Out of the world

[caption id="attachment_853" align="alignright" width="400" caption="This smarmy bastard\'s finally come back to Ohio"][/caption]

I've been out of the world for a little while, approximately 40 some days. I unplugged from a lot of things to focus on some big changes in my life. There was a kind of, cliche alert, perfect storm of events that made me feel like dropping off the grid for a while and just relaxing.

First off, this blog, which brings immeasurable joy to so many (for free I might add, actually the hosting costs me money) got 1337 h4x0rz pwned. You see I made this mistake where by I tried to express myself... foolish bastard that I am. Someone decided that all the good will and popularity I had generated through months of concerted effort and promotion would be better used to sell some scummy fake AV software. I quickly fired up my ftp and an editor to find out what was going on, I was able to detect the hack right away (normally don't have giant evals at the top of my pages), some quick regex work and I was able to disable the attack within less than an hour of detecting it. But I had been compromised, and even though I had been able to address the immediate issue steps needed to be taken to protect my blog and the fine people that come and read it. I decided to take it down until I could get it cleaned up properly. I felt terrible, but I had taken steps to prevent such a hack from occurring, I couldn't figure out what had happened. Then I saw this and realized that is exactly what had happened to my site. I felt a little bit better that this wasn't my fault and I wasn't alone.

The second major thing is that I quit my job. I worked at HMB for just over 2 years, and I learned an immense amount, worked with some of the best people I've ever met, and went from Ramen Noodles on milkcrates to my comfy house and filet mignon (if Burger King is still putting filet mignon in their hamburgers). It was a fantastic place to work right out of college but towards the end I felt like it wasn't where I wanted to be in life. I found an opportunity to go work for a young media company in town that needed an experienced PHP programmer to take over for their "web guru." I'm incredibly happy to report that I took that opportunity and am currently running with it.

The third major thing is that I was burned out. My last project at HMB was difficult, difficult for me personally in every way I can think of. I realized near the end that I was at my breaking point, I was frustrated, angry, and plain unhappy. I felt like I had nothing left to give, I felt completely worn down, and I knew that something would have to give.

That's where I found myself a month and half ago, in a strange position where I was frazzled and broken but ahead of me sat this golden opportunity. I decided that I would unplug, unwind, and rebuild. I had become that proverbial Windows XP box with the 2 years expired Kapersky that was slowing to a crawl. My hardware was fine, but I needed to reformat (preferably with Ubuntu or maybe into a Hackintosh) and recover. One of the things that went on the chopping block was blogging, not intentionally at first, but once I stopped, well an object at rest tends to remain at rest...

I'm happy to announce with the relaunch of this blog that the "reformat" worked. What you see before your eyes is a fresh WordPress 3.0 install (with all the old content recovered from my numerous backups), a visual reboot (this is an out of the box cleanr right now, I'm planning on adding my own personality in gradually), but most importantly, a happy blogger typing. I've spent the last month and half settling into my new job at 614 Media Group. I'm not sure what my title is, on one piece of paper it says Web Guru, which I don't much care for, I've seen and heard "Head of Web Development and New Media" which I like, even though its a bit wordy. I can tell you though that I'm in charge of PHP development (along with iPad and iPhone development to come) and that I'm loving it. I have a swanky new office, I get to work in TextMate and git and PHP all day, it's a dream come true. I work with friendly, hip, funny people. I'm still finding my place there, but I have already figured out it's where I belong. For the first time in a long time, I'm building things, and it feels so good to build again.

I'm not really sure what else to put in this post, I plan to start up the blogging again, refreshed and reinvigorated. You can expect to see a heavier focus on PHP and Cocoa, but I will still go off on my other loves, Ruby, LISP, JavaScript, and probably fall in love with some more. And even though I'm happy and contented I will still have amusing rants (just ask Heather if you don't believe me.) I haven't decided how much I'm going to blog yet, I'm hoping for a couple posts a week, but I'm sure I have plenty of topics to cover from the time I was gone so it might be coming a bit fast and furious for a while.

In conclusion I just want to thank all the people that helped support me when I wasn't feeling at my best. My wonderful girl Heather, my dear friend Jeremiah, my family, and so many others. I also want to thank HMB for giving me a place to grow and learn, I'm still proud of the work I did there and proud of the work they do. I'm sorry I was gone for so long, if you come back and give me your eyeballs I hope to open them a little and maybe make you smile.