Weekend Reflections of Life

Several readers have asked what's going on with me on a persoanl level, so I figure I will give a brief update of sorts. First, last weekend I had written about the wedding we attended at the Founders Inn in Virginia Beach next door to sociopath Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. The event was wonderful not withstanding that the boyfriend forgot his tuxedo pants and attended the beautiful outdoor ceremony in formal dress combined with shorts (that's us at left with the shorts cropped out) - another guest rescued him and loaned him pants for the reception festivities. True to the Inn's promise to the bride, there were plenty of gay and lesbian couples dancing together without incident and based on the event, I'd recommend the Founders Inn for someone seeking a beautiful setting for a wedding or other large event.

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In terms of my house fire, I am still dealing with the contractor and insurance adjuster to get a final price on the repairs so that repair work can proceed. I have secured another tenant for the house so that I will be better able to increase payments to my former wife and get her fully out of my life more quickly. I have moved a few of my favorite pieces of furniture plus some of my books - I have tons of books - and family photos to the boyfriend's home, but the bulk of my things remain at the house which is rented out on a furnished basis. In terms of the post divorce wars, my attorney is endeavoring to work out a compromise so that we can avoid further court hearings that needlessly waste money and send me into an emotional/psychological tail spin. I still find that I need xanax to sleep through the night, although I am definitely considerably better than I was back in May when I had gone into a severe and dangerous free fall.

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The boyfriend continues to be an anchor and safe harbor my life and between him and my youngest daughter, I have my family base. My oldest daughter is still not speaking to me and my son is out in Oregon, so my youngest daughter has been a life saver to me. It's odd in some ways because my coming out and the divorce caused her the most direct turmoil in her life, yet she seems to hold no grudge and has stated that she believes that my coming out was a positive for the family. While a straight person can never fully understand the Hell of being in the closet and what it does to one emotionally, she does seem to get it more than one would expect. She is a real sweetheart and I love her so very much. There are definitely times I wish she'd move in with us.

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Next month we will be traveling to southwest Pennsylvania for the boyfriend's family reunion extravaganza -one day is his mother's family reunion and the next day is his father's side of the family's reunion event. One of my paralegals and his boyfriend will stay at our house and baby sit Bandit, our full size Chihuahua, since we will be staying at an inn in Pennsylvania. They are a sweet couple and Bandit loves them and vice versa. While in Pennsylvania we are going to see two of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses: Falling Water - built over a waterfall - and Kentuck Nob. Other than business trips to Pittsburgh, I have never been to that part of Pennsylvania. It should be a fun, brief get away.

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One thing that I am enjoying is writing some pieces for Bilerico-DC and working with some of the other bloggers and editors. Our goal is to try to have both news and opinion pieces that are fact based and hard hitting. Sometimes the posts I do are modified versions of what appears on this blog and other times they are unique to Bilerico.

Bilerico is Going Dark Temporarily

UPDATED: Here is some additional information from Bilerico Editor in Chief, Bill Browning, concerning the hacker attack on Bilerico Project and its affilaited blogs:
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I wanted to give folks a quick heads up on what's happened to the Bilerico Project and our affiliated sites. All of our sites are currently dark - they've been taken offline by a massive hacker attack.

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We've been fighting off these Eastern European hackers for over a year now; they're the same crowd that took down popular feminist political blog Shakespeare's Sister a year and a half ago. They're professionals and they're nasty.

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Earlier this week, they managed to take us down for about 9 hours overnight but we were able to regain control. They severely compromised the server though, so we had to get a new server up and running quickly. Yesterday, we got the new server racked up and were planning on making all of the switch overs (we also host quite a few Indiana LGBT organizations' websites), but the hackers managed to crack through our defenses again yesterday afternoon.

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This time they firebombed the place; our old server is toast. Unfortunately, none of the data was transferred before they regained control. We have backups and are trying to get the site back up ASAP, but we're still suffering from the lag required to set up a new server from scratch, retrieve as much data as possible from the old server, install all of our attendant software like Movable Type, and then port over the Bilerico database and double check to make sure it all works again since our site was so customized.

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I have no idea when the site will be back up and running. We're hopeful that we can have it all finished by Friday night, but there's no guarantee. The hackers caused massive damage, but co-owner and tech guru Jerame Davis is working feverishly to fix everything.

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Not too long ago Pam's House Blend and other liberal blogs using the same platform went dark as a result of hackers. Now, The Bilerico Project and its affiliated blogs have been attacked and the result is that a new server is being set up as quickly as possible. Bill Browning sent all contributors this note today:

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We will be moving to a new server tomorrow afternoon. As you saw on TBP's front page this week, we were hit by hackers again. We regularly fight off these Denial of Service attacks (we're an LGBT liberal blog; it comes with the territory), but this time our server is toast. They killed it.

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Thanks for your patience as we migrate to the new server. The good news out of all of this is that we'll plenty of room now for even more visitors; we'd almost outgrown our old server capacity! Let's keep up the hard work and continue to grow the Bilerico sites. We may have bumps in the road like this one, but we just keep improving thanks to all of you!

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It's a sad commentary that the wingnuts feel they have to knock down sites since they cannot counter sound arguments with anything but religious fanaticism and untruths. Bilerico should be back up unscathed within a day or so at most.