I received a couple of emails informing me of Malware on the site, unfortunately with everything going on I wasn’t able to actually login to work on things more than just upgrading WordPress via my phone. Turns out the Malware was no where near as bad as some of the sites that I’ve been working on. One of the Malware hits was so severe I had to completely recode the website because every template file was infected and beyond repair. “Why not just upload your copy of the theme?” simple – I’m in Delaware – not New York and don’t have access to the original files. Redoing the entire site from scratch was the only way to go.
In reference to the attack here, however, the only effected file was index.php which is two lines of code pulling the blog header file from the WordPress directory. Once I went through all of the template files to confirm there was nothing else to worry about and did a fresh reinstall of the current WP version I now no longer need to worry about anything. I submitted my site through the Webmaster tools with Google so it stopped kicking the error back to me and hopefully there won’t be any problems moving forward. I don’t understand how it happens, but at this point all I can say is “Whatever, it’s gone now” and move along.
So, as I noted, we’re in Delaware. Typically it would be our usual work during the day and head down to the beach at night, being as that’s what we always did when we actually lived down here during the summer months. However, it’s been much different this time around and now instead of “Go to Beach” it’s “Catch the hell up!”.
Unfortunately Sean’s mom has been having medical issues and instead of going to any of the doctors down here (since they suck balls) we made the trip up to Baltimore to spend some time floating around the numerous departments in Johns Hopkins main hospital so she could actually get proper care. After having some chest pain, shortness of breath and elevated heart rate the choice to walk right into the E.R. was pretty much manditory. From there, she was admitted and wound up in the hospital for about 5 days (in total). We went up on a Friday, wound up waiting until very early Saturday morning before she actually made it into a room. I attempted to get some sleep in the car but it was during the middle of the heat wave and we were in a parking garage so that just didn’t happen. Sean wound up crashing in his mothers room a little after 7am and got a few hours of sleep while everyone was trying to make heads or tails of things.
After he woke up we decided to head back to Rehoboth because on top of needing to take a shower and get some proper sleep – we also needed to do some light laundry and get everything together for Sean’s mom due to the fact that none of us had any idea that she would be admitted to the hospital and had absolutely no clothes or any kind of ‘overnight’ supplies with us. We wound up driving two cars back up, which was not fun AT ALL being as we got stuck in the middle of a monsoon on Sunday night. It wound up turning the 2 1/2 hour trip into a 3 hour trip just because we had no choice but to pull over. If I can’t even see the tail lights of the car in front of me there’s absolutely no way in hell I’m going to keep moving. My choice for stopping was warrented, and confirmed when we got back on the road after things had let up and saw a pretty major accident on the south bound lane that was more than likely due to the lack of visability.
So Sean and I stayed at the Tremonth Plaza in Baltimore for a few nights. The hotel in its own right was really nice, the people were friendly and having the car locked away in a parking garage made me feel very safe knowing that nothing was going to randomly disappear. They offer a shuttle service to the Hopkins hospitals so that you don’t have to worry about navigating your way around Baltimore AND paying additional money for parking. They offered parking for free at their facility, so that cut down on expenses quite a bit. It also helped that they offer their rooms at a discounted rate if you’re family of someone who’s currently admitted.
After two nights in the hotel, and countless hours floating around the hospital she was released and we’ve been back down here ever since. Unfortunately it’s taken me forever to catch up on everything when considering I was on some pretty serious deadlines that I had to post-pone for clients. It also didn’t help that my backs been bothering me from all of the excessive walking with horrible unsupportive sneakers.
We’ve been down here for a few weeks, it’s not like we just showed up and instantly went up to the hospital. I just know that his Mom wasn’t feeling too hot the night we came down and things have just kind of spiraled from there. Thankfully everything appears under control now, there are still more appointments to get through but I think after this coming Monday things should be OK. We’re heading back up to Baltimore so she can have the mass on her lung looked into. There are also issues with her heart that need to be looked after, but I highly doubt we’ll be able to get into any offices for that while we’re up there.
Needless to say, this one-two week trip has turned into a longer than anticipated stay. It’s just my hope that everything begins to work itself out, and I’m able to get through the weeks worth of work that I’m backed up with. I’m seriously considering hiring other hands but haven’t seen anyone floating around that can really be trusted with “hush-hush” type of clients. Everyone wants to put something into their portfolio and don’t seem to understand what NDA actually means. It drives me crazy, but that’s the caliber of people floating around these days I guess. I think I’m better off just pushing through exhaustion and trying to get as much done as humanly possible over the course of the next few days.
I just know that I some how need to force myself to sleep by 10pm on Sunday so I can be ready to leave the house by 6:30 on Monday morning. Not looking forward to dealing with Baltimore traffic on a Monday so we’ll see how well this goes. :crosses fingers:
I try not to join those button rotations because it seems a lot of them have been infected and taken over by Malware threats and stuff. Ugh, super lame! I’m glad the Malware problem on your site has seemed to be cleared up… what a bummer though that it even happened.
Got my fingers crossed everything works out ok for you. Why does life have to be so hard?!