So you want to have your own website and play around with different tools and technologies? Great, just don’t leave a project sitting too long, bad things happen.

Case in point, over on the Child Abuse Survivor site, I had created a sub-domain with it’s own WordPress Multi-User install (back when that was a separate version of WP), running Buddypress to act as a sort of community site. Over time the site saw some traffic, but eventually the community involvement started to fall off, around about the same time that I was changing jobs and moving,  so I really sort of stopped dedicating a bunch of time to it. Oh I left the community up, in case anyone wanted to continue to use it and communicate with each other, but I stopped checking in regularly.

That also means I stopped updating the WordPress install. A big no-no.

Sure enough, late last week, I noticed an issue with the RSS feeds on the main blog getting malformed text and becoming invalid. I didn’t see anything wrong on that WordPress install, but somehow the feeds weren’t publishing properly. A quick re-install of WP in place corrected the feeds issue, but I made a note to keep a closer eye on the feeds.

Sure enough, Monday evening, I saw the same problem with the feeds again. This time I decided this wasn’t a random occurrence, something was wrong. So I dug in to the site and the WordPress database to see if I could see what was causing this. As I dug around I came across a strange class.php file that had been dropped into the wp-content folder, and an .htaccess file that hadn’t been at that level of the install before, pointing to a random numeric php document in another folder, on the community site. Further digging led me to discover Google search results, mostly for pharmaceuticals, pointing to oddly named pages on my site.

Now my blog’s WordPress install was up to date, and there wasn’t any SQL injection into the database, but as I rolled over to the community WordPress install, boy what a mess. There were a number of malicious PHP files over there, and some SQL injected into the database. Since I haven’t updated that install in months, I assume it was compromised thanks to a known exploit that has since been fixed.

After nuking the community site completely, database included, and then cleaning the handful of PHP files running all over the rest of the site’s directories, it seems to be clean again, though Google hasn’t re-indexed things just yet so I’m still getting interesting search queries to say the least. (Sigh)

Those are two nights of my life I’m never getting back, thanks to leaving an old WP install laying around unused. Trust me, it’s not worth it.

Or, Why you want to come visit!

Thanks to friends pointing out these stories on Facebook and Twitter!(And people say they don’t learn anything important in social media?)

How A Park Helped One Town Weather The Recession
Southern U.S. distillery to legally sell moonshine

By the way, my favorite part from the latter story:

The area was settled, along with the nearby Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, by Scots, Irish and Welsh who migrated down through the Appalachian mountain chain from Pennsylvania in the 1700s.

“They thought it was their inalienable, God-given right to make whiskey,”

Yup, those are my people!

Learned an important lesson during this trip. It’s hot in the middle of the day around here.

Still, the zoo is relatively small, cheap, and a good way to get a little exercise and take some photos for an hour on an otherwise free Saturday. I enjoyed it, and like having a few new photos to share!

Aside from all of the professional reasons, my wife being from the South, and the warmer weather, there is one other reason why I think moving was worth it.

As a photographer, how could I not appreciate the fact that I can drive less than 30 minutes, and take photos of beautiful mountains?

Or how about the 10 minute drive to one of the loveliest campuses in the US?

Me and my camera are going to like it here in South Carolina just fine!

Last week. while my wife was visiting, she treated me to a night at the bed and breakfast where we spent our honeymoon in Asheville, NC. (Interestingly, just about an hour from where I am now.)

As we were hiking around the grounds of the Sourwood Inn, I couldn’t help but notice how the change in the canopy of the forests really changed the look of the light. As we went from a typical North Carolina mountain tree canopy, to a large area of Bamboo growth, the light change almost made it seem like we were going from clouds to sun.

Naturally, having some interesting light gave us a chance to play around with some interesting shots, and post-processing, to create some nice shots. I’m going to have to try and find some more interesting light changes as I explore some of the nearby mountains and lakes over the Summer.

With everything being brand new it’s been a little tough to develop any routine, let alone one that includes posting to the blog on a regular basis. After one week at the new job, I’m just starting to develop a bit of a routine there, but outside of work, life is really a work in progress.

In fact, I’d say that “work in progress” is a great description of my day-to-day life right now. Work is still overwhelming, but it’s getting there. I still feel clueless much of the time, but I have been able to tackle some tasks on my own, and contribute toward getting through the team’s workload, so I feel good about that. Plus, I’m learning a whole bunch of new Litigation Support tools, which is always fun.

I’ve just started searching for a furnished apartment to live in temporarily. The extended-stay hotel is ok for a short time, but I feel like a closet and a couch would be awesome additions. Hopefully something will work out on that front in the next couple of weeks.

