The Post that (Almost) Wouldn't Be

So I have some cleanup to do.

Last night, for reasons I forget, I logged out of my Google Account while on YouTube. As I recall, I was trying to find a video that was being blocked in the United States due to copyright purposes (probably for the brief bit of "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" in it, a silly, silly thing to do in a video meant to educate the masses about the art of Buster Keaton (nevermind that the music fit at the moment). I'm not sure why I thought logging out would fix the problem, but I was problem-solving at the moment. And it doesn't matter, since I found the video at Vimeo.

This morning, I tried to log in again.

My account -- one of many on this computer, since I have teenagers -- was not there.

Not a big deal, I thought. I'll just log in again. I have all my passwords saved independently of any computer.

But Email No. 1 did not work.

Neither did the password for Email No. 2.

Why two emails? Well, because I had one I used to set up this blog back in 2009. Then much later, I wanted to upload a few videos to YouTube, and created an account there using a different email.

Then Google bought both services and brought us all under one ring. To bind us, yes, yes.

I had no idea why neither account was working. I'm scrupulous in recording emails and passwords.

Maybe not scrupulous enough. But we'll get to other interference in a minute.

I at first thought, "Well, this is my fault." I kept putting off two-factor authentication. And one of the email addresses I used was a work address and they might have finally found the connection and cut it off.

But I was hopeful I'd be able to sort things out.

Then less hopeful.

Because Google put me into a do-loop where they'd send me a text verification (to a phone number I later confirmed was connected to my account)  but they said they were unable to determine the account actually belonged to me.

I may have entered answers to security questions long ago when I set this blog up. Or my YouTube account. But all they would ask for is email and password.

Finally -- and I think it was through brute force determination rather than anything else -- I got back in again. And saw my email address had been changed to some cockamamie "temporary" account from one of my employers. I won't reveal which one.

So now I have done the following:

Reset my password.

Set up two-factor authentication.

Tried to change from that cockamamie email address. But that's going to prove difficult. I might have to set up yet another stupid email account in order to get the temporary one off the docket. But I have put in an alternate address in the meantime, in case this happens again.

I'm not sure losing access to the blog or to my YouTube content would have been a great loss, but this is more than a decade of blogging I'm talking about here. Still available online, but possibly compromised and certainly uneditable if I couldn't get access back. Just like the Blogspot account I started a few years before this one. It's out there, somewhere. I don't even remember what I called it. So if you come across a highly obscure blog with drivel that matches what I've got here, drop me a line.