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Thanks to everyone for your understanding while I was dealing with the website hack. Unfortunately, as a result, I am currently about 3 days behind on editing, and sorting through hundreds of emails. I am working furiously to get caught up, and will do my best to keep everyone updated. Thanks so much in advance for your patience!

UPDATE 8/19/08: The server that was hosting my website was recently hacked. Thanks to my new best friend Tim, the affected files on my site have been repaired, so it appears the crisis has been averted. Still, I highly recommend that you install some type of anti-virus software on your computer – I’ve done everything I can on my end to keep this from happening again, but that doesn’t mean I’m hack-proof. Even if I were hack-proof, you may happen to come across an entirely different website that’s been affected, or accidentally open an email with spyware in it. You can get a free anti-virus app here, I used to use this one myself when I had a PC:

http://free.avg.com/

Thanks also to my friend Andy for staying up late with me on the phone, helping me to get this mess straightened out!

UPDATE 8/20/08: I spoke to a client today and she mentioned her computer was infected with a virus sometime within the last few days – and she had NOT been to my website at all recently. So apparently, there are also some other viruses currently making the rounds. The particular virus she got is causing her computer to spontaneously turn itself off and on, making it difficult to fix because she can’t stay online long enough to look for a removal tool. She was running McAfee anti-virus software, and the virus still got through. I can’t emphasize it enough, please try to protect yourself and your data as much as you can – at minimum, back up your data to other media (it only takes a few minutes to burn a disc full of files) and get some anti-virus software (better yet, run more than one). If you have anti-virus software installed and don’t have it scheduled to run regular scans on your entire system, do it – even if you don’t have a virus, it will help catch other things like tracking cookies that hackers can use to track your keystrokes, among other things. Nothing is foolproof, but it doesn’t hurt to try!

My website appears to be down at the moment – I’ve contacted my web host, so hopefully it will be back up soon!

EDITED TO ADD: Website is back up!

Today The Princeton Review (who rates the top colleges and universities) named my alma mater, The University of California at Santa Barbara, the number 9 party school in the country! Yeah, I know, it’s an interesting claim to fame, back when I was there I think we were number 2, so I guess things have calmed down a bit (although I don’t remember partying a whole lot, I was busy in the lab being a pharmacology major – but I admit I had my moments, haha). Party school reputation aside, UCSB has to have one of the most beautiful campuses anywhere, and I totally miss the awesome weather. If you get a chance to visit Santa Barbara, go! And while you’re there, have a Freebirds burrito and a Blenders in the Grass smoothie for me!

*EDITED TO ADD: I am cracking up here – I just saw that UCSB was also ranked number 4 in the “Lots of Hard Liquor” category, and number 18 in “Reefer Madness” LOLOLOL! Now I can tell you that I smelled a joint many times when walking around campus, but as far as the hard liquor thing goes – from what I remember, among the poor college students there was a heck of a lot more Natural Light than hard liquor!