persona non grata

Finally figured out what my problem was with getting to this blog or anything connected with the machine it is running on.

I'd been trying to get here for a couple of days, but couldn't make any connection from home.

It took me awhile, but I finally realized that the problem was related to connecting from home and nowhere else.

So, after eliminating any issue at my end and having encountered this kind of problem a couple of years ago, I took a guess that it was at the ISP's end.

Sure enough, my IP address had been flagged and I was officially a persona non grata. The ISP responded quickly and restored me to good standing.

Something to keep in mind, though -- some security software will notice what it thinks is something odd and automatically throw the offending IP address into a list that cuts out all future connections.

I guess that's one of the prices we all pay for idiots who aren't creative or constructive enough to build something positive, instead using technology to destroy. I'm obviously not talking about security experts who help to uncover and patch holes, but the criminals who abuse security problems to destructive ends.

Another example of the 2.5% who make life tougher for the remaining 97.5.