So where have you been, Terry?

September 28th, 2009

Welcome back to The Pomo Blog. I’ve been out of commission for over three months as we’ve repaired a nasty infection caused by hackers who filled my comments with crap links through a back door. It’s my own fault, because I was running an older version of WordPress, and for that, I shall always have regrets. I mean, I know the hackers are to blame, but it could have been avoided by following basic software protocols.

Just recently, the blogosphere has been filled with stories of this hack. TechCrunch has an excellent post. And Lorelle on WordPress.com has some excellent suggestions for cleaning up a blog like this one.

The sad thing is this. While I’m back publishing — and was able to keep all my posts intact — I’m afraid I may have lost all comments, and when you go back seven years, that’s a lot of content. Included in the loss is the outpouring of love expressed to me by you when Alicia passed away in 2006. Fortunately, I have a printed copy, but I’m sad that the online record may not contain the comments.

Much has happened over the past few months, and I’ve wanted so badly to comment. Twitter, for all its wonder, is a weak substitute for blogging, IMO. Blogging is for writers; twitter is for reporters. I agree with Dave Winer, who calls Twitter “a publishing environment, a place to push links, a notification system.”

Over the next few days, I hope to be posting items from our newsletter that I’ve written over the summer. For now, let me just say that I’m happy to be back in business (the business of writers is to write) and happy that I can share my work with you.

To all the people who wrote to ask where I was, I wish to say thanks. To the hackers, I’ll only say this: may Karma’s wheel visit you with the curse that you have visited upon me.

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