Thank You, Adam!

No, not that Adam.  The other Adam.  Adam Lang, who works on our Join the Fight! project as the “database guy” and who hosts our database and the WordPress server for the social media initiative.

I spent part of yesterday testing and repurposing our Join the Fight WordPress server for the Balloon Juice home away from home, showed it to John, got the nod from him, called Adam to let him know, and was writing the newsletter note to let everyone else know… when Adam volunteered to host a separate WordPress server just for this.

One way or another we were going to have a home away from home today, but this is even better!

Thanks, Adam, for your generosity and your time.

In other good news, late last night we received an update from our site hosts.

365 Data Centers identified the root cause of the May 14 cyber incident. I would have thought the root cause was the hacking, but that’s just me! 🙂

Seriously, though, this is spectacular news.  It was becoming clear that the “investigation” phase was going to continue until they figured it out, and now that they have, they are finally saying words like “developing recovery action plans” and “timetables”.

Because of the sheer volume of sites involved, I think it’s still going to be a long slog to get them all back up, and there’s no way to know yet exactly what the process will be and where we’ll be in line.

Developing recovery action plans?  Be still my beating heart.

May 20, 2022 by Open Threads

Friday Morning Open Thread: A Truism

 

Lyle Lovett has a new album, and the Washington Post has the story:

… Lovett never expected to become a first-time father when he was nearly 60 years old, with a daughter and son born in June 2017.

“It’s wonderful. I mean, I’m so grateful to have had this experience at all,” says Lovett, 64, his warm, gravelly drawl beaming from the other end of the line. His parents were less than half his age when they had him, but at the same point in his own life, Lovett poured everything into getting his music career off the ground. “I always imagined having children,” he insists. “But I had absolutely no idea how much I would enjoy it.”

That joy is stamped on the cover of Lovett’s new album out Friday, “12th of June,” which takes its title from his children’s birthday. It’s his first collection of songs since 2012, when his longtime contract that he first signed with Curb Records in the 1980s came to an end. “I always knew I wanted to record again,” he says. But he was more than happy to bide his time, stockpiling songs and waiting for the right deal to come along, which it finally did in the shape of an offer from Verve Records. “It was nice. If somebody called up and asked for me to sing a harmony with them on a record, I didn’t have to ask anybody’s permission,” he says of the intervening years…

The influence of fatherhood on the album can perhaps be most clearly seen in the comedic turn of a song like “Pants is Overrated,” inspired by Lovett’s children and written with a playful, adolescent sensibility. “That’s just something I started singing to them as I was trying to convince them to wear pants,” he says. Similarly, “Pig Meat Man” came from his son’s love for eating bacon. The singer takes clear enjoyment in learning to see the world through his kids’ eyes. “These are the two most interesting people I’ve ever met,” he says proudly…

Now, with “12th of June” available, Lovett can look forward to getting back to his element: on the road with the Large Band. If life, and the outside world, have slowed him down in recent years, he’s nowhere near stopping. “Not many people in their lives get to do something their whole life that they love to do,” he says. “And I’m grateful for that.”

 

And that being said…

 

May 20, 2022 by Open Threads Popular Culture

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, May 19-20 (Testing, Testing… )

Continue reading…

May 20, 2022 by COVID-19 Coronavirus

Welcome To Our Home Away from Home

Welcome to our little WordPress server that can be a gathering place while the real Balloon Juice is unavailable.

Hopefully the real site will be back soon, or at least soon-ish.  This site is rudimentary – we are not trying to recreate Balloon Juice because we have faith that the site will be back.

We’ve started by creating logins for John and Betty and Anne Laurie, and in the morning I will happily create logins for all front-pagers who are interested.

We want this place to be just comfy enough, but we’re not going to settle in.  We’ll have just a handful of categories: Open Thread, Politics, Respite, Political Action, War in Ukraine, Covid-19, etc.

I miss the front page posts, the comments, and the commenters.  So we’re hoping this temporary site can tide us over!

This is how I’ve been feeling.

How about you guys? What have you been up to?

I get most of my news from Balloon Juice, so fill me in!

Update at 3 am: There is now at least talk from 365 Data Centers about “developing recovery action plans and timetables”.  Finally!  I think it will still be awhile, and it will surely take longer than we would like, but that’s big progress.

May 20, 2022 by Open Threads
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