Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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Site Maintenance

Here’s Where Things Stand With the Site

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The triple merge has happened.

There are a lot of things to be fixed.  Cursory check shows we have no media images before 2008.  We have 575 posts that don’t have the author.  All the draft posts show as published in 1970.  Etc.  I’m sure I will find many more things that aren’t quite right.

So here’s what we’re gonna do.

We are going to use the site as usual tonight and give the site developers / site hosts 2 options.

We can lose everything we do tonight (posts, comments, images etc) and go back to new-old Balloon Juice tomorrow, and we go through this whole process again at a later date, with the bugs worked out.

OR

We start using this as the mother ship, with everything imperfectly merged, and they agree to continue to do the cleanup so that we have everything back.  To be completed within one month maximum.  This will mean occasional downtime while they import media library etc.

So for now, this is Balloon Juice.  We’ll know more tomorrow!

Update: all in all, merging the 3 sites was a massively complex job, and kudos for them for what they have accomplished.

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Lawsuit Filed & Site Update

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From Scout211 in the comments below:

I don’t know if this has been posted yet, but Bizbudding filed their lawsuit against 365 data centers yesterday. Here is a listing of the lawsuit but you have to get an account to read or download it.

The summary from law.com, which also requires an account to read the whole thing.

The suit, backed by Glancy Prongay & Murray and Morgan & Morgan, alleges that 365 Data Centers failed to take reasonable and necessary precautions to detect, prevent and mitigate cyberattacks. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendant. The case is 3:22-cv-00715, Bizbudding, Inc.

ETA. The link to the filing broke the margin so I deleted it. Let me try again.
https://www.pacermonitor.com/court/111/Connecticut_District_Court

Link to the complaint.

72-page pdf file.

Above is the district court link. Hopefully this will not break the margin.

I am kind of hoping that the point of the lawsuit is to COMPEL “350” Data Centers to turn over the fucking backups.  Money in 10 years does us no good at all.

Scout211 and other attorneys who have an account and have access, what else does the lawsuit say?

Sort of related, I have been working on the Balloon Juice all day.

This is what I posted this morning:

Tuesday is the day we plan to go home to a SHELL of Balloon Juice.

We have the banner and the balloon guy. And the comment system, though I’m not entirely sure it’s functioning normally. We have tags that could rotate, but no tags. No pie filter. No forms.

It’s pretty much just the banner with the balloon guy, the comment system and tags that can rotate, but no tags.

But if they could only find 3 things, those are the 3 things I would have asked for.

I will put up a post later. Tuesday will be the day we go back.

I am happy to say that we now have 69 of our rotating tags rotating again.  Thanks to Wolvesvalley – I had enlisted her aid in finding rotating tags in the web archives.  Steep is taking second shift on that, looking for the remaining 40 or so rotating tags so I can add those back in, too.

Also, I have added the white menu bar again at the top and reconstituted those pages, and we now have everything up there again: About Us, Lexicon, Contact Us and the link to the Balloon Juice store.

I set up the footer, and reconstituted all of these pages, too:

Comment Policy
Our Published Authors
Blogroll
Our Artists & Artisans
Privacy Policy

I know you guys would have been bummed without the policies! :-)

I had to reverse-engineer in order to figure out to get the On the Road form, some trial and error there, but now we have that, too!

I kept good notes during the site rebuild, so I knew we had 10 plugins that weren’t installed on the SHELL we got back last night, so I installed those, which gave us more functionality.

And we have the pie filter back, which appeared this afternoon.  I tried so many things today that I don’t know which thing brought that back, but I am so happy to see it.

Anyway, lots more work to be done tomorrow, but even with none of our old posts and old comments, I feel so much better today than I did when i saw the shell of the site last night.

I definitely shed some tears last night after I first saw the shell of the site, so I wanted to share some happy news today.

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Finally Some Good News

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Good news from David, via John:

I got some really good news from David, not optimal news, but very good indeed.

He and his team were able to find actual hard copies of all the custom coding for Balloon Juice. He had backups of that and our data on the cloud, but was able to find a copy they had done. They will be working through the weekend to get us up and running, and hopefully by Monday we will be back.

What does this mean? What it means is that the structure and foundation of the house is there, but there is no artwork and furniture, the cupboards are bare, and I’m gonna need to go shopping for new plants. Basically, the house is still there, but the thieves kicked us in the family jewels and took them and still have them hostage.

I am remaining positive that we will eventually get our data back, but right now it is the target of a tug of war between the mba’s and lawyers at 365 data centers, the mba’s and lawyers at the as yet unnamed third party vendor/macguffin, and the hackers. I’ll let you decide which is worse, and personally I am hoping for something like the shootout at the end of Reservoir Dogs with the jewels remaining safe.

As for the data, the absolute worst case scenario is we use the tarball crawl we have, the internet wayback machine, and/or hopefully one of the people involved in the 2019 redesign have backups. I will be trawling my computer for files later. But hopefully it will not resort to that. Personally, I wish the fuckers would just pay.

So good news, mostly. Yay!

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Also, Water is Wet and the Sky is Blue

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Letter from “353” Data Centers sandwiched between a prologue and an epilogue from John.

It appears that the good people at 365-3 Data Centers have decided to admit what we all know, and have informed us that it is in fact a ransomware attack. I’ll attach the letter they sent to David at Bizbudding:

Facilities: EWR, LGA, IAD
Date: 5/25/2022

Thank you for your patience over the past 10 days while we worked to regain access to the impacted cloud management systems and to restore your services following the security incident of May 14, 2022.

