So it’s been a whacky couple of days both in virtual and physical space. First my blog got hacked by some Cialis spammer who left invisible links in a post from a couple of weeks ago, which led to it being delisted by Google, which led to an upgrade and server transfer at edublogs (my host) which hit a couple of snags and left me blogless for a couple of days. (The shakes are just now abating.) Then last night on my way to Tess’s basketball practice, this doofus deer runs out in front of my little Prius too late for me to stop and I BANG into his right rear flank sending him flopping into a cornfield and sending me into a stream of profanities even I didn’t know existed. (Unfortunately, Tess’s friend was in the car. Fortunately, when I called her mom to fill her in and apologize, she said she was sure it was nothing she hadn’t heard before. I’ll take her word for it.) Upshot: one seriously banged up hybrid, one dead deer, and a couple of amazed kids.
But here’s the warm fuzzy side to both of these stories. (You knew there had to be one, right?) Shortly after I realized my blog was in Google hell, I Tweeted out its demise. Within a few minutes, Tim Lauer had diagnosed the problem, sending screen shots of the wonderful Cialis ads that came up on a Google search of my blog and later scouring my source code to find the offending post. Soon after, Steve Dembo, who was having the same problem, Tweeted a link to the “claim your blog” function in Google to get the relisting process started. (Steve’s is back in the Google database…mine, notsomuch, and they’re saying up to three weeks. Ugh.) Then, after my whole blog went down on Sunday to finally come back this morning, I got an e-mail from Lennie Symes, a total blog stranger, letting me know that my RSS feed wasn’t working properly. Got that squared away now too. And, I can’t not mention the efforts of Dean Shareski, he of too much time on his hands, who created a blog update status page to chronicle the event. Nice.
On the deer side (not a pretty picture, btw) when I went to the State Police barracks to file a report (for the insurance process), I decided to Tweet up a quick recap of the event while waiting for the paperwork. Within about 2 minutes I must have had 20 Tweets of concern back (well, most of concern, some bad poetry thrown in) from folks wondering if I was ok and how the deer was and if anyone was hurt, etc. I got a half dozen DM Tweets from people, even, surprisingly from a family member. (Who knew?) One even offered legal help if I needed it. (No, his name was not Vinny.) And there were a couple of venison recipes thrown in for good measure. It was, um, what’s the word, um, not surprising but, um, kinda nice 2.0, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, you don’t need me to make the point here, do you?
Thanks, everyone.
(Photo “Winking at You” by cyclewidow.)