Well, it’s simple really. I was hacked. Badly. The stuff over at Bridgebunnies was nothing compared to this mess. (Although I shouldn’t say that… I’ve still got to fix that one.) It took me the better part of three days and a lot of help from the host to resolve the issue. Hosting Matters finally had to nuke it down to the roots, completely eliminating the files and databases, then restoring it from backups. Then I had to go digging, and found the files that compromised my security, which as it happened, one was older than the backup — it may have been here for as much as a year. After that, I finally upgraded, changed my password, and deleted about 75 bogus users. If you find that you can’t comment, when you used to be able to, that’s why. I’ve closed registrations for a while too. I’ll reopen them eventually, but not just yet. Got a few other security holes to plug first, and then I want to restore the appearance — or maybe improve it.

Edit: and any pictures I had up are gone for the time being, until I get around to restoring them.

I hate site hackers….

Well, here I go being barely active again. I really haven’t been “into” regular blogging lately; even my anime blog is suffering. I have all these ideas during the day, and when I get home, it’s like all the determination has been sucked out of me. If my home is activating my lazy streak, maybe I should move?

Nah… too much work.

More seriously: As I’ve written Houblog over the last 3 years, I’ve tried to ensure that I have reported factual data. Whenever possible, I’ve posted links to source material, or posted scans of original documents. My rule of thumb has always been, if I can’t verify it (and obscure the origin enough to keep myself and any source off the hotseat) I won’t write about it. From time to time, I pick up bits and pieces of information that I just can’t verify. Most often, this is because I can’t investigate enough to verify, without drawing attention to myself at work. (Needless to say, the only place I want attention because of the blog is on the blog.) And sometimes there isn’t any original source material. So I’ve let these go by, even when I wanted to write about them badly. I’m sure that’s cost me a lot of potential posts over the last few years.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to change that policy. I’m establishing a new topic: “Rumor Control.” Items under this topic/category should not be considered 100% accurate. In fact, they may be completely inaccurate, and they’re definitely unverified. All they are is what I have picked up from the grapevine, nothing more, and nothing less. Not personal gossip; I have no interest in that, and if you’re the type that does, you’re reading the wrong blog anyway. If I have a sense of the rumor’s veracity, I’ll indicate what I think of it, but that’s about the limit.

I think they’ll be of occasional interest. At the very least, they’ll be mildly diverting. Tomorrow morning, I’ll post the first of these….about the fallout behind the firing of a Utility Customer Service assistant manager who was scamming people.

In the meantime, I’d like to leave you with a line heard in a (probably union financed) commercial supporting COH employees:

“The guy scooping out your sewer makes less than the guy scooping your Ben & Jerry’s ice cream!”

Edit: Let me make it clear, the new category is for the purpose of reporting items that I feel it may be in the public interest for them to be spotlighted. It is not for the purpose of airing “dirty laundry” or gossip.

Well, if you’ve been asking yourself, “What’s with all the animé? Where did the politics go on Houblog?” you seriously need to stop asking yourself questions that should have been addressed to me. I had started a long drawn-out explanation-by-way-of-apology, but frankly, who wants to read all that crap?

Here’s the short version: I’m stressing out due to real-life issues. Work, home, illness, etc. Serious posting takes a serious mindset, and the more stressed I have gotten, the more I’ve run away from being serious. Animé has been my big escape, to the point that it’s started dominating Houblog, which was never my intent. And in the last week or two, the stress has doubled and then some; to the point that I’ve been nearly incapacitated.

The only thing I can do is scale back my optional committments, and pretty much, that means blogging. I’ve already let the crew over at blogHOUSTON know that I’m taking some time off from posting there, and now I’m filling in my readers (both of those remaining!) that I’m doing the same here. About a month, which is what I think should be necessary for the non-optional things to settle down. I hope, anyway.

I’m not abandoning Houblog, or blogging in general. While I won’t be posting, I’m still going to be commenting over at bH, and on a few animé sites as well. I’m also going to be working behind the scenes here to do something I’ve been mulling over for some time: I’m going to split Houblog in two. Animé and politics just don’t mix that well, and I’m going to move the first to a new site, which I plan to be a subdomain of Houblog, just for the sake of simplicity (and cost, since I’ve yet to make a dime off any blegging here.) That way, when I take off on a run of posts about either local politics (and there’s so much going on there!) or animé, the other audience needn’t groan and wonder why they clicked on my link today.

So, although I might get bored and post a comment here, in all likelihood, you won’t see regular posting from me until sometime in October. Everyone take care, and keep the fires burning ’til I get back!

Well, anyone who follows the local blog scene has probably already seen the announcement over at BlogHouston: I am accepting Kevin’s invitation to join their staff as a contributing writer. That is going to mean some changes to Houblog as well. Primarily, my “city-oriented” posts, including the agenda summaries, will be moving to BlogHouston. I’ll still be posting on the city here, but it will be more along the line of opinion pieces, the really snarky stuff, union advertisements, and brief one-liner comments. This means that, while my total posting won’t increase, Houblog readers will find a proportionally smaller amount of local “news” here as opposed to opinion, national/world scope stuff, general interest, and yes, anime!

Hardcore political junkies will probably still need to keep an eye on Houblog, since BlogHouston isn’t the proper place for my longer, rambling posts where I delve into the background and history of the city’s politics, but for more immediate, news-driven commentary and analysis, well, that’s going to be over at BlogHouston now.

No, really, and it will stay that way until late Thursday at best, the weekend at worst (I hope). Life is kind of busy happening to me right now. “Gomen ne.”

And I don’t expect it to change much for the rest of this week. Feeling under the weather. I’ve had energy to drop a few comments here and there on other blogs (and one post for tomorrow) but that’s about it.

Definately a few things to gripe about over the last week. The press’ Fifth Column’s horrible behavior over the Memorial Day holiday, the Council saddling us with red-light cameras and an illegal alien employement center. Oddly, only KHOU considers it worthy of it’s own article.

So much to complain about, so little energy to work with.

Akismet now installed. Let’s see how much crap gets through it I’ve had 529 spam comments in the last few days. Moderation duties were bad enough, but deleting the damned notice e-mails was driving me nuts.

Update 5/22: It’s rocking so far. Caught about 300 spam comments with about 5% false negatives and no false positives. The negatives land in the usual moderation queue and I delete them from there.