http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/5119324

I like Arlen Specter. He’s a pretty fair guy, and has done a pretty good job representing my half of PA in the US Senate. And he’s from Philly, an avid Eagles and Phillies fan. But I think that, right now, he needs to stick his head in a bucket of ice water for a few minutes. Specter, who admits he’s as hostile towards TO as any other green-blooded Philadelphian, thinks that he may bring anti-trust law to bear against the NFL for upholding TO’s suspension. For those living in areas with no football reception, Terrell Owens was canned from the Eagles for making derogatory comments and basically being a stubborn clot. Not only was he suspended for four games without pay, but the team’s paying him the minimum for him to stay away from any of the team’s facilities and being even more disruptive than he already is. This has caused the city to come out against him in a fashion that hasn’t been seen since Eric Lindros whined to his daddy about the way he was being forced to play hurt.

So now Specter’s making something up about vindictiveness and inappropriateness and a very nebulous “restraint of trade” charge. I personally think he’s trying to have it both ways. He doesn’t want to alienate his neighbors by supporting the unsupportable; but he wants to stay on the up-and-up should the NFL find itself needing a friend. This, incidentally, is why I have absolutely zero time for anything political. I hate the games, I hate the double-talk, and I hate the trying to please everyone.

Senator Specter: chill.

Since so many people have been asking, and I’m getting tired of sending a 2mb attachment, I’ve decided to upload the Holman Christian Standard Bible modules for e-Sword and PocketPC e-Sword to this site. You can get the PC version here and the PocketPC version here. My disclaimer is that I have no idea where these came from, and if the original author finds out and wants these taken down, that’s his right. But since I don’t know who the original author is, I’m distributing these in the public domain. Enjoy!

:EDIT: So Rick says that Broadman-Holman changed their minds about offering it for free for e-sword users. This means they’re trusting that no one who downloaded it will ever again share it with friends. This is a pretty dumb assumption, but then I’ve always been cynical that way. SO…

Since I never did download it for e-sword, I suppose I can’t offer it myself. But, perhaps someone who DID download it for himself and DOES have his own website and WANTS to have a sharing attitude could. And he’ll be getting an email from me shortly.

It’s gotta be hard to be (A.) Jay Feely this afternoon. Poor guy missed not one, not even two, but three potential game-winning field goals. The Giants lost a heartbreaker to the Seahawks just now…and this author is shedding no tears. Seattle got all the good calls - even the challenges went their way. With the Eagles’ win in Philly and the Skins loss at home, the NFC East is a mess of two-way ties. Dallas and NY are tied for first, and Philly and Washington are tied for second. With the key NFC East game next week (Dallas at NY, 1pm EST on Fox), Dallas could conceivably move into first place with a win. Philly hosts MNF #3 this season when Seattle, coming off this very emotional win, moves into town. Washington has what should be an easy game against St. Louis in San Looah. (Note to self - Martin St. Louis should pronounce his name like everyone in this country reads it, not the prissy French pronounciation.)

Also in sports news, speculation still abounds where TO (who was T[K]O’d earlier this week) will end up next year, if anywhere. Possible suitors include San Diego (don’t ask; we don’t know why), Washington (and you really think he’ll get along with Joe Gibbs? note to self - not only is he the head coach, he’s also the owner. Double trouble for TO.), and Denver. But lest we forget - we’ve already seen one spoiled brat ruin his team and his chances of ever getting a contract again. I’m betting TO Sprees his chances at playing again.

I was over at this site’s server admin’s house (catch all those posessives? whew…) tonight, and he clued me in on this little gem. Be it henceforth known that you have a patriotic duty as a caring American, not only to spend exorbitant amounts of money on Junior this Christmas season to keep him happy, but also to make millionaires of a suburban Shreveport, Louisiana, family. Thankfully, you can do it all at once! Buy an Xbox 360 system new for Junior (using up Junior’s “Christmas present fund” for the next three centuries) and this Bossier City family will be millionaires and can buy a nice house.

Think I’m joking? Then you obviously haven’t seen this eBay listing.

If you want to skip the tidings of comfort and joy that comes from giving $1 million and ten dollars to complete strangers, you can spend $1.5 million more and get yourself a new house to go along with your new gaming system. Proving once again that some eBay listers have the IQ of Sticky Tak, this generous soul is selling his Xbox 360 for $2.5 million and throwing in a handbuilt stone house for free. I imagine he did this because he really wanted to sell the house but knew that only boring people looked at the houses listed on eBay. So, rather than list a house and throw in an Xbox 360, why not list the Xbox for over two million dollars? And we’ll throw in a free house! How cool is that!?!?

