the wrong one.  I remember reading it like a passerby staring at a car wreck.  Something about the baby, the pig and the cook just won't leave my subconscious alone.  I probably should reread it just to destimulate the memory.  I only came to appreciate it after my Uncle bought me a coloring book with puzzles.  I still love logic puzzles, which always remind me of my father.  I never realized it until much later in life; but, he often passed on his gems of wisdom in the form of logic puzzles.  "Did you know there are two kinds of people in this world?  Those that divide everything into two categories; and those that don't.  Does there exist a man such that when he drinks, everybody drinks?"  My father loved his cocktails.  My earliest memory consists of things like "What's blue and goes ding dong?"  Of course, the answer is "a blue ding dong", and the same with all colors except red, which, is a fire engine.  What a card!  I wish I'd gotten to know the man all his friends knew; unfortunately, cancer took him at 65 years of age.

But I digress.  I believe the subject was "On writing," so, as one might expect, I'm a writer.  Amateur, of course, I've never been paid to write anything; unless one counts technical papers, which I don't.  I've been told since as far back as I can remember that I'll never be able to write Fiction.  I'm starting to believe this is true, and so naturally, my most ardent desire is to write Fiction, Science Fiction.  I'm working on that right now, as a matter of fact.  Well, there's the rub; I'm writing this right now.  I haven't touched my fictional writing in almost a week.  I'd like to say it's writer's block.  But, like this, I always have writer's block, but it doesn't stop me from writing.  For some reason, it's just never Fiction... go figure.  If I could only just stop comparing myself to my favorite authors...

Update: 2023-06-17:  I am about 25% of the way through writing my book.  My wife, an avid reader of 2-3 books a week, says it's excellent, and I must finish it.  

She also said I cannot tell you anything about the story.

Microsoft says I changed my password; but, I didn't. One users journey to recapture a potentially stolen XBox account and re-establish access through authentication to other compromised accounts.

Originally published 2020-07-25

Giving the new blog by Google a tryout with the first blog.  Let's see... current peeve.  I've only recently come to realize that Microsoft maintains access to all of it's features by using live.com.  The convenience of this is unmistakable.  Log into live and access all of your Microsoft accounts.  But, I've run into a couple of, for the lack of a better term, bugs. Let me elaborate.

1. Most recently, I ran into this one!  My adult daughter has recently moved back home. Yay?  After a brief quarantine camping in our back yard, A week and a Covid-19 test later with negative results; we let her into the house.  Now, this probably says more about us than anything; but, basically she's a 40 yr old flower child, spirits slightly dampened by the virus.  Thankfully, it only took about 3 months for her to realize she's better off here.  But, I digress.  Forgive me, but I do that a lot!

We have an old Xbox 360 which I stopped using after I realized that my subscription was auto renewing and I wasn't using it enough to warrant that.  Nonetheless, when I started using it, even though I have strong Microsoft connections, I didn't want to tie the subscription, nor the box to my primary Microsoft account.  So, I opened a Hotmail account; at the time these were unconnected in any way, and so I felt, well... comfortable would be too final a concept so let's say, moderately safe; and, I'm sure my use of the words... 'at the time' gives you a clue where I might be going with this.

Anyway, my daughter moves in, sees the old XBox 360 and naturally wants to play one of the old games.  No problem I think, she had an account on the machine, so no big deal.  She sets it up; and begins playing.  

First, she doesn't tell me, remember the free spirit love child, that her account doesn't work, and besides, she doesn't remember the password; but, no problem, she has the original disk, and sets it up to play and starts saving it to the machine.

This next part I'm not totally sure what "really" happened; but, apparently they're somehow related as I discover later.  When she saves the game, somehow either through her actions, or some internal action of XBox itself, suddenly Microsoft gives me a message, and remember, I don't know what's going on, that my password had changed.  Well, naturally, I kind of freak out because as you might guess, I didn't change it!

So, I re authenticate on my computer reset my password, look around at things on my computer, run a scan, (by the way I am a, let's keep it short, computer Guru for most of my life. I don't see or find anything amiss, other than MS saying I reset my password, and move along.  Several days go by, and again, MS tells me my password has changed and starts putting my life through the ringer.  They don't just want me to simply re-authenticate, they start asking personal questions about my life, and emails, and stuff even I don't remember about me.  And, as you can imagine, this kind of freaks me out.  

After checking to make sure it *IS* Microsoft; I start filling out the forms, worried that I might not pass their scrutiny, I reached the boiling point, and thought they were too nosey; I saw something that gave me a clue what might be happening and just skipped the reset to see what would happen.  Fortunately, I got back into my account, even though they said it would be 48 hours before they decided whether I could have my account back, which blew my mind; but, OK, IT security in the time of WikiLeaks and Trump... fine.  

The clue was that they asked me whether I owned an XBox; well, I do; and they asked me about my Hotmail account, and I thought, oh shit... I do!  And I go running into my daughter's room, (cough) my old storage and guest room, and say... "Did you log into or use my account on XBox?" and she, like she does when she knows she screwed up somewhere, shrivels up inside, and meekly says... "I might have..." 

