Becca Jane St Clair

Yesterday, we had plans for taking my mom to Edinburgh via the train. Tim and I planned on using our staff travel passes, and we had my mom apply for a Senior Rail Card (You are eligible at age 60) so we could save money on her ticket. I booked her ticket last week on the East Coast Trains website.

After getting out of the house a bit later than we had wanted, we managed to get to Newark North Gate with time to spare, as our train had been delayed due to engineering works. Tim explained that the engineering works was probably supposed to have ended prior to the first train of the day, but something must have happened to prevent engineering from giving up the possession (sometimes it helps to have a husband “in the know”!). While we were waiting, my husband was outside on the platform and saw a train go past with blue sparks coming out of the overhead – The trains were having problems with the frosty covered overhead wires and he speculated that was why our train might have been running late.

So we sat and read and kept glancing up at the timetable as our delay changed to being over an hour late….and then was simply replaced by the words “delayed” and an announcement that there were wires down. Tim said that wasn’t good, so I took the opportunity to go speak with someone at the ticket counter.

First, let me say that he was amazing, and I wish I remembered his name. He explained to me that it was looking likely that our train would be cancelled OR the delay would be so fierce that by the time we arrived in Edinburgh, we’d have to turn right back around on the train we had booked Mom’s return ticket on. I asked him what we should do about the fact that her tickets claim it is “non-refundable”, and he explained that he would endorse the tickets and I could go to the website to claim a refund since the train was going to be cancelled and we had day return tickets. He couldn’t offer me the refund right there as the tickets were purchased through the website. He then also validated our parking ticket so we wouldn’t have to pay £9 for day parking. He also told me that if we decided to go to Edinburgh tomorrow (er, today), I could just bring the tickets back to him and he would re-issue them.

So..we left. We salvaged the day slightly by going to Newark Castleand the National Space Centre*, but it was still a disappointing day.

East Coast Trains announced they planned on getting trains running again by 18:30, with one train an hour, but according to their website right now, most services are still suspended, so I don’t think we’ll be attempting Edinburgh today.

But imagine my confusion when I go to the website to put in my claim!

According to their website, we are eligible for a refund, as the site clearly states:

With the following instructions:

But then, when I’m looking at the “Your Account” page, the option to request a refund is blanked out:

I completely undestand that technically the ticket is “Non-refundable”, but both the person we spoke with at Newark North Gate and their own website says I am eligible for a refund regardless because the service was cancelled.

So..now what? I guess my only option is to send the request by post…and given that it is TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS and most of the UK is shut down the Monday and Tuesday after to cover the holiday, I don’t think I’ll be seeing this refund anytime soon. Which is quite annoying because if we do decide to go anywhere next week, we’ll have to pay for Mom’s tickets instead of applying the refund.

Of course, this is assuming I ever actually GET the refund, too. Tim and I also each wasted one of our passes, as you can’t amend/cross out anything on the pass and we already had the date written in on it. In the long-run, that’s not as big of an issue as being out £50, though. We probably won’t use all 16 passes before next year’s cards are issued anyway.

And to make things even MORE difficult for us – last night we had a power cut for about an hour and despite having the fire going, it’s been impossible to warm the house up again.

*Also, interesting to note. Day admission to the Space Centre gives you an annual pass.

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I meal plan pretty much every week for Tim and I, but it’s not always on Monday, so this is my first time participating in Menu Planning Monday. I also have meal planned the rest of the month, since my Mom arrives for her visit on Thursday and she leaves on the 30th. I didn’t want to take time away from our visit with meal planning, and I had to get my order into Tesco to ensure delivery next week, too!

So, here is it..

Today – Chicken Pot Pie made with the leftovers from Sunday’s roast
Tuesday – Homemade Fish and Chips
Wednesday – Leftover Pot Pie
Thursday – Mom arrives! Crock Pot Indian from A Year of Slow Cooking
Friday – Toad in the Hole
Saturday – Fish Pie – This is an excellent recipe if you’re just learning. I’ve since modified it to fit our needs, but this was a great recipe to learn from.
Sunday – Kitchen Barbecue
Monday – Sweet and Sour Chicken Stir-Fry (with homemade sweet and sour sauce)
Tuesday – Turkey (yes, even though Christmas is Saturday)
Wednesday – Dinner out – Trip to Edinburgh for the day!
Thursday – Turkey Leftovers (leaning towards tetrazinni)
Friday – Vegetable Soup
Saturday – Crock Pot Breakfast Casserole; snacks for Lunch; Christmas dinner at in-laws
Sunday – Ham and Potatoes
Monday – Captain’s Casserole
Tuesday – Fish and Chips (from the chippy)
Wednesday – Chicken Tacos

I usually try one new recipe a week, but I’m not really experimenting while my mom is here. The Toad in the Hole recipe I’m using will be a new to me recipe, but I have made it before (as mini toad in the hole).
I’ve got a couple of recipes I want to post, too. I’ll see if I have time to post them before Thursday, or at least to schedule them for later posting!

