Magic Jewball

Sorry, it’s another Facebook post. So if you’re one of those people who aren’t on Facebook, think of the things I could have written about, like A-Rod (so orange! what’s up with that?). But I’ve snagged my biggest find yet, my college suitemate (later housemate) with whom I lost touch soon after graduation. See, those are the most exciting sightings on there: the person with whom you are the closest and who you haven’t seen in the longest time. It’s easy to find people you’re tight with now (the “are you on Facebook? I should friend you” people) and it’s about as easy to find people you knew a long time ago with whom you would have comfortably lost touch after Middle School (these are the folks you sometimes have to think about for a minute before you accept their friendship, and then you have the a-ha moment, look at their page once, and proceed to re-forget them).

I have a mental list of the people I am desperate to find, people with whom I had a close friendship and saw or spoke to every day. I’m not sure whether it’s the hope of renewing the friendship or just wondering what the hell they have done for the last fifteen years. Probably not the first because I have many excellent friends in the here and now and really, that ship has sailed, hasn’t it? Do I have anything in common with them anymore? Maybe that’s what I’m hoping to find out. But my list, which had been, until recently, three, is down to one and a half. I say this because my suitemate, with whom I lived for the first two years of college, is still in touch with suitemate #2 and has given me news of her. She may join Facebook but it’s OK if she doesn’t, I suppose. We had a fourth housemate but she is the one college friend with whom I have maintained a steady friendship, so she’s not on the list.

Still, there is something bizarre about having a stilted e-mail exchange with someone with whom you once had fights about who would wash the dishes, took long bus rides with to distant malls, danced with to Depeche Mode songs. Someone who gave you haircuts and borrowed your clothes and called you nicknames no one calls you anymore. What do you say to that person all those years later? Apparently, I’m not sure, because I took a break from the labored e-mail to write this post. It’s still easier to blog. I don’t know whether we’ll be actual friends rather than just Mark Zuckerburg Trademark Friends, but when I see her picture now, I am almost disappointed to lose the last image I have of her, sitting across from me at a diner in Baltimore in 1994. Or wearing those high-waisted 80′s jeans with floppy 80′s hair. Don’t ask what I wore.

So, you may wonder, who is the #1, the white whale? I have mentioned her before so maybe you already know. It’s my high school BFF (one of two) and apparently, she has fallen off the face of the earth. But one thing I know to be true: unless she’s now living on another planet, she will eventually join Facebook.

For personal reasons… (and not on Napster, or on the album anymore).

MIA giving birth onstage could only have improved that train wreck.

If you’re on the West Coast, it’s not too late to save yourself!

If you checked my blog some time after 9pm on Wednesday evening and before 2pm yesterday, you’d have been met with a bizarre error message with lots of php code on a blank white screen. I don’t think anyone I actually know did that because I feel sure one of you would have sent me an e-mail telling me so. But I don’t blame you. In fact, the new service for which I signed up last week didn’t and that’s their only job, unlike the rest of you. I may have to end my “friendship” with them.

Unless I’m posting or reading comments, I rarely actually go to my own blog. I only went because some time around 10am yesterday morning I realized that I hadn’t had a visitor in over 12 hours. No one. No one asking if Federer is Jewish or Googling for Simpsons jpegs or just wanting to know if I finally got to their Jew & A question. That was strange. So I went and got the weird ass message. That wasn’t good. But, maybe you noticed that last week I had some strange error messages too. Those appeared above my header and were the fault of my web host. They were updating their systems but eventually things got worked out. Either way, at least you could see the actual blog. But the fixes that worked last week didn’t this time so I called them (they’re called Hostgator, should you be interested). They had me actually look at the file in the error message. Oh dear.

It was the file that contains the instructions to make my header appear. It’s kind of like, “and when someone lands on your page, go fetch the file with all the flowers and the logo and the title, please!” But instead it had a lot of gibberish and tons and tons of spam keywords. It turns out the gibberish was code that instructed Google to forward anyone asking if Federer was Jewish who clicked on my link to go to spammy websites selling you stuff I won’t name here for fear of causing that exact same problem. And all the while my blog looked like a giant error message.

I’d been hacked and the hackers changed the files in a way that I couldn’t change them back. It’s like they’re smart or something! And speaking of smart, I’m not. Because how did this happen? I didn’t upgrade my WordPress, which is the back end program that runs the website. And the older versions had vulnerabilities that allowed hackers to get in and hijack my site. See, as you know, I love my theme (that’s the site design) and it’s custom which means there’s no way to tell if it will work with whatever new version WordPress will dream up. And so I watched version after version come and go and stayed mired in 2007. Bad move, Becca!

