Hacked, bad weekend

Well what was already a bad weekend was extended into a bad Monday as I discovered my site was hacked over the weekend. They replaced my homepage with a “hacked by” page. I was hacked once before but that was when I hosted my main site on my home server. My main content is now on a commercial provider that runs on linux. I was very surprised hackers were able to get in as such providers normally have their boxes locked down pretty tight. Guess I was wrong. So now I am paranoid. F’in a-holes.

My weekend sucked. Saturday I had a vball tourney in Lauderdale. I was excited because I decided I was going to take the Vette. Cruising across the state in the Vette would be cool. However last weekend I had the problem I blogged where the Vette was stumbling and sputtering on acceleration. However, during the week I started it up and let it warm up and then took it out and it ran just fine so I attributed the stumbling to not being driven for awhile.

Saturday morning I wake up bright and early at 5am to head out. I load up the car, kiss Ali goodbye and drive off. Shortly after I hit the main road I start to feel the same hesitation and stumbling. So I start running through my options in my head. Maybe it just needs to warm up more? How long should I wait till I turn around and switch to the truck. I am debating the entire time until I stop at a gas station about 12 miles out from my house to fill up. Even after the fill up I am still hoping that it will fire up and run like a champ. Well after stopping it stumbled even worse so I had to concede and putt putt my ass back home. I was pissed. I should have just taken the truck in the first place. I throw the stuff back in the truck, quickly tell Ali why she heard the garage door open and I am back on my way. I am flustered because the Vette issue may require expertise beyond my scope and the incident put me way behind schedule.

I had to stop and fill up the truck with gas and I decided to grab some coffee to help wake me up. I had a ridiculous incident while preparing my java. I had just finished putting in 2 creamers and opened the third one and instead of pouring it in my coffee, I poured it into the trashcan. I have no idea why I did it, still groggy, flustered about being late, whatever…. One of the clerks was nearby and asked him if he saw me. He said no but then I told him what I did anyway. He laughed and said it was no big deal, he’s done that before. So I hopped in the truck and sped off. I was a good 45 minutes behind schedule. As I got on the highway I took a sip of my coffee. I immediately felt something hot on my chest. I spilled coffee all over my shirt, the lid wasn’t on right. I hauled ass across alligator alley and managed to get the tournament site about 25 minutes late so I was lucky. My partner had already checked us in so it was no big deal. I immediately went to the bathroom and tried to launder my coffee-stained t-shirt the best I could.

The tournament itself was a nightmare for me. Even though we made the playoffs and went 5-3 I was miserable. Let me get the excuses out of the way. It was hot as HELL but more more humid than hell would ever be. Playing in 95 degree weather on dark sand with little wind is energy depleting before you even put a foot on the court. Our division got assigned to play on the permanent courts with wooden poles. These courts were severely bowled out from the constant use. What this means is as you approached the net you were literally running up hill. The sand was also deep, as deep if not deeper than any I have played in. This combination translated into me not being able to hit the ball. My feet would be dragging in the sand as I approached which meant I could not jump out of the sand at all which meant I couldn’t hit to save my life. I get upset if any aspect of my game is consistently bad. If I serve out I grumble, if I make an errant pass I will get mad at myself, if give my partner a bad set it pisses me off but NOTHING gets me madder than hitting a ball into the net. I did it repeatedly on Saturday. I kept things more or less under control until later in the day. Even though I couldn’t hit, we managed to win games somehow. We narrowly beat teams we should have destroyed. We even managed to win our first 2 playoff games. But from there our luck ran out and we lost in the semi-finals and the 3/4 playoff game. I had several really embarrassing outbursts.

After yet another hit into the net I screamed “JESUS!” and threw the ball high up into the air. A couple times I just laid on the hot sand on my belly after missing short balls just over the net. The grand finale was after yet another missed short ball, I was down on both knees and slammed both fists down over my head and into the sand angrily while yelling “DAMN IT”. I’m sure it looked quite ridiculous to all onlookers. I was so frustrated. So after our last loss I just moped around and dwelled on how shitty I played. The team that won it all was eaily beatable if we played anywhere near or A game, unfortunately I had my C-/D+ game that day. I packed up my shit , apologized to my partner for my bad play and started the depressing ride back.

The drive back was fittingly miserable as I drove through strong storms in the Everglades for most of the trip. I got home defeated, depressed and wondering why I even play the damn game. Ali did her best to cheer me up which I appreciated, but still I felt down. We have to make plans on how to handle the last 2 tournaments of the year. Originally we planned to have Ali come with me (something she only has gotten to do once this year) and watch my tournaments. We planned to stay over in Clearwater beach for one of them and South Beach for the other. However the issue of what to do with Nicki is complicating things greatly. I inquired my mom about her willingness to help out and watch her but was met with a total lack of interest in doing so. It frustrates me because if my mom ever needs anything I am always more than willing to help but if I ask her to watch the dog she acts like it is such a monumental pain in the ass that I just feel like not even asking her about it anymore. Some friends of ours that have watched Nicki in the past also were non-commital on the prospect so now we have to come up with other options. It sucks because Ali babies the dog so much that the idea of putting her in a kennel seems cruel to her. It has been one of the problems with owning a dog that we have not yet been able to properly address. Ali and I basically have not been able to do anything away from home for an extended period of time together since we got Nicki.

Sunday came and I had a lot to do and little motivation to do it. The grass needed to be mowed and weed whacked even though a good part of the grass is either under water or a mucky mess from being underwater. I wanted to steam clean the rugs and wash the kitchen floor since everything was still grungy from our hurricane weekend the week prior. Also on the end of the to do list was run some diagnostics on the Vette to see what was wrong and pay the bills. (neither of which got done) So I woke up and instead of getting right to work I played Doom 3 for 2 hours. 🙂 I really was hurting for inspiration to go out in the sweltering heat but eventually I caved and got to work. Ali ran the tractor while I knocked down the weeds. I even tried to wade into the water to knock down the real high stuff which left me sloshing around in wet boots. We busted our asses for a few hours and got it done. As we cooled off in the pool for a few minutes I was just standing in the water staring off into space and Ali asked me what I was thinking about. “Moving” I said. I told her how the constant maintenance demands of the house were wearing on me. How I was sick of our property being a swamp during the summer. How I wanted to not have to deal with the traffic nightmare out in our area and not live so far away from work. I told her maybe it was just because I was in a bad mood and how things have been rough for the past week or so, it could be contributing to my thought process.

Earlier in the day Sunday I had to pull the cold water line to the washer to remove some algae that had clogged the screen. I hooked it back up and tested it to make sure it didn’t leak. However what I didn’t notice was the drain line had popped off. After Ali did a load of laundry she went in to put the stuff in the dryer. She yells out to me that the laundry room is flooded. Great….. The hose had pulled off and pumped all the water onto the floor. That was a nice mess as the litter box is in that room as well so the spilled litter mixed in with the water to make it even more of a pain in the ass. By the time that was cleaned up, the carpet was cleaned and the kitchen floor mopped it was 4:30, weekend almost over.

Ali really worked hard this weekend to help take the edge off what I had to do which was very nice of her. Even so it chalked up to be one of my worse weekends in a long time. Add in the hacked website this morning and it may have gained top 3 bad weekends in 2004 status.