I’m going to take advantage of eBay one of these days. I’m going to make a George Foreman grill with a vaguely face-shaped design on the grill part, then mass-produce toasted cheese sandwiches. I’ll claim they’re one-of-a-kind miraculous sandwiches, imprinted with the face of the Virgin Mary. I’ll say they were cooked in some remote Ecuadorian village, and that they’re personally guaranteed and blessed by the Pope himself. I’ll make a fortune selling them overseas for $10,000 a pop. Don’t be fooled by imitations!

It’s been a while, and it’s been an equally long weekend. I found myself in Toms River, NJ, at Ocean County Baptist Church. That was after singing in a recital and flying up to Newark. Click for more…

Independent Online Edition > World Politics

I find it somewhat amusing that Democrats are forgetting that their fearless leader, the Right Man for the Job, their much-beloved former President, Bill Clinton, once took the nation to war with Iraq to distract attention from his impeachment hearings. Now he’s saying that it’s a colossal mistake…as if the idea weren’t his in the first place. And where were the pundits complaining about an “unjust war” when Clinton started shelling Baghdad and sending US troops in? Oh, yeah…I forgot. And keep forgetting. Democrats are always right, and Republicans are always wrong. Silly me.

Much has been written in the last few years about cell phone etiquette. This makes sense; cell phones weren’t nearly as common in the days of Emily Post. However, because most six-year-olds now have cell phones, the need for some codified standards has come up. The trouble is, those standards are being written by people who hate answering machines because they like the old-fashioned letter-writing method (or “snail mail,” if you prefer) better - at least then you knew you wouldn’t hear back from someone for at least two weeks.

So troublesome is this to me that, after reading a news story from an on-campus publication that portrayed cell phones as little more than an escape from reality for the introverted among us, I must write. I must debunk the myths that your average 65-year-old believes about how we, the average 23-year-olds, feel about cell phone useage.

The first myth is that it’s rude to talk on a cell phone when you’re with other people. This really only holds true when you’re with people who resent cell phones in the first place. In fact I have (several times) had experiences where I’ve been walking down the sidewalk with a friend, and both of us will be talking to completely different people on our respective phones. We don’t consider this rude. In fact sometimes he’ll be calling someone while I’m talking to him, or vice versa. We do not find this inconsiderate. We both realize that we are not the sole center of the other’s life, and so we make allowances for other people to interrupt.

The second myth is that it’s rude to talk on a cell phone while in a building. I believe this is an attempt by the Cell Phone Resenter’s Association (CPRA) to deprive us of places to talk. Pretty soon someone will say that it’s rude to talk on a cell phone within earshot of anyone else, including members of the rodent family. Then it’ll be rude to talk outdoors. Then it’ll be illegal to talk in one’s car. Pretty soon there will be designated 3-foot-square corners of fields located miles away from any building that will be designated as that state’s cell phone zone. Then they’ll pull the first myth back out and say that only one person can use that block at a time.

The third myth is that cell phones allow people to zone out of their surroundings and happily ignore others. My thought is, I don’t really have the time to say hello to absolutely everyone I see on the sidewalk, much as I’m sure I’d like to. The aforementioned article cited cell phone usage as one of the reasons so many students are so glum. Radiation arguments aside (remember those?), I’ve not seen many glum students around, except the ones that feel it absolutely necessary to wear all black AND sunglasses, even when the sun is shining, technically, on the other side of the planet. (In other news I almost hit one of these people as I drove back on campus last night. Why, oh WHY, do people think it smart to walk on unlighted streets wearing all black??) But I digress. I’m not talking about absolutely hideous fashion taste, like wearing one’s polo shirt collar completely up, or wearing sunglasses at midnight, or wearing white socks and black dress shoes, or wearing sneakers with suits without a valid medical reason…all of which I see on a daily basis. I’m talking about…wait a minute…what am I talking about? Ah, yes. Glum students. They’re not glum because they use their cell phones as a primary means of communication (nothing like text messaging your quiz answers to the teacher!) and therefore lack any meaningful social interaction. There’s plenty of social interaction, specifically around 11:45a in the Snack Shop. They’re glum because their cell phone usage is misunderstood! Or because they’re out of minutes.

