I don’t know why the message is so chilling. I’ve been reading about the ransomware attack on Ascension medical group for a couple of weeks now. I know it’s happened. I know it’s attached to their first call several weeks ago claiming an “outage” had disrupted their fax and web portal capacity. Today the “important message for …. Robert … “ with it’s synthesized voice reminds me that I’m very, very fortunate to not be needing anything immediate from my primary care physician. Clearly they know enough to be able to call me, but what would happen if I rolled in with some sort of problem? They’d be able to identify me presumably, but could the connect me with my insurance? Am I going to regret not having records of my previous visits?
I hate the idea that I COULD wish I had printed everything out and kept it in some old filing cabinet the way my parents did.
Like I said – I’m fortunate to not have anything going horribly wrong at the moment. Minus a couple of blips here and there, I don’t suppose there’s that much in my records that would actually be useful. No long term trends that have huge warning signs that need to be tracked. But somewhere, some group of hacke- of fucking cyber-terrorists – have the records from 140 hospitals and medical sites locked down and people have to rely on their own records and memories for the results of tests, prescriptions, what an MRI showed… it offends me that Ascension doesn’t have appropriate backups, it offends me more that according to the NYTimes “Errol Weiss, chief security officer for the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which he described as a virtual neighborhood watch for the industry, says it would be unrealistic to expect a hospital to have redundant systems in the event of a ransomware or malware attack. “It’s just not possible and feasible in this economic environment,” Mr. Weiss said.” It offends me that my web portal didn’t have some big red button saying “download YOUR records NOW onto your phone or PC for data redundancy!” And it TRULY offends me that “Ransom-as-a-Service” is a thing and that there are enough humans in the world that think it’s an acceptable thing to attack hospitals that organizations like Black Basta are lucrative.
But let’s move the Hell on. I don’t need to be offended. I’m a lucky one. I get to play gigs that I adore with people that I Love and I’m in good health and I guess I’ll just make sure I print everything and I bought a new printer and it’s READY. I have colour prints of my colonoscopy and that’s a joy to ALL.
This past week I ran my open mics and was entirely too stressed out about a gig that ended up being a lot of fun. ilyAIMY should ALWAYS be allowed to run amok at the zoo … we were the only original band in the lineup and if I was still talking about what I’m offended by, I’d be a little offended by THAT too – but I’m also grateful that there’s something about us that simply crosses all sorts of lines.
We were thinking about that as we wandered the zoo and frequently getting stopped by random people enthusiastic about how awesome we’d been… (we know, we know)…
In most environments, I feel like people will recognize Heather first. She’s distinctive, and not to put too fine a point on it, hawt. Wandering the zoo though, we were mostly stopped by people recognizing ME, which was a pleasant surprise. We got asked about “the vocalist who did the English song”, complimented on our Tool cover, and generally complimented on our amazing energy on a day where, overheated and in the sun for our first festival gig of the summer, I didn’t think we were THAT energetic!
But, as above, everyone wanted to talk to us about something slightly different. A couple of old fans. Plenty of new. Though I should’ve done my mailing list spiel. Unfortunately during our show we didn’t have anything set up (and what little we DID got moved by the band coming up after us, which, if I felt like being angry about would’ve made me really fucking angry).
Some people who’d been thinking about coming out and then got tipped over the fence by the fact that we were playing. So grateful the Zoo took a chance on us.
We had a great show – but one of my favourite moments came at the very end of the afternoon : we were well and truly parked-the-fuck-in by the last band’s huge truck and trailer (I can’t get angry about THAT – we were kiiiiinda supposed to move our car by then) and we had to do a fair amount of car acrobatics to get Heather’s trusty steed back out to the road and so t’was with no small amount of chagrin that when we’d finally made it out of the spot, around the picnickers that’d set up camp AROUND the spot, around the roots of the gigantic tree on one side and the gigantic truck on the other, down the higher-than-it-looked curb and past the children who kept racing across the dirt road in front of us – we were stopped cold by a padlocked gate.
I wandered back to the stage and grabbed the stage manager and demanded our freedom. He’d walked about halfway back with me before he said suddenly “I just remembered! I’ve got to pee!” and ran off the opposite direction.
Sooooo I stand there for a couple of minutes thinking “wtf” and he walks back holding his KEYS aloft (ooooh… he’s got a KEY) and says proudly “there should be a time in every man’s Life when he realizes he’s got a key to the ZOO!”
And I saw in him the glee that I sometimes have when I realize “who the Hell would’ve guessed what I get to do with my Life now” – just as I play the strange and wonderful places like parks and cathedrals and beautiful homes, museums and towers and yes, zoos – who’d’ve thunk vibrating my little strings and smacking a guitar would’ve brought me hear. Metaphorically speaking, Hell yeah, I’ve got a key to the ZOO.
