Several big name bloggers got hit with a SEO hacker who used a Wordpress admin exploit. Apparently they had something to prove.

The recent Wordpress 2.0.7 release addresses this issue, so it’s highly recommended you upgrade ASAP.

Of course when you run 11+ different sites with Wordpress, that gets a bit tedious, but at least they are all protected now. Fortunately the upgrade is simple, simply replacing everything except the wp-content and config.php file, and go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php and you’re done. Though it’s a good idea to backup your files before you upload the new ones.

Good morning father winter of 17 degrees. And though some of the same people who bitched that it was too warm in January, will no doubt bitch again because you have arrived, I will welcome you with open arms. Come, stay a while, we’ve been waiting for you.

I’ve posted some pictures that I took this weekend, mostly of my father/dog and our old and new water heater. They all open up into very large photos for detail.

As you can see the old one is fairly grotesque:

Keep in mind it’s 28 years old, as you can tell by the label (also in the series of pictures). That is what was holding our water! Gross.

Our new one is tre awesome (and I’m sure more energy efficient):

Keep in mind this all comes out of our pocket. Though we may see if the landlord will let us take it out of the rent for the month.

I came across this site which, when you enter a URL, renders through all the pages and identifies all the tags used to create the site, then color-coordinates them by type of tag, and creates this flowering applet of color and scale. It gives you an idea of your distribution of tags throughout your site (hopefully no red, no tables!) and just looks nifty without having any real purpose.

The colored sections read as follows:
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

I did a sample for my journal:
Read the rest of this entry »

My computer fried this weekend. It’s still barely chugging along, but I have a new motherboard, CPU, and video card on the way. So it’ll sorta be like a brand new computer.

This has put my online projects slightly on hold. I can’t even balance my checkbook at home, I have to do it at work. But I was able to back everything up on my external hard drive, so I won’t be losing anything if my hard drive crashes. I just pray that it doesn’t :x.

New parts should be in Wednesday.

I’ve also decided I want to become a licensed HAM operator.

Steven Colbert is Flacid with Rage over the IPhone.

Cracked me up.

[Download] (about 39megs, and the songs are not labeled)
Artist: Mac Umba
Album: Bruhuhaho
About: Mac Umba is based in Scotland, and are the unique mix of Scottish Bagpipes with Brazilian percussion (two of my favorite sounds). It should also be noted that “Macumba” is a word that has many weird meanings. In Africa it can mean a musical instrument, in Brazil it can mean “black witchcraft”.

DOWNLOAD HAS ENDED FOR THIS ITEM.

I just read through a lot of my employment archives over the last 5 years or so, looking up entries to link to for various things.

My employment history has been a constant wave of ups and downs. Things always start out so great, and then inevitably, something happens that ruins it completely.

Like working for the vet, I was so excited and absolutely loved the job and the hours. Then I get fired for a mistake, only to get hired again a year later when they realize it’s not my fault. I was equally as excited to be hired back, until my co-workers found my journal and essentially forced me to leave. Granted this is during a time where Blogs/Journals aren’t the norm yet.

During that year hiatus, I get a job at another vet, and fired a month later because the previous vet called this one and somehow got me fired because I was fired -there- first.

Then I go to work for Terminix. Absolutely thrilled about this job, but worried that I wasn’t smart enough to do it. Turns out I was over-qualified and (in my opinion) propelled our branch beyond what its expectations were as far as organization. Then a co-worker started to get jealous because I was getting praise, and she was getting in trouble for not doing her job. She tries to get me fired, fails, and instead does even worse at her job so that I have to clean up her mess, which essentially pisses me off that I leave.

Now I’m at another job I love, but it scares me. It scares me because the type of employment and work that we do, doesn’t make me feel irreplaceable. Granted you can be replaced at any job, but it feels moreso at this one, because everyone here is so much smarter than me. I feel inferior to my co-workers, and I’m not used to that at all. I’ve always felt on par and needed.

And I don’t harbor this fear for myself, or the fact that I wouldn’t have a job. I’m scared because now, as opposed to 5 or so years ago, I -have- to support my father. I can’t just “lose a job” now without it causing some damage. I have a decent savings that I’m building on for security purposes, but it will probably still scare me for a while.

I have this habit I’ve started, where I save all emails from various co-workers giving praise or pats on the back for good work. I’ve even created a little collage of some of these emails, to reflect on so I don’t get down about my job here. A reminder to work hard and make yourself an asset to the company, so that you don’t have these fears and doubts plaguing your mind everyday. So that your time here is enjoyable, and doesn’t end up like the rest. So that when the time comes for you to move on, you can do so comfortably.