In short, as global communication and the ability to instantly get a hold of anyone, anywhere on the face of the planet, continues to improve, the “rules” governing cell phone useage must evolve. After all, what good is a cell phone if you don’t use it or even leave it on?

I’ve made some tweaks over on the launchpad, mostly the addition of the “Last 5 posts” section. For you web junkies out there, here’s how I did it:

I added another <div>...</div> section to my markup right before the main <div>. I specified its width and floated it right. I had to change the right padding of the main <div> to get it to work. I also had to put in a CSS hack:

html>body #right {padding-top:0px;}

This is ignored in IE and Opera but renders in Mozilla and Firefox. I had to set the upper margin for both sidebars to -1.1em so that they lined up with the top of my main <div> correctly in IE and Opera. But that shoved them way up too high in FF. So, I added a note that says, “By the way, more advanced browsers: give it a padding of 0 instead, and humor those klunky other browsers.” See, when I start a new div with my margins and paddings at 0, I fully expect them to be right at the top, not one line (typically one line height = 1.1em) down. But such is life.

Anyway, the other cool trick for today is the use of multiple declarations in CSS. I could type:

#left ul {
	color: #777;
	list-style-type: none;
	margin-left: -3px;
	padding-left: 3px;
	text-transform: lowercase;
}

then type

#right ul {
	color: #777;
	list-style-type: none;
	margin-left: -3px;
	padding-left: 3px;
	text-transform: lowercase;
}

Instead, I start that CSS section off with a #left ul, right ul {, and browsers render that and apply the settings to both.

Any other CSS or markup questions, I’m happy to take them.

I came across another BJ grad in the blogosphere the other day - Pastor Frank Sansone of the Messiah Baptist Fellowship in Salisbury, MD runs A Thinking Man’s Thoughts. He also has a family blog, linked from that site.

Remember, Pastor Sansone and 124 other BJ-related bloggers can be found at the list. This list is best viewed while listening to the third movement of Mahler’s 1st Symphony (”Titan”), which is what I’m listening to currently. In fact, just about anything can be done better listening to Mahler. I personally recommend his first, sixth (”Tragic”) and eighth (”Symphony of a Thousand”) symphonies, but your mileage may vary.

http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

This drove me nuts. Somehow I refuse to believe that my brain can be so easily duped from what it knows to be true. I suppose there’s a warning in there, somewhere, too.

Total views: 28,207

Most Viewed Post:
This could happen with 192 views. I’m seeing a lot of spam comments on here, so I wonder if this is accurate. Meh.

Referrals:
SI with 224

Browsers:
Firefox: 5,176 (49%)
IE: 4,965 (47%)
Netscape: 229 (2%)
Other: 187 (2%)

Searches:

• how long did it take to pait mona lisa by leonardo da vinci - rumor has it he did it in twenty minutes while waiting to see his optometrist.
• wizard of god my life with jack hyles - “wizard of god” just stuck out, and Jack Hyles always sticks out
• mt dew nosebleed - suppose it stops nosebleeds?
• what does “Afternoon dress” at a horse race mean? - I don’t know. I wasn’t aware there was such a thing.
• CMS is unstable and will shut down immediately. Reason: Database access error. Reason . - Ha ha!
• spanglish sandwhich - I’m guessing this person is looking for the spanglish word for “sandwhich,” which is “sandwhich.” but it still looks funny.
• hack+winxp+sp2 - this from the “I+don’t+realize+that+the+plusses+are+unnecessary+in+any+modern+search+engine+programmed+after,+say,+1960″ school of searching.
• cracked bible reader+ for palm os - Generally things on sourceforge are FREE and don’t require hacking.
• baptist mottos - I can think of a few, but rather than start infighting with my chosen affiliation, I won’t.
• 870 magnum - Bet that makes big holes. 2.5x bigger than the .357, which means that bad boy would be impossible to control. One shot is all you get.
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• MARTINLUTHERPICTURES - this from the “I’MSHOUTINGANDRUNNINGALLMYWORDSTOGETHER” school of searching.
• adopt ESV - yes. Do.
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• christian southern gospel chord piano accompany tips theory music - Three magic numbers (in Roman Numerals!) that will get you through any Southern Gospel song, whether singing or playing: I, IV, V.
• Keep Your Hand on the Plow lyrics - Good song.I like Chanticleer’s arrangement.
• The pennycandystore beyond the El explanation de texte - I must have listened to this once while blogging, and now everyone searches for it. I can’t imagine why - I only heard it once and turned it off with a look of slight disgust.
• ESV BJU - Don’t I wish.
• ho;y bible - Some typos need no added comments. Except to point out that they need no added comments.
• xp sp2 supports hdd 320gb? - Don’t see why not - my computer’s got that much.
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• advantage of having a presedential in the philippines - I love having presidentials. They’re so…presidential…
• E-sWORD NEWS - yOU MIGHT WANT TO TURN YOUR caps lock OFF.
• FUNNY HINDI POEMS - NO SHOUTING! And most Hindi poems would lose something in the translation, I’d think.

