Once upon a time, as in today, my friend Leslie e-mailed me to let me know my blog was hacked, and I don’t mean just a few files here and there like last time. Though I took a screenshot, I will not post it here for the hacker’s benefit. I’ll just say that it featured a photo of an eagle’s head with the Jordanian flag superimposed on it and accompanied by the worst Sousa-type march ever. Don’t you just love sites that automatically play music?

Brian Googled the hacker’s e-mail address, which s/he arrogantly included on my “new” site. It turns out this person has hacked many, many sites and is a network administrator, of all things.

As many of you know, I immediately posted to both Twitter and Facebook about this and I extend my thanks to all of you who offered help and support. My host was able to restore my blog without having lost any information. However, it isn’t within their parameters to help me secure my files, which I had no idea how to do even with the list of suggestions they gave me. Not long afterwards, I was surprised to receive a Twitter reply from someone asking me about the hack and assuring me that the most current version of WP, which is the one I’ve been using since it was released, is secure. I gave him the full story and the next thing you know, Andrew Norcross came to rescue this damsel in distress.

With his help, which I highly recommend to anyone who needs it (he designs WordPress themes, too), my blog is now free from phantom admin users and other evil things that don’t belong. Andrew had to delete all of the users, so for any of you who were subscribed directly to my blog rather than through an RSS feed reader of some kind, you’ll have to re-subscribe. But I don’t think that’s a problem. Most people use feed readers these days anyway, right? (I do.) I even added a Subscribe widget to make things easier for you all.

Brian wrote 10 posts and those had to be attributed to me as the author, but that’s not a big price to pay. Neither was the cost of Andrew’s work. He also updated my theme so I now have threaded comments. Yay!!!

Though I still have a headache, I’m breathing a lot easier. Thanks again to everyone. I guess all of us WP users should prepare for a new update soon. Make sure you’re using the most current version if you use WP to blog! Earlier versions are even less secure than this one. Thanks again, everybody! Now I’m going to get off the computer and watch Season 3 of ER happily ever after.

I just realized that my blog is 5 years old this month. And to think that for the past week or so I’ve been considering trashing this blog and starting a new one just because my categories are all messed up, there’s crap I no longer write about, the comment template needs new coding….

But I’m too in love with my template because it’s based on a photo of me and I know the designer will redo the coding when she has time. She’s always been there for me in that regard.

I’m in love with my blog’s name for the simple reason that it rhymes. No, I’m not a rhyming poet, but I do appreciate complicated rhymes, slant rhymes, and especially internal rhymes. And I love the rhythm. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a poet or was once a percussionist or both or neither.

I no longer have the number of readers I used to, probably because I’d go periods without blogging and in that time without reading others’ blogs. Since I’ve begun blogging again on a regular basis, the diehards are back along with some new folks, all of whom I appreciate. I also don’t know that blogging is what it was back during the days of Blog Explosion (Does anyone still use that? I can’t believe it’s still around.) and other blog surfing sites and all that stuff years ago. Plus, I admit that Twitter makes blogging so much easier, especially the mundane stuff. And let’s face it — I blog about an awful lot of mundane stuff.

Anyway, I’ve decided to keep bloggo chicago. Let’s see if it makes it to a 10th birthday.

Sounds like the title of a paper, doesn’t it? I want to share a blog post that includes a magazine article written by a history professor who has helped me in the past and continues to be an inspiration. The article is a PDF link within his post: What If Churchill Hadn’t Tamed His “Black Dog”? Please read it.

I finally deleted my account. I never use it and it doesn’t work when I do. Like, when I visit someone else’s blog who I know has MyBlogLog because they appear in my Recent Visitors widget (that I’ve deleted), my avatar never shows up on their Recent Visitors. WTF’s the point if they don’t even know you’ve been by?

I’m still having a little trouble writing, even blogging, but since the pdoc added another med to my cocktail, I’m feeling better. Still, it’s tough even to just freewrite. Insane, huh?

Weird how it’s easy for me to write blog posts on the computer, but when I write first drafts or sketches of scenes, dialogue, whatever, it’s always been easier and more comforting for me to write on actual paper.

A yellow letter-size legal pad.