Website

as shocking as it is to my fragile, miopic worldview — we aren’t
the first theparkerfamily.org.

turns out, according to the internet archive “wayback machine” there was another parker family who had the domain back in 2001.

i don’t have much on who they were — scott was the dad and wasn’t up for “programmer of the year”, jordan was the daughter and created a fan site for horses (called “thunder horses” no less) and a cheerleading page (featuring nearly impenetrable cheerleading trivia).

unfortunately, 2 minutes of googling didn’t lead to any “where are they now” stories, and that’s just about the sum total of my attention span these days.

in other news, the new owners of evanandtasha.com — our wedding domain from a few years back — got married, went on a cruise, and if splash pages are to be believed may be thinking about babies.

more bulletins as warranted.

i really, honestly can take no credit for this one — but that doesn’t mean i’m not going to try.

good friends of ours bought a domain (mightymightyboigs.com) to migrate their old blogspot blog, and never made it past the content migration. after 10 minutes of setup, 12 minutes of page migration, and one pre-made wordpress theme (yup, it’s too nice to be mine) and we’re good to go.

Mighty, Mighty Boigs
http://mightymightyboigs.com/

a friend was looking at a couple $30+ a month web providers to feature her photography, and i talked her off that ledge — and promptly ended up tricking out WordPress for her instead, in exchange for free professional baby photos from her forward.

i think i may have gotten the better end of the deal, so long as sparklet isn’t already going to be the most photographed baby on the planet.

Erika Nortemann, Documentary Photographer:
http://erikanortemann.com/

well, while i was rebuilding the site anyway i figured it was about time to ditch the old three column format. it’s not my design, but that may actually be the point — i find i like designs longer when i have nothing to do with them.

it’s the 11th design i’ve had since my first site in may of 2002, and i can’t think of one that lasted longer than 18 months.

i feel so violated.

early this week, i was making a quick change to the blog, when i discovered hundreds of files filled with all sorts of obvious porn keywords (khandi-alexander-nude-pics.html) and some more with not so obvious porn keywords (blue-lotus-tea-recipe.html).

now, i would have been fine if was making porn-star money for hosting the files … but no one appeared to be sending me my cut of the proceeds.

for three days, i tried everything from deleting the files to figuring out where the security hole was that needed to be plugged. i had the latest version of the operating system, the latest version of WordPress, i deleted “extra” logins to the system, and i changed to a new WordPress theme (hense the new design) to make sure one of my “upgrades” wasn’t at fault.

but each night at 12:04 am, the porn files mysteriously reappeared. out of desperation, i finally contacted my web host — i did that last because i knew they were going to be useless — and sure enough all they could manage was “sorry we can’t help you, but try resetting your passwords.”

oops. hadn’t thought of that …

sure enough, i reset all the passwords, and the site hasn’t been hacked since. hard to believe it was something so simple (and stupid, and obvious).

i think there is some sort of life lesson in here somewhere, if i only knew where to look.

In what is sure to be a freak storm never to be repeated again, I had three people complain to me that the blog didn’t accept comments. Here is what was *easily* my favorite complaint:

I have thoughts and opinions. I need to be able to express them on your blog.

Frankly, I had comments turned off because I assumed that no one actually read my ramblings, or cared to comment if they did. However, after about 15 minutes of hard labour, you, the adoring public, can now comment to your hearts content.

(cue the sound of crickets chirping)

a friend of ours is getting ready to become a foster parent, and is @#$%ed off about the process enough that she wants to vent. publicly. not my design (i don’t really do purple — or butterflies) but i setup the nastiness on the technical backend.

Foster Mom
http://fostermom.miramir.org/