Two grads to report:

Jeff and Emily Burgess, now living in Maine: jeffnem
Dan Hamilton: Greenville Condo Blog

As one would expect, the Greenville Condo Blog is a blog about Greenville condos. (Did I lose anyone yet?) If you’re in the market for houses in the $1+ million range (and I assume lower) you should check it out. In fact, check it out anyway.

On an unrelated note - I highly recommend the site of a non-grad: Eric Whitacre. He’s a composer, and a good one at that. Chorale typically does at least one of his pieces every concert, it seems. This time around it was Lux Aurumque. Other recommended pieces are “i thank You God,” “Water Night,” “hope faith,” and “A Boy and a Girl” (which made a valiant effort at reducing me to tears when I heard it a few weeks ago). Characteristic of Whitacre’s pieces are extremely tight chords - usually “secundal” harmony, or chords with a lot of intervals of close seconds - and a somewhat unexpected yet still diatonic chord sequencing. Translation - lots of lush sounds and enough twists to keep you listening. And to think - he never heard much classical music until he got to college. Hmmm. He’s got one CD out, his complete works, which my roommate last year had - excellent compilation, and I recommend it highly.

So, that should fill your listening and reading requirements for this evening. Get to work, folks!

Philadelphia’s “Love” affair with Terrell Owens is officially over. Andy Reid canned Owens for a four game suspension without pay, and word on the street is that he’ll be deactivated and paid the minimum his contract requires for the rest of the five games after his suspension. Let’s review, shall we?

• Owens gets traded to Baltimore at the beginning of last season, but throws a fit and demands a quick retrade to Philadelphia, which (surprisingly) is approved by all sides. He wants a ring, and Philly needs a receiver. Match made in heaven, right?
• Philly signs T.O. to a contract that, even by the standards of pro atheletes today, is absolutely enormous - seven years and around 43 million dollars.
• Like a good little boy, T.O. says his days of running wild are over. “Donovan McNabb runs this town, and I’m cool with it!” is his line. Those who know better all die of epileptic seizures.
• T.O. delivers and the Eagles coast on a new-found passing game, until…
• T.O. gets hurt and sits out the rest of the season. Which is a good thing, because absolutely no one wanted to see Andy Reid in Spandex.
• Philly, despite the injury to their #1 receiver and new best friend, makes it to Super Bown XXXIX.
• T.O., despite doctor’s orders, plays in SB XXXIX, citing direct revelation from God that he will be the key to winning the game. Mormons everywhere wonder when he converted.
• Either God or T.O. was wrong, because Philly lost the game. No one thinks of blaming God.
• Skip to the off-season. McNabb admits he was a little dazed at the end of the game (bad clock management, anyone?) and T.O. immediately hops on his back, saying he shouldn’t have played sick and that McNabb lost the game for the team because of his selfishness.
• T.O. continues mouthing off and acting like a brat who was denied a Super Bowl ring. Next target is Andy Reid, then McNabb again, then the entire organization, then his agent, then McNabb one more time, then the PR department…
• Owens finally runs out of people to insult and decides to get into a fist fight with someone twice his weight in the locker room. Hugh Douglas, not wanting to further bruise T.O.’s ego, says “nothing happened” when in fact he likely creamed Owens.
• McNabb finally wakes up (!) and realizes it’s him or T.O., and guess who Philly likes better?