We are now able to confirm that the May 14th security incident was a ransomware attack. We are also able to confirm that neither 365 Data Centers nor our customers were the target of this attack. The intended target was a third party whose data is stored in a dedicated environment on our cloud platform. Unfortunately, for our valued customers and 365 Data Centers, the cyber-attacker broadened the ransomware attack.

While our investigation continues, an analysis and evaluation to date by our systems team and cybersecurity experts has revealed that, aside from the targeted third party, no data was taken from the 365 Data Centers cloud environment and there are no on-going threats in the environment.

We worked tirelessly in tandem with our experts and government authorities and positioned 365 Data Centers to initiate restoration. Unfortunately, the resolution of the third-party circumstances is not in our control and continues to prevent us from moving ahead in our recovery process.

While we continue to monitor the third party’s resolution of the cyber-attack, 365 Data Centers believes that at this point in time the prudent path forward is to rebuild the affected cloud platform. This will be conducted along with an all-out effort to retrieve all data within the existing cloud environment that can still be accessed. 365 Data Centers will work with each customer who prefers to go in this direction to restore your service on a rebuilt 365 platform tailored to your current needs at our expense. In the event the ransomware attack is resolved on all fronts, we can initiate restoration of the existing cloud environment in parallel.

If your preference is to work with us to restore your service on a new 365 platform, please inform Steve Oakie, 365 Data Centers’ Chief Revenue Officer.

We are saddened by the impact this incident has caused on our many years of collaborative hard work with you to build your cloud services. Our entire organization is sorry for the significant inconvenience that this has brought to you and your business.

We will continue to be transparent by providing factual and accurate data as soon as it is verified. We appreciate your ongoing support and patience as we navigate this complex situation.

Bob DeSantis James Cornman
Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Office

John again:

Well, that’s nice to know. I have no idea if the notification of a class action lawsuit convinced them to be more forthcoming with their customers, or if it is all just a big fucking coincidence this came out today.

David doesn’t know exactly what this means and will be seeking clarification with them tomorrow, and I have no idea if the previous repeated assurances from 365 that our data is still safe are still there. It’s a mystery wrapped inside an enigma inside a riddle inside some unnamed 3rd party vendor’s fuckup and most definitely not 365 Data Centers, that’s fer god damned sure.

Hopefully we will know more, and should our data be safe and accessible, we will move forward. If not, I will have some decisions to make about how we proceed with a new website. For now though, y’all keep enjoying your unplanned vacation at the cottage, and I’ll keep trying to figure out if the tornado just ripped off some shingles, did major structural damage, or if our home simply no longer exists. Personally, I feel better about the news today because AT LEAST I FUCKING KNOW SOMETHING FOR SURE. I feel like I have been sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office for two weeks because he doesn’t have the balls to tell me I have cancer. Now we wait for the oncologist to chime in. I know I can fit in another metaphor and some mangled imagery here so I will just let you all know I’ll be here until the cows come home and we’ll be giving 110 percent and working harder than a dog to get things back to normal and to keep a stiff upper chin and don’t let the bedbugs bite.

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No News is Not Good News, the Lying Bastards

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John’s latest missive through the mailing list, after the update today.

I’m officially depressed.  I feel so helpless and there is simply nothing I can do to get the website back.  I just have to sit here and wait and hope they come through.

I am glad that there will be a lawsuit, because that at least will put some pressure on the fuckers.  But it doesn’t help me get the site back.

I feel like someone whose house has burned down with all their shit in it.

I am, however, once the site comes back, get more involved in the day to day operations of things, because i never want to feel this helpless again.

That’s all I have.  Miss you guys.

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Update from Our Site Host

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Hey everybody,

In quotes below you will find the latest update from our site hosts.  In case you haven’t been following along, our site hosts are the good guys, and “354” Data Denters are the ones who are stonewalling and withholding information.  Our site hosts pass on what information they have from 354 Data Centers, which is usually meaningless word salad.

As a visual cue, you can pretty much assume that any text that refers to them as 365 Data Centers was written by someone besides me!

I’m sorry my message to you yesterday might have seemed confusing.

The confused mixture of phrases and updates from 365 sounds like word salad to me and has made it difficult for me to communicate clearly and effectively with you. I’ve done my best to accurately relay their communications to you.

I am fighting hard for your business. My primary focus has been to get our backups from 365. My secondary focus has been to create a temporary landing page system for your website so that you could communicate to your customers and audience.

Late last night I received some new information that I did not have before that has caused me to pause and consider taking legal action.

I’ve reached out to and started discussions with a law firm that specializes in corporate liability and class actions and we are in the process of initiating a class-action lawsuit against 365 Data Centers – for everyone’s benefit. Several customers in our blogging community have stepped up to co-lead the class-action lawsuit on your behalf.

I’ve been fighting hard for our clients. This has really gone on way too long and it’s beyond unacceptable. The damage being done to our brands is devastating.

I do expect to have the timeline from 365 this week and I do anticipate that timeline includes 365 Data Centers turning back on the cloud services and releasing our backups – at least that is what their team has repeatedly been telling me.

We do not yet know details of the new information that David found disturbing, but it’s surely nothing that would make us feel better about the situation.  My hope is that we’ll be back up with Balloon Juice within a week or 10 days.

In the meantime, I’m trying to make this site as comfy as possible since our 3-hour tour has turned into a much longer one than that!

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