Wow… I’m going to be happy to get to bed this evening. It’s been a totally insane day.
I won’t get into too many details but our day started off with having to ground our 9 year old son until he’s about 30 years old. Sigh… To make a long story short he went on his computer about 3 AM this morning (yes… 3 AM!). That was our fault. We always remove the lap top from his room before he goes to bed because he has a bad habit of waking up at 6 AM to go on the computer to play on Club Penguin. So that was mistake number one on our part for forgetting to get the computer before he went to bed.
Our second mistake (well, more so my husband’s) was forgetting to put the password protection on the lap top. My son’s display broke so my husband rebuilt him another one (one of the benefits of being married to a tech). My husband forgot to password protect it so our son could only go to pre-approved web sites (Disney, Discovery Kids, National Geographic Kids…). So that meant our son had free access to ANY place on the ‘net. NOT GOOD!
In the wee hours of the night, unbeknown to us, our son managed to download A LOT of stuff on the computer, create a Yahoo e-mail account and the worst thing of all… he HACKED into a web site. Yes… you read that right – HACKED! As in NOT GOOD!!!! NOT GOOD AT ALL!!! Needless to say he won’t be seeing a computer again until he’s 30 if he’s lucky!
So how do we know all of this? Well it started off with our daughter telling us that she woke up at 3:40 to pull her blankets up because they fell off her during the night and she was cold. She noticed he was on the computer (they share a room) and she glanced at the clock but was too sleepy to really pay any mind. But when she got up she told us. Of course he denied it. However he’s NOT too bright when it comes to “covering his trail”. For one HE E-MAILED ME at 3:34 AM to tell me that he created a Yahoo e-mail account (not too smart of a move was it?). So he came out and told me in an e-mail that he created an e-mail account AND it was time stamped so I knew what time he sent the e-mail. BAD MISTAKE!
We found out about all the stuff he downloaded when my husband checked out his computer. He was downloading tool bars and other strange things. UGH!
We found out about the hacking part because our son LOVES to make movies using Window’s Movie Maker program. He’s actually pretty good at it for a 9 year old. He once made an 18 minute movie of just the snow outside. My husband noticed that he made movies during the night, one of which was time stamped 3:04 AM. Mind you our son argues that the times are wrong. Yeah, OK… whatever!
As my husband was watching the movie he made at 3:04 AM we saw that he basically made a step-by-step movie on how to hack into a web site!!!! I KID YOU NOT! This is a 9 year old! I don’t know whether to be impressed by his skills or ship him off to Timbuktu! We know that he had a knack for tweaking the computer and we (my husband and I) always JOKED he would be a hacker someday, but we wanted him to work for the government doing GOOD with the hacking. IT WAS A JOKE! We never realized he had what it took do actually do it.
So… our son has pretty much seen his last computer until he’s considered an adult and buys one himself. He’s also grounded for life. The kicker is that he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. WRONG? Oh let me count the ways!
So if that wasn’t the worst day to start the day I don’t know what is.
We went out and about today to run some errands, which of course was no fun with an overly cranky kid running on no sleep since he was up all night. Grrrr!
I had to go to Staples to pick up some stuff. We WERE going to go to Staples at the mall and walk around, but considering our son was over cranky from being tired and grounded we opted to go to a different Staples. Keep this in mind for later on in my story…
I had some extra cash since I have several orders I am working on this weekend for my business so I treated the family to Chinese food for dinner. I always cook dinner. We rarely eat out or order in. So something like Chinese food is a “treat”.
While waiting for it to be ready we went to get a Mega Millions Lottery ticket. No one won the past few times so the prize it up to $210 million. WOW… that would be awesome to win but we’d be happy enough to win enough to buy a nice “Brady Bunch” looking home, nothing fancy. Just to have a house would be a blessing. So we picked up $5.00 worth of Mega Millions numbers.
Later on this evening, long after dinner was done, my husband opened up his fortune cookie. And guess what it said? It said “You will receive some high prize or award soon“. High prize? LOTTO? Could it be??? Imagine that!
Right now it’s sitting in my husband’s wallet next to the Lotto card. Gosh… wouldn’t that be BEYOND weird if we won, even a little something with Lotto?
By the way my fortune cookie read “Wait for it. There will be a big change today“. If by “big change” it means our son never using a computer ever again, OK. I saw the change today. UNLESS it has something to do with my husband’s fortune and the Lotto tickets. Interesting huh?
Now… back to the reason why I said to remember how we were going to go to Staples at the mall today and walk around. Well it just so happens we have two movie theaters in our mall, one of which has the new Jonas Brothers movie opening today. My daughter LOVES the Jonas Brothers like most ‘tweens. Guess what? The Jonas Brothers WERE AT THE MALL TODAY!!! I just read it online on our local newspaper web site. I kid you not…. they were at the mall! Pretty much the same time we would have been there. She might have been able to see them if we were there. She is going to be so upset with us when she finds out. If we just would have stayed with our original plan our daughter might have gone to bed extra happy tonight.
Weird! Weird! Weird! This has just been a totally weird day. Thank goodness we’re not doing much tomorrow because we’re suppose to get more snow tomorrow into Monday. I don’t think I can handle another crazy day. Hopefully tomorrow will be low key, quiet and uneventful.