Which brings us to Sunday night. Philly looked remarkably more like a team now that Owens is gone. However, he will likely absorb all the blame for the Eagles’ record. His attitude shattered team rapport, and in the long run it’s very likely that he is the reason they haven’t played as a team (and consequently lost). I don’t think this is the typical Philly boo-wagon - everyone in this town wants him gone, even his quarterback. Trouble is, he’s not at the retirement point just yet. He may have to humble himself for a smaller contract, though, because no one’s going to sign him for what his contract says he’s worth. Ravens? They still remember his world-class snubbing last year and won’t even blink. Vikings? Why would they want his baggage when they just got done with their last PR disaster? Green Bay? After all, Owens said the Eagles would be better with Favre at the helm. Think Favre will be impressed enough to welcome Owens into the fold? :snicker, snicker: Dallas? Two words: star dance.

Anyone who needs a receiver doesn’t have the cash to sign him. In the end he’s going to take a pay hit for being such a world-class jerk. In a town where there’s only one king of the hill, Owens is going to get booed out. McNabb is there to stay, but Owens is expendable. Sorry, T.O. How much you want for that house in Jersey?

The sad part is, someone will try to look beyond all the garbage and try to find the diamond underneath. Unless Owens does an about-face in attitude, he’ll kill any team he plays for. The word for that is “cancer,” and he’s it. He’ll sow seeds of discontent and strife wherever he goes. Remember, a WR is only good if he has someone throwing to him, and usually QBs are the kings in town. Wide receivers don’t get to have the spotlight. Maybe he’ll learn that before he retires a bitter old man.

I’d like to clear the air about some submission issues with BJBloggers.mountyscorner.com:

If you’re submitting your site yourself, that means you want your site listed. In this case I’ll send you a note after I’ve added your site. No sending hate mail after-the-fact saying things like “I didn’t actually think submitting my site would put it out there for the world to see!”

If you’re submitting a site for someone else, don’t put their email address in the “Your Email” space. I know it’s not very clear, but when I say I want “your email” I want “your” email, not “their” email. In these cases, put your email in there so I can get in touch with you if I need to.

BUT, because I would like to get in touch with the actual site author, if you happen to know “their” email address, please include it in the comments section so I can send them a note.

I hope that clears things up a little. It’s starting to get so I don’t really know who’s submitting who (pardon the bad grammar), and there’s starting to sprout a little confusion along the lines of, “Hey…you found my site. Were you going to email me and let me know I was listed?” This is most disconcerting, especially when that person is the one listed as making the submission. I suppose that could show a bad memory problem, but still…

I like the way that looked - “addition” in German sounds so cool.

Sara Garfield, proud owner of shmoo has been added to the list.

Also, because I’m thinking about it, two thoughts on Tuxedos:

1. French cuffs are appropriately named, and it’s not because they’re cuffs. Only a culture that considers the human consumption of snails “normal” could come up with something as truly impractical as French cuffs.
2. Cumberbunds are God’s curse to mankind, specifically the male part of mankind. Only people like Pavarotti or human beanpoles can wear them without constant adjustments. The rest of us are doomed.

So that’s that. Stop by Sara’s site and poke around, and feel free to be miserable about formalwear.

I used to think seagulls were the world’s dumbest animals. I took as my proof some observations I’d made back home in the winters. When it snows at my house, it’s usually raining on the Jersey Coast, and about 10 degrees warmer. But where do you find the seagulls? Yup…in snowy Allentown. In the cold. For animals that prefer the beach you gotta wonder why they’re flying around in the snow.

And yet deer get the vote this weekend. Why do cute furry woodland creatures wait until they see traffic on the roads to cross the road? Moose, I can understand. They can wreck any non-military vehicle and walk away from the accident. But something as fragile as a deer…I dunno. One tried to play chicken with our bus on the way back from this weekend and ended up dead for his troubles. Makes no sense. We didn’t actually front-end it; with all the swerving going on we just clipped it. Still had enough force to kill it, though.

This weekend brought out another first. We drove up Friday night to Evansville, IN for a few hours, then moved on to Mt. Vernon, about 20 miles away. We had our concert that night and went to bed, hearing something about a line of thunderstorms that were supposed to move through late that night.

About 1:30a, I wake up to very constant lightning, wind, rain, and hail. (Said the Help Desk manager this morning: “In Indiana, that’s never a good sign.”) The lightning seemed to be all cloud-to-cloud, and the sky was more or less consistently lit up. I figure this must be the strong thunderstorms forecasted, and something in the back of my head is saying “Midwest = Tornado.” So I move to the next room and turn on the TV to the local news station. The same weatherman I saw earlier that night is now pointing to a blotch of red on his radar screen, talking about confirmed tornadoes on the ground, and saying people who live in communities listed on that map should already be in their basements with their heads covered. Something about an F2 or F3 tornado ripping through the area.