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I live in a relatively small village. Our village touches the next village over due to housing/businesses spreading out, and so we share a police “force”. I think there are 4 of them, and their office is a little building next to the neighbouring village’s village hall.

A few days ago, we received our village’s monthly newsletter (late, due to the snow!) and I discovered on the Police’s note that they now had a blog set up for the area where they will be posting local crimes, so I added it to my RSS reader, figuring it might be handy to know what’s happened locally.

Today, they posted a ” Persoanl [sic] Safety Warning”. The warning apparently originally came from the Northants Police, but the top of the blog post says it was emailed to the poster “by a member of my family”. The incident supposedly happened along the M3 at the Fleet Services.

I’m reading this warning, and it talks about a woman stopping for petrol and going in to pay and having the clerk tell her there is a man hiding in the backseat of her car.

It made me pause and think hang on, I’m sure I’ve seen this before. I logged into my old email account from before I was married and ran a search, and sure enough, when I still lived in PA, I had received a very similar “warning” via a forwarded email, so I went to snopes.

And, sure enough, the whole thing is made up, and the story is as old as 1967!

It bothers me that our local police force would send out a rumour like this. People will see that post and panic. Way to go, local police.

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I had a few questions about how to upgrade to the newest (secure) version, so here’s easy directions with screenshots:

1. Log into your dashboard with your admin account

2. Look to the left. If it’s not dropped down, click on the word “dashboard”

3. Click “updates”

4. WordPress will tell you what needs updating (WordPress, plug-ins, etc) and all you have to do is click on the upgrade button and WordPress will do everything automatically.

BTW, if you don’t have a dedicated comment spam blocker, I recommend going into the plugins and searching through the available blockers. I added Askimet last night, and it’s already blocked 75 spam comments. My previous spam blocker, WP-SpamFree, blocked some spam, but would have emailed me those 75 spam comments for me to manually mark as spam.

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I sent an email off to Dreamhost complaining about the lack of help I received from their security team. I received a wonderful email from a member of their tech support who went through my entire site and found the malicious code on more pages (that google had not found, as the pages were on plug-ins not currently in use). I was able to completely remove the code, and I have to say, Dreamhost was much better about it this time around!

It took me an hour and a half to remove every last bit of the malicious code, but it’s gone. And hopefully with the new WordPress upgrade, this won’t happen again. Apparently there was a flaw in the previous version that made it easy to hack into. So, if any of you are using WordPress, go upgrade it to the new version that was released on December 1!

Here’s a full list of my posts for November:

Nov 1 – It’s NaBloPoMo
Nov 2 – A Day on the Welshpool and Llanfair
Nov 3 – A Call to NHS Direct
Nov 4 – Last Day in Wales: Ffestiniog Railway
Nov 5 – Happy Anniversary
Nov 6 – A trio of Vlogs
Nov 7 – Lincolnshire Life
Nov 8 – London Transport and War
Nov 9 – A Visit to the Seaside
Nov 10 –York, not to be Confused with New York or York PA
Nov 11 – Safety First
Nov 12 – Building a Railway
Nov 13 – Swagbucks Update
Nov 14 – Why Are You Here?
Nov 15 – Halfway!
Nov 16 – Wildlife in our House
Nov 17 – When Filters Go Bad
Nov 18 – Lincolnshire Sausage Festival
Nov 19 – Bonfire Night!
Nov 20 – Harry Potter and the Chorus Concert
Nov 21 – Wii Socialization
Nov 22 – Filler Post
Nov 23 – I am an Immigrant
Nov 24 – Tattershall Castle
Nov 25 – Abbey in the Backyard, Part 2
Nov 26 – Recipe: Potato Scramble
Nov 27 – Save your Feet
Nov 28 – Thanksgiving
Nov 29 – Warning
Nov 30 – Still Infected

It was fun. I had to put up a filler post on one day because I was sick and didn’t want to skip out on my commitment, and the last two days of the month were not what I had intended to post at all, thanks to a hacker (I had planned on doing this post on November 30), but I think I did good.