Well, who would have thought that a two year old machine might in anyway have access to an old Hotmail account.  I say I don't know what happened because for all intents and purposes... that machine shouldn't have had access to *anything*!  How, who, what, when, where and why should it.  What if it had been stolen?  And, ironically, my Hotmail account, tied in NOW to my "live" account has privileges that it shouldn't, with an old password; but, Xbox, the left hand of Microsoft, and my computer, the right hand of Microsoft not knowing what either one was doing, and yet... now connected.  Holy Shit!

I get into my Hotmail account, and find out it has some computer assigned user name; and is only accessible by my logging into live.  Plus, at one time Microsoft decided in their wisdom to make it an "authentication" account to recover my "other account" and I imagine you can see the issue.

My daughter still insists she didn't do anything; and, a big part of me believes her.  I think it was totally automatic, and a default from when they connected live and every other account I have with Microsoft.   A residual problem from before they were connected through live, and because I used a Gmail account, which they begrudgingly allowed me to do at the time.  Whatever it was; I took control of everything, and "think" I've worked out the bugs.  Will know more later.  But, beware!  And, this is just peeve #1.

Peeve #2:  Coming up in next blog.  Computers connected to Microsoft live accounts on other home computers and family users that use the machine who have forgotten their passwords.  If you have a computer that family members use, and use "external" accounts, and not local accounts; you don't want to miss it.  No worries, you're probably reading this months after everything happened.  I hope they've fixed it by then.

Updated 2020-08-01 - Peeve #1 

I finally resolved the issue with the XBox; and I have to claim fault on this one; and yet, my confusion came from Microsoft.  Prior to solving the issue, I did not have an Outlook.com mailbox; when I signed onto my XBox account, which I can do remotely, and tried to turn off the profile, Microsoft pushed me to an outlook.com account and possibly only attempted to connect it; which failed.  The reasons for the failure I found out two days later.  It was connected to a Hotmail account.  I was aware of this connection; however, when Microsoft created an XBox profile on outlook, I assumed erroneously, that it was the Hotmail account.  My error completely.  Fortunately, I did notice two days later, recovered my Hotmail account and changed the password effectively blocking the automatic login of the XBox account.

I'm aware that I could have at any time, gone into my daughter's bedroom where she is keeping the XBox, and take control there; but, I wanted to handle this as a "stolen XBox" account and discover if I could halt the interference it was causing with my live account access.  Ultimately, I was successful but it was fraught with obstacles. 

This resolves Peeve #1.

However I do have a grave concern. Although Microsoft uses live.com as the primary log in account for the Microsoft accounts; they are all linked in through this account under the login email of various selected accounts such as Gmail; outlook.com and hotmail.com.  Access to one gives access to all.  This in conjunction with the authenticator app and alternate batches of code provide the bulk of Microsoft's security authentication methods.  There is also Hello, and PIN access to a primary computer on which Microsoft live log in is enabled.

No system is foolproof; but, the XBox 360 especially with earlier versions which may not have been updated regularly show the existence of a potential hole of vulnerability, especially if the XBox has been lost or stolen. Users with XBox should ensure that the software and profile has been updated; and that the password setting does not default to automatic log in for the best protection.  Considering the complexity of passwords, this can be extremely inconvenient when typing into the XBox console; so, buyer beware if you bypass this security.

One feature noteworthy of mention:  When using a Gmail account; the Microsoft live log in can me associated with the Gmail address.  This can cause confusion since when the password is requested, if a user has both google related apps security activated.  It's not always clear which account is making the request.  To clarify, the password, when associated with live.com is a separate password than the one used on live.com, except when Microsoft chooses to use an option created by the internet security group which allows companies to cooperate and establish authentication via authentication associated with their account.

Let me clarify.  It's possible for Microsoft to request Google to authenticate a user through the Google account, confirming the user is who they claim to be.  This does have to be set up in your Microsoft account.  Microsoft does on occasion appear to randomly choose from the various accepted methods of authentication to confirm your identity.  Usually, one has the option to choose another method if the chosen one doesn't suit you. However, if this is opted during authentication, it's easy to get confused which account is being changed, if the password didn't work, and the user then opts to change it.  This confusion seems to occur in Chrome; since they are generating the request from Microsoft.  It's impossible to determine whether Chrome is asking for the Microsoft password, or the Gmail password, since both use the same email address.  If the user chooses the wrong one, or something has changed one password or the other, the end result can be complicated.  Fortunately, the one app that seems to resolve any issue over authentication is the authenticator app; but even this has its pitfalls.

Several apps have chosen to generate their own version of the authenticator app.  Discord, Google, and Microsoft are three.  These apps in your phone are nearly identical and this too confuses the issue.  We should just consider this another layer of obfuscation to confuse the would be hacker; but it's up to the user to keep them separate. 

If you are a superuser like me; make sure you keep which service is generating the authentication request.  With Google, it is the individual app account by which one will receive the codes; all kept separate from the service itself; but, available from your Chrome account.  With Microsoft, it's associated with your live account for your various Microsoft accounts, all of which will use live to access them.

Most of us have probably already encountered some of the confusion that can be caused by maintaining security through two different services.  Microsoft and Google to name but two.  However, my experience is that though it can be frustrating at times; it does seem to provide a decent amount of security.  Even if someone gains access to one of your authentication methods; it's possible by having one or more alternate authentication methods to regain control of the one lost, re-establishing your authentication with that service; and re-securing your apps and accounts.