i’ve been wrestling with my blog for the last couple weeks. one day i logged in and my dashboard looked like this:

which is really not right.

i contacted my website host (dreamhost) for support right away and, yes, i panicked a bit. the rest of my website seemed a-okay, however. i did a database restore from my web account and the next day it seemed like my little ol’ blog was back to normal.

then i logged in again a couple nights ago, and blog was sick again!

chrome was giving me the same warning it had given me a week or so ago, so this time i took it all much more seriously, with tips directly from wordpress. i backed up my SQL wordpress database and all of my wordpress files from my website. i changed passwords everywhere. i downloaded and ran the recommended virus-finding software for my mac. i reported the attack to dreamhost again. i changed my wordpress keys. i reinstalled wordpress from a .zip download and from the wonky dashboard. and i considered deleting everything — but luckily, this time, i don’t think it’ll come to that.

it turns out that macs can get viruses! who knew? after running the clamxav software, this report popped up:

i didn’t do anything about it right away (yesterday morning) because i had to go to work. however, when i got to work — my dashboard (via windows 7) looked a-okay and back to normal. what had changed? i wasn’t sure. when i got home again last night, the dashboard (via my mac) was sick again. i was getting so frustrated!

but then i remoted into my computer at work — and the dashboard was still fine there. so the problem must’ve been with my mac. so strange! i couldn’t see any other ill effects from the viruses the scanner found, except for on my wordpress dashboard.

so, last night i ran the scan again and opted to move the yucky files into a folder on my desktop. this time it only found the trojan.java files. i moved them to the trash and did a secure empty — and now my dashboard is a-okay again.

so that was very bizarre. i hope the drama is over now, but today i will be working on beefing up my wordpress’s security (and running the virus software one more time), just in case. i would be so sad if i lost my blog — it holds so many memories!

bryan, karyn, hannie and i drove down to south dakota on christmas eve – despite really nasty winter weather.

my mom was thawing a ham for the family meal on christmas day. it was my brother’s ham, so it was like he was there with us. right?

but for christmas eve dinner, mom made two giant vats of soup – chicken noodle and split pea. yum!

hannie likes bread best.

as we finished eating dinner, dad got a phone call from a friend. “looks like someone hit the front side of your van…” he said. dad looked outside, and though there was no damage to the van, there was a very large package next to it. bryan and i ran outside to bring it in…

a 55″ lcd hdtv! dad was stunned and hannie was very excited.

bryan, dad and i went to wal-mart to get a new entertainment center for the tv, while karyn, mom and hannie frosted and sprinkled cookies.

hannie had an icing mustache, which was pretty funny, but she wouldn’t let me take a photo of it.

so, that was a pretty exciting night.

we also had a turducken for christmas day lunch. this was very exciting for everyone involved, i assure you.

hannie got really excited about opening presents, so she got to open her stocking right away. i also let her open a small present i got for her.

so many presents for hannie!

but there were a few presents for the rest of us, too. fun!

jason gave me a wii for christmas and now i have a new game to play on it – epic mickey! i started the other night. it’s kinda dark, but will be fun once i get into it, i think.

karyn got her very own masher! wahoo!

“hannie, are you silly?” “yeah!”

mom and dad got a new camera for their trip to taiwan next month! take lots and lots of photos, okay, guys?!

karyn disguised my last gift (which hannie helped me open) by wrapping it with a few random other things inside at least 5 different bags and boxes – it was a new ipod nano!

we went to uncle tom’s & aunt kim’s for our first christmas day meal. grampa bob brought some “mystery wine” he made at home. it was pretty tasty!

but kim opted for poinsettia cocktails instead.

newest christmas tradition: cousin micheal’s robotic santa.

tur! duck! hen!

then it was time for the always hilarious dice game.

shih tzu party central.

cousin jenny and jeremy got married this year. they still seem to like each other, so that’s good, ‘eh?

cousin jon got a pregnancy test. let’s hope it negative!

hannie got a whoopee cushion. i have a video, which i’ll upload to youtube… someday…

all tuckered out! i guess that was a pretty exhausting gift exchange for the puppies.

oh, wait! one more gift for jeremy from cousin micheal!

