murder.booklocker.com

We’ve been getting all sorts of catalogs in the mail — everybody wants to sell us something to give as gifts for Christmas, I guess. I’ve been keeping track of the sayings inscribed on t-shirts and ballcaps that might turn into an article of interest to senior citizens. [Interesting thing that word(s) ball cap. Because I used it as two words in my book, someone wrote to ask me if I was Canadian. However, if I type it as one word, the spelling checker from Word highlights it and gives me the option of changing it to "Balkan" or "black." Maybe Word is Canadian.] The most recent slogan (and forgive me for misquoting — we’ve already pitched the catalog) was that perennial favorite which reminds you that Excrement Occureth.

Well, a boatload of it occured this morning. I opened my browser which is set to my home page. Instead of seeing the familiar grey background with its artfully arranged blocks of color, with links to my Emily Dickinson research, links to my books and classes, a link to the artist, Barbara Weber Wright, a page of photos and writings by Donna Jackson, and to Luanne’s recipes and flowers — lo and behold (sounds Christmas-y, doesn’t it?) there were only two words.

I instantly fired off WS_FTP which I use to post pages to my site. My files were still there; however, there were lots of files which did not belong to me. When I queried my hosting service I was told:

“The sites are now down.  What we believe happened is that our co-lo site got hacked (presumably by the XXXX), although they have not yet confirmed this.

“We have taken the sites down and are cleaning them or restoring from backup as necessary, and are putting everything onto new hardware with new settings, IP and DNS, etc. etc.”

Which in non-geek-speak means excrement in the machinery, deposited by someone using the server as a porta-potty.

I can only hope the site is back up soon.