As far as living in Greenville, I am enjoying that. As with any Southern town, the people are friendly, the weather’s been fantastic, and there’s plenty to explore in the area to keep me busy. Plus, I do think my camera is going to love it here, as evidenced by the photos I took while exploring downtown on a lovely Sunday afternoon.

Yes, there is a waterfall in the center of downtown, and it’s surrounded by quite a lovely park area, which is also a community WiFi zone, how cool is that?

So, while it’s still a struggle to adjust to all of this new stuff, including living apart from my wife for now, I’m excited about the future here, and looking forward to continuing to settle in.

Whenever I’m asked about using social networking tools, inevitably someone asks me if I could see it ever helping someone find a job. I’ve always had to answer that although I have never gotten a job offer due to my online connections, it has led to a number of other opportunities that I would not have been able to experience without those connections.

Now, I may have to change my answer. As I arrive in Greenville and settle into my new home town, I have to say that it was social networking that got me connected to this job, although not directly.

The story starts, actually, in 2009. I was approached by some folks who had read my blog about speaking at the ILTA Annual Meeting on Social Networking. That invitation was purely the result of being involved with online networking. That led to being invited back to do a couple of sessions at ILTA 2010, and it just so happens that the person who was working as a recruiter for this new firm saw me speak there and introduced himself. Late in 2010 he contacted me to ask whether I, or someone I knew, might be interested in relocating South.

So, while I have no evidence that anyone who ultimately made the hiring decision was influenced by my online activities, clearly even being put in front of them was an indirect result of online connections. Which just goes to show that you never know where some connections are going to lead, and that you never know what getting out there and doing something like speaking and sharing your knowledge will lead to. So take advantage of opportunities!

Apparently, an old Yahoo! email account that I haven’t used in over a year, was accessed by someone to send out emails to everyone in the contact list. Since I had, at some point, imported my LinkedIn contacts to Yahoo!, that turned out to be quite a few people.

My assumption is that my recent usage of that Yahoo! account to login and manage a fantasy hockey team and NCAA basketball brackets was the point where the password was intercepted, or was collected from a link, though I am at a bit of a loss to figure out the exact culprit.

The experience does, however, teach me a couple of things. One, don’t ignore old email accounts. Second, if you aren’t going to delete them, at least clear out the contact lists. There was no reason for me to have contacts listed there, I don’t use that account for anything outside of Yahoo! services.

Anyway, if you got a random email from my yahoo.com address yesterday, I apologize! I have since changed my password, and dumped all the contacts from the address book.

What other advice for web based email services do you have?

Earlier this week, I gave notice to my current firm. I’ve been offered, and accepted ,a Litigation Support Analyst position with a much larger firm. (I’m not exactly sure about their policies regarding naming the firm in a blog post, so I’ll leave that out for now….)

Anyway, the new gig is in their Greenville, SC office, so at the end of March I will be packing up the car with as much of my stuff as I can, and heading to South Carolina. My wife will be staying behind, for a few months at least, to take care of things she wants to do before starting her own job search and joining me. (Not to mention being the lucky one who gets to pack up our house!)

So, as much as I would love to invite you all to come visit, I’ll be living is small, temporary, housing. I won’t have room for guests! However, if you happen to be in the area, please let me know! Seriously, I’m moving to a city I don’t know anyone in, without my wife, if you’re going to be close, say hello. Heck, if you see me on Facebook chat, Twitter, or just want to email, please say hello! Those of you who have my cell phone number can text or call too. I may not be in Ohio any more, but it’s 2011, we have the technology to keep in touch, and I fully expect to make use of it!

Also, if you know anything about the Greenville area, or have some contacts, get in touch! I can definitely use the help.

So, that’s the big news. I’ll start the new job on April 4. Planning past that, in terms of things like being at ILTA11, when I might be back in Columbus to visit, or when we’ll be living in permanent housing and have room for folks to stay with us, are pretty much filed in the “to be determined” drawer. I just don’t know, but I will keep you posted.

It should be an interesting ride, I look forward to sharing it here on the blog!

Yes, I know, we’ve been back for awhile and the only photos I had posted were mobile uploads to my Facebook profile from my phone. I’ve been a little busy since we got home.

But, fear not, I did have the big camera with me for a couple of days, especially at Animal Kingdom, and have just uploaded some more to the Flickr page.

I will say that carrying a Nikon D50 around Disney is not for everyone, and in fact, I chose not to on two of the three days. One was a very rainy day, and the other we decided to make the day we were going to hit all the rides at Magic Kingdom. No sense in worrying about it there, the iPhone was fine for capturing some neat shots. The one day I did carry it was for a combination of things.

We spent the majority of the day at Animal Kingdom, which I loved! That was definitely a photographers dream. Then, when Animal Kingdom closed for the day, we made our way over to the Magic Kingdom for the evening events.

Not a bad day of photography!