I still have to blog about Austria, and I will do my best to get those done before my mom arrives on December 16th! I will be most likely taking off from the 15th to 31st so I can spend time with my mom, and then start my new goals in the new year!

And I promise, this is my last blog post for today!

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I know I promised not to post twice in one day, but I needed to post this….and I’ll likely be posting a third post with all the NaBloPoMo links later today, too.

So, I generally love my hosting company (Dreamhost), but I have to say, I’m really kind of annoyed with them right now.

When this mess started Monday morning (GMT), they sent my problem to one of their specialists. I didn’t hear back until Tuesday afternoon (GMT), and most of what they told me to do had nothing to do with my problem – For example, I got told to update software on other domains and sub-domains when the ONLY sub having any issue at all was blog.beccajanestclair.com. So, I turned to google (via Swagbucks*) for help.

I tried the Google Webmaster Tools, and Google pinpointed three files as being “infected” – my about this blog page, a photo page from an August blog, and I forget the third. I deleted those three pages and the photos that had been displayed on those pages, and will need to re-write an about this blog page tomorrow. Dreamhost had not mentioned these files, only 2 files that were buried deep within 6 folders of a theme I hadn’t even ever used, which I also deleted. I then decided if the themes really were the problem, I had better go through and remove all the wordpress themes I wasn’t using. Dreamhost suggested re-installing my current theme, but unfortunately download links to it no longer exist. I had decided I would search for a similar looking theme, and take my css sheet from the current theme to make a new theme look like the current theme if I had to.

I had about 10 help sites open by this point, so I can’t tell you which site it was that actually gave me this idea, but I went into the WordPress theme editor and opened all the php files for my current them and really looked at them. My coding skills aren’t super or anything, but I was confident I would notice something off, as I have modified most of the php files marginally to achieve my custom theme. Sure enough, at the top of every single php page was a random string of code. Please note, Dreamhost did not suggest doing this. Dreamhost did not even tell me what string of code to look for, and did NOT detect the string of code in all my php files when they looked. The files they had told me to delete had been css files, but the css file for my current theme was the only part of my theme that was clean! I removed the string of code from all the files, and then went into FileZilla and checked all the other php files on my server. Nothing else was infected. I also took this time to remove lots of old files, and to remove previous incarnations of my website, including the very first version using frames and a version using python. I don’t think I needed to remove these files, but I figured I might as well start to clean up my stuff, since I have now held my domain for nearly 10 years. The me of 10 years ago (age 21!) is very different than the me I am now, and while I had the old pages buried deep in random folders, I really don’t think I want anyone finding them.

And good news from google, too – I just checked the webmaster tools and it says:

Status of the latest badware review for this site: A review for this site has finished. The site was found clean. The badware warnings from web search are being removed. Please note that it can take some time for this change to propagate.

Woot.

So. Rebecca: 1 Dreamhost: 0

*Oh, and when I started googling with Swagbucks yesterday, my points count was 649. As of right now, I have 721 swagbucks, a little over a 100 to go for another £5 Amazon voucher!

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Oh the weather outside is frightful

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:
No pic of my house, but here’s one I took in Lincoln

Tuesday:

10AM:

2PM:

9PM:

11PM:

But the fire is so delightful

And since we’ve no place to go…Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

And the most recent, taken at 1AM on Wednesday:

It doesn’t show signs of stopping….:

And just for good measure, the snowperson my sister-in-law and I made this afternoon:

The village shop has run out of the 4 pint size bottle (half gallonish) of milk and no longer has bread, but we’ve got the bread machine for bread, and worst case scenario, we’ll buy smaller milk if we run out (just opened a 4 pt bottle Tuesday afternoon). Worst, worst case scenario, I have a canister of powdered milk in my baking supplies we can raid for tea. We stopped at Morrison’s on Monday and bought a few “basics”, not our weekly shop, but I think I can cobble together some meals for a few days. Tim and I can also always go to the CostCutter or the Co-Op, though those are longer walks (about a mile RT to CostCutter and 2 miles RT to the Co-Op) and today when we went to the Spar shop (literally, 5 houses down from us) I got soaked by a passing car, so I really don’t want to walk near the road right now!

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