It’s crazy to think that it’s been a whole year already.

The party isn’t until Saturday, but we still had fun celebrating Kate’s first Birthday.

We played games and opened presents. She might even get a little cake tonight.

More pictures HERE.

Look at those cheekbones!

I don’t know what to say about all of this, except that there’s no denying Kate is our kid.

And that we were all pretty cute babies.

It’s not your fault, kiddo, it’s the photographer.

Current Members of the Bad Photography Club:

“Reflections”

“Freedom Isn’t Free”

Old Post: Apologies to Ansel Adams

My dad put these pictures next to each other today.

That’s me on the left and Kate on the right.

I had been thinking that Kate’s face looked just like Mark’s.

But there’s no denying it: this is my baby.

We were in the back room trying to find a bottle of Mont Marcal Cava sparkling wine.

We let Kate roam through the (very skinny) aisles of wine boxes. She had a great time exploring a baby-sized maze.

This was right before she was walking unassisted and there was plenty of places for her to hold on as she moved.

Sadly, we had to leave Syracuse before their Sparling Wine tasting.

On the other hand, we did find two bottles of the Mont Marcal Cava.

A lot of kiddie party invitations are based on Mickey and Tomas and other children’s TV shows, but Kate doesn’t watch those shows.

Instead, when Kate and I get up at 6 am, we watch The Wire. (Why not? She doesn’t care about TV and I’ve seen every Law & Order rerun on TV at that time of the morning).

With that in mind, I put together some Wire themed birthday invitations for Kate’s party.

While we’re on the topic of Kate’s birthday, she says that she has too many toys and that if you want to buy her anything she’d really like scotch. She prefers single malt.

A quick check from my Mac revealed nothing, and neither did Chrome in Windows.

Then I checked in Internet Explorer and, yep, our site got hacked.

And then my Win XP machine got infected.

(I’m not sure what I was expecting, intentionally visiting an infected website, but I didn’t think getting a virus would be this easy.)

Enter Crisis Management Mode:

I backed-up and then trashed the wordpress install. If the site was hacked I had no chance of rescuing it. There are too many moving parts and places to hide nasty things.

Then I spent a while trying to diagnose the Windows machine. It got hit with the System Fix virus, which was fixable, but System Fix also installed a rootkit, and it would be faster to wipe the machine and start over. Thankfully it’s used for testing purposes at work (which is why it’s stuck in the dark ages of WinXP) so there wasn’t anything valuable on it. I dug out the system install disks and began the process of installing WinXP.

And then upgrading WinXP.

Installing Security Update for Windows XP (update 48 of 111)…done!

Installing Security Update for Windows XP (update 49 of 111)…done!

Installing Security Update for Windows XP (update 50 of 111)…

In the middle of all of this I still had work to do. Two customers with problems that I had no idea how to fix. Thankfully neither of them had problems relating to Windows. After a late night of working I’m 1 for 2.

Today I installed the latest WordPress, locked it down as much as I could and reinstalled old posts and comments from backup. We’re stuck with this weird theme until I can get back in and tinker some more (Grey text? Seriously?).

Lessons:

What did we learn from all of this?

1. Back up everything, often.

Thankfully I had a very recent backup of ericaandmark.com. And thankfully I didn’t have anything of value on my Windows box.

External hard drives are cheap and Macs and Windows come with automated backup assistants. Back up your stuff now.

2. Stay Up to Date.

Running your own WordPress site take diligence and perseverance, and I got lax. I hadn’t updated WordPress to the newest version, and there were a few plugins that needed to be updated.

I toyed around with the idea of moving the site to WordPress.com, which takes the system administrative duties away from you, but they don’t allow custom themes and I wouldn’t have access to WebType fonts. (Besides, I like having an online sandbox in which to play).

3. At some point, take a walk.

Crisis Mode makes it hard to think straight. Once you stop the bleeding, take a moment to figure out what you’re doing and what the next steps are. Otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time freaking out and not a lot of time actually getting things done. Also, Rooney likes walks.

And now… back to work.

Kate got a few sips of grapefruit juice from Grandma and instantly became hooked.

Now whenever we cut into a grapefruit, Kate gets super excited and bounces up and down.

She doesn’t stop until we give her some. And then she demands more!

So this year, we threw one.

At 5 pm the party kicked off. We had a fully stocked bar and “catered” food. Pad Thai and Panang from Taiwan 101, and cookies from Kretchmar’s Bakery.

About halfway into the party Bonuses were given out in appreciation of…

“…your hard work and dedication over the past year.

Your leadership and ability to get things done are an inspiration to us all, and really help make this place the success that it is. You truly deserve more for all the late nights, long meetings, and endless issues.
Happy holidays to you and yours.“

Then there was dancing.

And someone got naked.

It was a fun party!

I’m looking forward to next year’s Office Holiday Party.