Bear in mind I have no idea where in Indiana I am. I knew we were in Evansville, but that was it. North, south, east, west…how far…I knew none of those. So I realized that there was a good chance, given the storm outside, that a tornado could be bearing down on my community and I’d have no idea whatsoever. Between that realization and the tornado sirens going off, it was a very tense hour. This is contrasted to my hosts, who slept through the whole thing.

I found out the next morning that we were 20 miles away from the tornado path; the storm had hit us and moved on before spawning any twisters. But there were plenty of people in the church that had friends or relatives who lost homes in the incident. We even saw some of the damage firsthand on the way back - one racetrack next to I-64 was flattened.

So, plenty to be thankful about this weekend. Between safety and the ability to sing pretty well, it was a good weekend. My only regret is not making the coffee any stronger than I did this morning. Ah, well…I’ll be fine.

…along life’s road. I’ve been doing a lot of singing recently. This month has been especially hard: Chorale sings at Anderson College. Dan Kreider’s recital choir meets twice weekly to prepare for the recital Nov. 19. Chorale sings for High School Festival. Chorale practices for concert. Chorale sings two concerts. Quartet sings in Indiana that same weekend.

Tom gets sick last Saturday. Click for more…

I know, I’m just full of it. Then, some would say that I’ve always been full of it. Like ‘Mom’ from McDonalds…wonder how she’s doing. She wasn’t my mom, of course. She was a manager at the McDonalds I worked at in high school. Could have a bit of a foul mouth at times, but as one of my professors here says often in many different forms, “What do you expect from an unsaved person?” Despite that, she was the bright spot of the evenings. Had at any given time three of her own children working there with her. She was always very quick to stand up for employees who actually worked hard, and just as quick to smack down any employee who wasn’t. Hard workers found her a powerful ally, and slackers found her impossible to get along with. Disgruntled customers complaining about any employee, hard-working or not, most certainly did not find a sympathetic ear. (What she said to the slackers who served the said disgruntled employee is another matter entirely.) And she ran the store like Mother Hubbard, always making sure everything was humming right along, understanding when we were having bad days or bad customers, etc. She was great.

Anyway, that wasn’t where I was intending to go. I was intending to say that a well-formed, consistent, and aesthetically pleasing website is a thing of beauty. I’ve wanted for a while to simplify the CSS across this fair site of mine, both for markup purposes (who wants to sift through five layers of <div>s?) and for cross-browser compatibility (because those five layers of <div>s mean that IE, Firefox, and Opera render them all differently). Thanks to my h4×0r friend (or not), I have the opportunity to reprogram my main page. In doing so, I learned how to write my own INNER JOIN statements in SQL without using Access. I also simplified my markup and the CSS for this page. Last, and certainly not least, the launchpad and the list are laid out in the same way - link list on the left, content in the middle. The only difference is that the right side of the launchpad is blank, though I can quickly fill that. But the color scheme, sizes, and layout are all now the same.

Do enjoy. My “last five comments” section is up and running, and I’ve got a “I’m so high on coffee and adrenaline I don’t think I’ll ever come down” speech written out there.

We found the hacker and banned him from my site forever and always. It’s kinda funny - as we were looking for him he logged in from a different computer and tried doing more stuff. So, if you’re from Brazil and you’re using veloxzone.com.br as your ISP…sorry. Tomorrow you will no longer be able to access this site. In fact, as soon as I finish this, you won’t be able to get on. If you don’t like this, email me.

Sorry to start the month like this, folks. Sometime between last night and this morning, my site was hacked. On the downside, I lost my launchpad (which will be up as soon as my server admin restores an old copy, assuming he or I still have it). On the plus side, the hacker was nice and renamed my /blog folder to /_blog, without deleting anything on it. So the blog is back up after renaming that folder. The databases were left alone, including the list, so that’s good. Wasn’t a terrible break, but annoying nonetheless. For those who have had troubles connecting the past few weeks, Doug, my server admin, tells me he was thinking there were some hacker attacks that were bringing things down in the old DOS (denial-of-service) style, and it’s possible that our hacker friend finally got in to my account - none of the other sites on his server seem to have been affected - and that these things will stop. One can only hope. For now I’m making a backup of everything just in case.