Technical difficulties and Blog safety

We are currently offline at home so to speak. I am actually blogging at work during my lunch break while Will is out shopping for a new computer monitor. Saturday morning, our computer became infected with some kind of virus posing as anti-virus software. We could still use our computer, but we had no Internet access. My brother-in-law, computer-wizard that he is and Claire's favorite "Uncle Jon", located and cleaned the virus and got us all up and running again on Sunday night. The computer worked like a dream on Sunday night. However, last night, when we tried to use the computer, our screen would flash up then go completely black. After several re-start attempts and a phone call to Dell, we determined that it is the end of the road for our computer monitor. I find it somewhat coincidental that this happened right after we got a virus on our computer, but I don't think a virus can be passed from the CPU to the monitor. Does anybody else know? Hopefully, we will be up and running at home again soon. On a positive note, I did get a lot of chores done around the house last night after the kids went to bed since I didn't have the computer to suck away my time.

On to my next thought ... blog safety. I am currently trying to modify and/or remove any information my blog that might endanger my family. While I seriously doubt that anyone reads this who is not a friend or family member, you can never be too safe. Here are a few tips I found on Stacy's blog. (She is a friend-of-a-friend.)

-Avoid posting personal information like full names and addresses, but don't forget the other ways people can locate you or your children like your hometown, church, school, etc.

-Be careful what your photos reveal. Stores, license plates, little league team names, etc.

-Don't respond to negative comments.

-Don't put your friends at risk. Don't post information about their children that you wouldn't post about yours. Also, don't post future plans or activities on your site.

-To prevent images of your children being used in an exploitative fashion, you might consider adding a disclaimer on your site stating, "Images are the property of the site owner and may not be reproduced without permission."

There are also some great tips on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children website.