An Act of Misdirection

I'm going to talk about something computer-techy that's not about sex. So quick. Here's a photo of my dick.

Sometime in the wee hours between Sunday night and Monday morning, the very blog you are reading went down for about three and a half hours. Mass chaos ensued. Readers panicked. No, really. I woke up at about six-thirty in the morning, grabbed my iPad from my bedside table, fired it up, and found that my mailbox had about a dozen letters from regular readers informing me that Google had removed my blog and their lives would be miserable without it. (I might be filling in the lines a little on that last point.) Panicked, I opened my browser and navigated to this very page, only to find that indeed, there was a notice saying that my blog had been removed.

That didn't sound good. I logged into my Blogger account and discovered a notice saying my account had been suspended for 'suspicious activity.' But look, here's another picture of my dick:

No, not that kind of suspicious activity. Anyway, that's pretty typical for me.

They didn't specify what kind of suspicious activity it was, but the page helpfully told me that if I verified my identity via a text message to my phone, they'd release my blog from bondage.

Okay, so that photo doesn't have me in bondage. Sue me. Anyway, the blog bounced back online and the sun rose and all was well with the world again.

Only there were a couple of oddities I noticed throughout the day. For one thing, I was suddenly following my own blog, which I hadn't been before. For another, I seemed to be following a blog I could swear I'd never seen at all. I suppose there's a remote chance I added it and forgot about it, but if so, my memory really must be failing. (Of course, I received a gift card from my Amazon wish list from a reader last week that I promptly misplaced and haven't since found, so it's possible that I'm entering my dotage.)

But look over here! It's a photo of me fucking (I know one of my readers will recognize this one)!

Strangest of all, though, I received a note later in the day from my buddy Doc_Rob over at his blog, The Muse Descending, asking why I'd stopped following him. I hadn't stopped following him, as it turned out, but for some reason he'd blocked me. And so had the blog I don't remember having followed before. And as a matter of fact, now that I check, so has every blog I follow.

Now, I checked through Google's friend connect forums and didn't see anything relevant. So my question is, to all the friendly tech types out there, has anyone else had this issue? Why am I screwed up, if not?

I changed my password right off, just in case I was hacked. I'm usually pretty rigorous about protecting my information that way. But in case you want to guess my password, you might spy it in this photo right here:

Then again, maybe not.

So thanks for listening to my mysterious tale of woe. I'm sorry there wasn't any sex in my post today.