Lifestyle

Lifestyle

My Website Was Hacked And I Got It Back…But Here’s Why I’m Still Mad

April 21, 2014

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the story of my website being hacked - and how I got it back - and this feels like a good time for a follow-up. Because while things may have turned out "fine" for me…the truth is that nothing about this situation was "fine". First there's the fact that I'm not sure I'd call being forced to interact with criminals to keep your business secure an ideal situation, but more importantly: things could very easily have turned in a different direction.

I am certain that I was lucky; I am certain that 99% of similar cases would have turned out (do turn out) very, very differently; I am certain that it would be very, very easy for companies as big as HostMonster and GoDaddy to say something akin to "Super sorry; totally won't happen again"…and then do exactly nothing. Because memories are short and people forget and these companies have too much money to worry all that much about what, in the long-term, amounts to a PR blip.

I do not want that to happen. Because I have my business back, but the next person that this happens to may not be so lucky, and it doesn't matter whether you make thousands of dollars a month off of your site or just a few bucks here and there...or whether you run your site for nothing at all, just because you love it: your property - your work - matters. And so I've been following up with both GoDaddy and HostMonster in search of answers to why this happened, and to find out what they are doing to ensure that it will not happen again.

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Baby

How To Take Your Child To The Movies (And More)

April 14, 2014

In this segment (which you can find after the jump, below, because it's auto-playing for some reason and I don't want to get anyone watching this at work in trouble), three of my favorite new-mom tips:

1) How To Stretch Out Your Too-Tight Shoes (this really works, really fixes the whole pregnancy-made-my-feet-expand-half-a-size issue, and will blow your mind); 

2) How To Take A Toddler To The Movies;

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Lifestyle

Links & Love & Stuff

April 11, 2014

Earlier this week I got to hang out with Rebecca Budig and J.D. Roberto over at BetterTV and talk getting out with a baby and the Ramshackle Glam book. I wore the same thing I wore last time I appeared on the show (a draped, melon-colored Michael Kors), but that's okay; it looks slightly different on me nowadays. Segment coming up next week!

I want to be best friends with this awesome flight agent.

Lololol at this Brief Moment Of Lucidity Called Panic Attack (via TheOnion.com).

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Just A Little Encouragement

How To Write A Book (Or, More Accurately: How I Wrote A Book)

April 3, 2014

Illustration (and an early RG cover idea) by Katie Rodgers

Let me start by saying that I have been "writing a book" for most of my adult life. How many of these books have I finished, you ask? Up until a few months ago…none. Or…one, actually, but it was so terrible that I don't think it counts (it was an attempt at a girl-moves-to-LA-and-makes-poor-dating-choices rom-com thing that ended up being just sort of an accurate reflection of my actual poor dating choices at the time and was thus less "oh how cute and entertaining" and more "oh Jesus, that's sad").

When you want to write a book - and that's probably the one thing that I have wanted most in the world for as far back as I can remember - it's always there with you, that nagging sense of incompletion and guilt. "Today," you say to yourself, "is the day I start writing for real." You make promises to yourself that from now on, you'll write ten (or five, or two) pages every single day, and then…you don't. Life gets in the way. Years pass, and your book is still sitting there on your laptop, unfinished, and now transformed into a source of anxiety rather than something you're excited about.

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