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"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend;  inside of a dog, it is just too dark to read"!

Groucho Marx

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Redirect

“Shawn, what the hell is the matter with this computer?”


Total frustration had caused me to throw the styrofoam cup across my office. Fortunately, only a few drops of cold coffee splattered against the eggshell wall. The fifth refill was almost completely finished after a morning of “boot and re-boot”.

“Throw your coffee cup. That always seems to fix the problem.” His friendly sarcasm reverberated from the adjoining office. “I’m having to tinker with mine this morning too. I will give yours a look in a couple of minutes.”

Every time I would google “Granger Supply”, “Apartment Finder in Your City” would pop up. Backspace and start over and “Cheapest Airfares” would cover the screen. Each time the search would redirect to another site. A minor stumbling block each time would follow with the proper searched site. No big deal.

“I will be in there in a minute, my danged computer keeps redirecting my web search.”

“Virus”. My first thought was immediate. Where could I have picked this up? I haven’t been into any “neeckeed” picture sites..today. Ok, just “Norton” my files and things will be fine. An hour and a half later, same routine. Redirect. The usual check of any changes show nothing new being amended in any file anywhere. Restoring the computer to an earlier date brought no fix. After finally getting several searches to work properly, no articles were posted about a fix, although numerous people were reporting the same problems. One particular article was quite informative and I decided to go back and print it to see if I could find any clues. It would not “search” this title a second time. I eventually gave up that search and tried a generic search again. Redirect, redirect, redirect.

“Shawn”!

“You’re on your own, dude. My computer keeps redirecting me when I do a search”. No sarcasm this time, only frustration was in his voice.

“That’s all right. I am going to post about what my computer is doing on my blog and see if anyone else is having this problem”.

……………………..

Under normal circumstances, no one would notice the empty store front with the “For Lease” sign propped up in the front window. The blinds were drawn and the building lay between a Payless shoe store and an ancient Baskin Robbins ice cream parlor. There was no sign out front designating what the prior business had been. The city of Newark had almost forgotten about this once family oriented neighborhood. The twin black Yukons, parked out front, should seem out of place, but no one noticed. The three banks of computer servers, neatly arranged in the back store room, were completely out of sight.

“It still has a few bugs in it, but the initial setup is working toward what we had hoped. It is well hidden and doesn’t cause enough problems that people will expend a lot of effort trying to find the cause and hunt for a correction to the aggravation.”

“But, does it proceed with the intent of allowing the use of individual computers to be manipulated”?

“Oh, absolutely. All that is needed is the Czar Committee to put pressure on the major browser companies and they will understand that we actually control them, just as the Chinese did with Google. It will be just a matter of changing a few commands in the root program. Any information distribution the Information Czar Committee wants to put forth or “redirect” will be simplified. The individual will be limited on exchanging their own ideas and thoughts. Any use of the internet can be rerouted through a tracking program. The Tax Czar Committee has been searching for a consistent method to tax usage of the internet. This is a sure fix. The possibilities are only limited by the various Czar Committee’s imagination“.

“I am seeing an indication of an incoming inquiry. It looks like some sort of a trace exercise. I need to see where the signal is coming from”.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Shawn, have you figured this thing out yet”?

“Not yet”.

“ I’m trying to run down any incoming changes that have been automatically downloaded to my laptop”.

“Ok, fine, but pick up line one. I think it is one of your redneck buddies. He said he’s from the Homeland Security Czar Committee. You need to find some new friends”.

“Ok, tell him I will be right there as soon as I finis