Eri Wilde's Japonaiserie

I have a video on YouTube talking in English about recovering from this ransomware deadbolt attack, and there were a lot of posts made in the comments section of that video. I have blocked them now, but most of them were posts by bots advertising hackers who promised to recover files which were encrypted by ransomwares. I was trying to support a Japanese consulter whose ransom note couldn’t be restored. He didn’t know the bitcoin address to transfer the ransom to. I couldn’t help asking this hacker to help us. Then the hacker deceived me into believing that the decryption key would be obtained by having OP_RETURN output to the blockchain in the same way as when paying the ransom, but at a lower price than the ransom. However, there was one thing I was not convinced of. That was, how could they write out the decryption key to OP_RETURN without the ransom note, which has bitcoin address? My understanding was that the bitcoin address assigned to each NAS and the decryption k...

Deadbolt Out of the Blue Slightly after my father went back home from work on May 13, his QNAP NAS server at his company was attacked by Deadbolt Ransomware. He noticed the extensions of all the files on the server were turned into .deadbolt next morning. Because it was Saturday morning, his securiy management company was not operating, so he gave me a call. He asked me to come to check it up and fix it.  Then I thought his vendor should take care of the incident because I was not in charge of the security management of the server any longer. So I asked him to wait for their support. Next week, the person in charge of my father's server from the vendor visited his company and explained how they could recover the files. He told us the server had been set up so that backup files would be made when they were stored at the same time, and they would be able to restore the files from the backup. My father made them take the server to their place then. It took them quite a few days to est...

One day in the beginning of autumn, on Facebook, a friend of mine shared a news article about a renowned Hollywood star, Keanu Reeves, was spotted by a fan in Teshima Island in Kagawa Prefecture. Also, he talked about his brief visit to Naoshima Island during the interview for his latest film, ‘John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum’. Later, I was informed that he also visited Inujima Island, and he was accompanied by his rumored girlfriend, Alexandra Grant, who is a famous artist. We were delighted to hear of the celebrity’s private visit to our beloved sightseeing location. Of course, I had known the name of the actor Keanu Reeves, but I had never really watched his movies by then. I hadn’t even watched ‘The Matrix’ or ‘Speed’ properly. But because he spoke well of my prefecture, I became his fan and began watching his movies. I also started checking his fan pages and groups on Facebook, and liking the tweets about him on Twitter. I also shared the links of the articles about his visit...

Quit speculation Last year I went through a hard time in tackling my depression. The worst side appeared when I was engaged in investment in a speculative way. I also bought expensive information for sale and investment tools, which didn't work well. My doctor admits depression may lead us to spend much money. So I hope I can control my zest for investment more wisely this year. Keep balancing work and life Toward the end of last year I could barely manage to retrieve concentration in my day job, though I still feel drowsy while I'm at desk and my boss looks grumpy when he finds me idling. I'm doing my best anyway. I think I had better limit my working hours to work more efficiently and to have some rest enough to get over depression, but it seems difficult for some reasons. My work load as a mother and office worker is quite heavy when I have to get over depression. I hope I can handle the problem better this year. Become a successful giver I'd li...

One Saturday, I took my sons to the park where foreigners were holding a meetup. I was invited there by an Irish friend of mine. My husband was working on that day and I had to take care of my sons alone. I somehow persuaded my crabby eldest son to follow me there. He accepted the plan under the condition that we were going to play soccer in the park. I also brought my ukulele and sheet music there. When I was driving and arrived at a temple near the park, I saw some foreign guys standing and checking smart phones, and I thought they might have got lost, but I should find where others were at first. So I continued driving to the parking area near the park. I found the group of people relaxing on leisure sheets at the opposite side of the park. While my sons were still sleeping, I got off my car and walked to them to let them know some guys seemed to have been losing their way. My Irish friend went walking to find them after thanking me. I went back to my car to find my sons had jus...

I started consulting a psychiatrist last October. I had been suffering from psychosomatic disorders such as buzzing in the ear, lack of concentration, sleeping problems, memory disturbance, feeling of worthlessness, obsessional ideas, sense of anxiety, hypobulia, and inability to observe  the order of precedence. The symptoms hadn't started recently. I had been annoyed with lots of the above for a long time, but I had never dared to consult a doctor. It required a lot of courage to make an appointment with a psychiatrist for the first time. My doctor sounded impressed with my grit. My younger brother has been seeing a psychiatrist for more than 20 years. He has schizophrenia. He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic when he was a university student. There are some people who are seeing psychiatrists in my husband's family and relatives, too. Some of us share the same doctor. So the mental disorders are very common problems for my family at leas...

Hi, everyone. Today I'd like to write about my thoughts on children's English for Japanese based on my experiences of learning children's English with my sons for some years. I have two sons, the eldest is 6 years old and in the 1st grade at elementary school, and the second son is 3 years old and going to kindergarten.  My eldest son has been going to English school for almost 3 years. My second son is slow in language development, so he has been going there taking breaks depending on his condition. I have also been learning English specializing in it for a long time, but I started to learn English at a cram school when I was in the 5th grade of elementary school. Time has changed, and it has become quite common for us to let our children start learning English early. To be honest, I was not completely comfortable about letting my sons learn English conversation so early at first. Particularly, I was nervous wondering if it might be hindrance against learning correc...