… it’s an… alligator?

and for another oddity, steve made a christmas poo. but it was delish!

for dinner, we joined aunt deb, gramma d, and cousin brock just down the road.

gramma d got just a few more owls for christmas.

good thing hannie was around to help gramma open all of her presents!

we went home around 9pm. sioux falls was a-glow as we left it.

we had to get on the road back to minneapolis by noon, but i was glad that kelsey and aurora could come over before we started packing up.

can you imagine what life would be like to be that adorable? those eyes! she’s such a sweet little babe.

hannie was a little unsure about not being the center of attention, but she hung around anyway.

thanks for the visit, ladies!

when we got back to minneapolis, jason picked me up and whisked me away to st. paul for that night’s wild game. i won the tickets through email bingo at work! so even though the wild lost (unfortunately), we still had a pretty good time.

the final score was 1-4.

when i finally got home after the game, santa had brought jason another, special gift to give to me. santa sure is a sweet, generous guy!

i’m feeling very blessed this holiday season – lots of great family, a wonderful boyfriend, and really super friends. i’m currently in indianola, iowa, with jason’s family – waiting for 2011 at midnight and a few more christmas festivities tomorrow. i hope you’re having an equally fantastic holiday season, too.

happy new year!

yawn. this month-long meme is getting boring. but since it’s about 9:30, i’m thinking about heading to bed… i probably won’t actually go to bed ’til about 11:30 because i’ll get a second (or third?) wind and i’m easily distracted. since i’m not working tomorrow (for which i’d be waking up around 6 a.m. – yuck), i’ll sleep in ’til about 10. i’ll want to sleep later because i’ll be surrounded by warm, purring kitties, but i’m heading down to iowa with jason for more thanksgiving so we’ll need to be getting on the road.

did you have a good thanksgiving? i sure hope so.

i went out for a thanksgiving buffet at spasso in minnetonka with my sister, bro-in-law, and ever adorable niece. it was so delicious! mashed potatoes, roasted squash, turkey, stuffing with big chunks of veggies, and pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream. none of us had to cook anything and when we got back to their house afterwards, there were no dishes to wash!

hannie and i played with karyn’s ipad for a while. we “read” through a couple santa clause stories a few million times because hannie is obsessed. then we watched some elmo videos on youtube. that ipad thing is pretty neat.

i also sort of half-assedly helped bryan put their christmas tree up. that was fun. i brought my dslr and my new 50mm f1.8 lens and played with bokeh. i also experimented a little with bryan’s lensbaby 2.0. i’m such a nerd, but i enjoy it.

cheers to three more days of holiday!

A couple weeks ago I upgraded my phone to an HTC Droid Eris. It’s pretty awesome! I am getting pretty good at Bejeweled and I found an application that turns my phone into a toy camera. I’m still being sort of annoying with it (playing with it when I shouldn’t be), as is evident by my food photography from Sea Change last night. (Though, honestly, if I hadn’t been using my phone I would’ve been using my regular camera. You should always expect this kind of desire for documentation from me.)

Now, about these photos: It’s restaurant week here in the Twin Cities, which is a very good reason to go out and try food at fancy restaurants. Last year I went to Café Lurcat, and tomorrow I’ll be going to the Bloomington ChopHouse.

I really wanted to go to La Belle Vie this year, but it seems very difficult to get reservations there. I settled for Sea Change, which was (of course) very delicious. Since there were four of us at dinner, and only two different entrees on the restaurant week menu, I ordered from the regular menu for a few extra dollars.

These scallops were so delicious. And pretty to look at. I loved the spice on these — lemon pepper, I think? I could’ve eaten a whole plate of these.

The grilled swordfish cassoulet was tasty, but not because of the swordfish. Though the fish added some nice texture, the (giant!) beans and the sausage were really the main attractions. Delicious. More, please!

And since everyone else got banana cheesecake for dessert, I decided to get a citrus tartlet. The sour cherries were indeed sour, but the sweetness of the tartlet paired with them quite nicely. It’s always more fun to end a meal with the feeling like you just gave your teeth 5 new cavities, right?

I would easily dine here again, though I hope the next time might be coupled with a show at the Guthrie afterward.

I knew my Mac at work was older, but in the year that I’ve been using it I thought it was a Mac Pro. Today I actually looked at it and found that it’s a PowerMac G5 (these machines were discontinued in 2006), which means it doesn’t have an Intel processor. This is a huge bummer for me, because I had made requests to get it all upgraded and snazzy—I went from Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) to Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), and I was in the process of getting Parallels Desktop installed so I could run Windows on my Mac (which would mean that I wouldn’t need my Dell laptop).

Last Friday my coworker, David, received a monitor upgrade that he had requested (from a 19″ widescreen to a 24″ widescreen), so I hooked up his extra monitor to my Mac and had two big monitors (my orginal monitor is a 20″ widescreen). I was all excited for Parallels to be installed this week—I could keep Mac in one window, and Windows in the other.

After my initial disappoint with my non-Intel Mac, I thought I could at least hook up the second monitor to the Dell laptop to improve that situation… but then I realized that I would need another keyboard, which would only add to the clutter on my desk. I want to save space, not eliminate it!

This is all just so disappointing. Though it will still be nice to have two monitors for most of my projects, now I’m just feeling awfully self-conscious about people walking by, seeing all of my monitors, and wondering why I need so many. Is it overkill? We’ll see.