I do back up my blog regularly but things have been kind of crazy lately and I haven’t done so since January 18th. Aha! you say. That’s why my blog went back to 1/18. Luckily, I was able to gather together all the posts and comments after that and cut and paste them onto my computer for later re-addition. Then I deleted the whole thing and used my back-up. All the bad stuff went poof and the hackers went off to other blogs, presumably to laugh maniacally and drink to evil. Then I stayed up till the wee hours backing everything up file by file and upgrading to the newest WordPress. If you think the fact that I skipped five upgrades meant I could just jump over them, you are sadly mistaken. According to the wise people at WordPress, I needed to do each and every upgrade and make sure my blog didn’t explode before getting to the Grand New Version. Which is safe. Phew. And not only did my blog not explode, the new version is pretty kickin’. You can’t see it because all you see is the blog, but the behind-the-scenes controls are awesome. What kind of dumbass would stick with the tired old version?

*cough*

Anyway, you can be sure I’ll be changing this little section in the About page of my blog:

Er, indeed. Actually, that was back when I wrote it. Now they’re on 2.7. Yes, kids, I did five upgrades last night. I did skip one. I’m daring like that. And please don’t think it’s like when iTunes upgrades and you push a button, see a progress bar, and wallah, you’re done. No, here you have instructions like, “erase all the files that begin with wp. Except that one. Oh and that one. And this one if you’ve changed it. But not if you’re upgrading from version 1.5. You may need to do ____. Or not.” They’re changing that with this version but it didn’t help me last night.

But who cares, JBall is back and better than before. For me anyway. Although the fact that it’s not directing you to spam is a plus for you, I’m sure. And you would never need any kind of enhancement, anyway. I know. But if you find anything wrong or broken on the site, please do let me know.

The last step of the upgrade, I kid you not, is “Do something nice for yourself. Consider rewarding yourself with a blog post about the upgrade, reading that book or article you’ve been putting off, or simply sitting back for a few moments and let the world pass you by.”

I don’t really think of this post as a reward. It’s more a thwack to my own forehead as well as a PSA to the world (thus the title). And after being up till 3 with this thing, I think sitting back for a few minutes would result in me falling asleep at my desk. But last night for some inexplicable reason I had a song stuck in my head and with all the downloading and uploading of files, I didn’t have enough bandwidth to play it on YouTube. So when it was done, I finally listened to it.

Aaaah.

And now you can have it stuck in your head.
Rush – Closer to the Heart

Hidily ho, blog readers. There have been some technical difficulties and the site has been taken back to January 18th.

I’ll be doing some updating tonight so tomorrow it will either be:

a. back to the present time.
b. broken and unavailable to you.

Please pray for a. TIA!

Edited at 1am:

It’s taken hours, I had to go through four separate upgrades, but it’s done and it works! Tomorrow, I add the missing posts back in. This is not because I’m too tired but rather because I left them in a text file at work. Oops!

More on this in another post. Now, I’m off to bake cookies for me and Pious B.

Er, that would be today. Time flies when you’re squinting at file names. Thanks for your prayers!

Edited at 11am:
Almost there, just a few comments to go….

Edited at 2:30pm:
Aaaaaaand, we’re back! Thanks for your patience. If you subscribed to a post after 1/18, you no longer will be but I doubt anyone else will comment anyway. I’ve opened up comments, I just didn’t want any while I was rebuilding. The next post will explain all this and all the glorious lessons I learned. I know you can’t wait.

Here’s the scenario. Imagine that your grocery store has two floors. If you live in New York City this will be easier for you, but work with me here. And that the elevator is kind of old and creaky and slow and the button is hidden behind a display but it doesn’t really matter because the unit is in constant usage and thus you can rely on people inside pressing the buttons and ensuring its arrival. Once inside, people fit themselves in like a Tetris game for the 20 second ride. Usually, I just take the stairs (I can’t imagine maneuvering a cart around this narrow-aisled, super-crowded place) but either way, it’s no big deal.

Can you imagine a less interesting blog post that what I’ve just described in the last paragraph? And yet The New York Times, the newspaper of record, the staid Gray Lady, put that on the front page on Saturday. I have a weird relationship with the print media industry. That is, I see it the way the rest of you see the music industry. I subscribed to the daily NYT from my first year of college (my family were subscribers so I suppose you could say I’ve read it since I could read) through 2007. That’s when I realized I read so many news blogs and online papers that all I ended up doing with the physical paper was throwing it in the recycling bin. I still get the weekend Times (I’m thinking of stopping, though), thus me seeing this on the front page. Like your relationship with my own dying industry, I not only feel like I can get what they sell for free on the Interweb but now I’m beginning to feel it’s mostly crap anyway.

An article about my grocery store’s elevator? Really?

A Slow New York Passage, Up to Organic Food

Title comes from:
Joe Jackson – Sunday Papers