Doing something awesome!

Max had to regroup when his plans for the summer didn't materialize and checked in with me to see what I thought.  Hoping for a summer job to make lots of money, but that often doesn't turn out, I suggested Max do something awesome and not worry about making lots of money.  He manages pretty well with grants and on campus employment to pay his way at this point, and, after all, he may never be in a position to just choose what he will do for an entire summer ever again, why not make it something awesome???  What about the Peace Corp?  What about a cross country bike trip???  AH-HAH!!!!  That struck a chord with him and thus we have Tri-Lime Express.  The bike is a recumbent tricycle - a GREEN recumbent tricycle - and it won't be ALL the way across the country but it will be an AWESOME adventure!

Max is pretty pro-active when he knows what he wants.  He bought the trike after one trip to the store in Payson and then sold his car, and has got his airline ticket back east and most of his gear.  He has his maps and his route plotted out.

But Max - what about training????  Are you training for this????

I like writing.  Max doesn't.  I will ask questions to make it simple to get a story going.

Excited Mother

Access to some subscription material available

I have a skeleton site up http://latter-dayvillage.com with some limited material for our current subscribers.  The membership program isn't running so old usernames and passwords don't work.  You have to contact me to verify your current subscription then I will give you  temporary access.  This is just TEMPORARY!  It is no fun for you or for me, but it is better than nothing.  Old bookmarks will not work because they probably point to pages that are no longer extant.

It has actually been pretty sweet hearing from so many subscribers!  I have never talked to so many subscribers on the phone before, and it is so lovely to hear your comments about the site.  Everyone was wondering what was going on - and I am so sorry I was unable to send out an informative message to all subscribers because that is a function of the membership program and it is part of the old site and when we had to take it down because visitors were being diverted to some other website, there was no way to contact you - at least no easy way.  I could hand copy and paste 20,000 email addresses from a spreadsheet into a gmail message - not gonna even go there.

I have to nab my programmer to get the next phase of the rebuild going, so this temporary situation is NOT way more than temporary.

Keep in touch,
Debra

Coming Back Slowly

The new site is beginning to show up, and will become more functional a piece at a time.  I've put something up for now but we will shortly start the actual rebuild - so service will be spotty.  Please come back often to see the progress.

Someone with a PayPal account of the name Arifin Arif was involved with the hack and posed as LDV - if you know anything about this individual let me know.

Thanks,
Debra

Wednesday Update

Please contact me if you need a lesson. I have Gospel Principles Lesson 14, Gospel Doctrine Lessons through #29, Preparing for Exaltation Lessons through #27, all the YW Lessons, and Seminary Files for the D&C I can send to current subscribers.

We have a plan and a fall back plan we are working on.

I am so sorry that all these issues are interfering with your normal routine, plans and preparations.

Thanks for your encouragement.

Debra

Where the heck has LDV disappeared to???

During the renovation at our regular website, l a t t e r - d a y v i l l a g e dot com, I am using blogspot to keep in touch with our subscribers. Site security issues rendered the website out of commission for the time being. We are building a new site from the ground up because the original site was so vulnerable and so complicated, that it has been impossible to secure it or quickly rebuild it. I am not sure if there is someone who specifically wants to ruin our website or if in general, hackers found it an easy target with their sneaky methods for exploiting e-commerce websites, but either way, the site has been compromised and it seems that whenever we figure out how to eliminate one threat, within an hour or two, a new attack finds a new way in to mess things up.

HACKING 101

The reason this is possible is that the site was not originally set up to be what it has become. Add-ons were rigged to the original site, one after another over many years of time, and due to its complexity, the site uses many scripts that hackers have learned how to take advantage of. Each add-on created more vulnerabilities. Hackers know what to look for and send little robots out on the internet searching for sites using various e-commerce software versions with identifiable file names - and they have created little programs that know where to get in and damage a website. Software developers keep creating security patches and new versions of their programs to eliminate such vulnerabilities, and website owners have to be vigilant about keeping the latest patches and version updates installed.

Our website was set up by my deceased partner who kept integrating new features to the site over many years - and he had it configured in a way only he understood. If he had some measures for keeping the site secure, he took them to the grave with him. Often after a software update, he would report to me that it had been a harrowing night or weekend with him "sweating bullets" and back and forth with technical support trying to get everything to work right. When he died, the first time I got a notification that a new version of software needed to be installed on one of our sites, I carefully followed the instructions and the site disappeared. I panicked and hunted for a solution and became totally confused. Tim was not a programmer, but he had a much higher aptitude for technical matters than I do, and had been the one to set everything up to begin with, so I was really lost. In that particular instance, it was a related site that wasn't generating any revenue anyway, so I just let it go. I knew I could not have anything like that happen with LDV, and I really didn't know the risks involved, so I didn't mess with updating software over the last year and a half. There were issues I did know about that prompted me to hire programmers to help me upgrade the site. What they found when they got into the underlying code was a serious mess. And very recently we had an obvious attack that diverted a handful of transactions one evening that required us to shut down the site.

We have moved the site to a new server, and moved that server twice, and the hacker keeps finding us. We patch the hole in the code that he came through, and he finds another hole. Whether this is one person, or any number of skilled hackers who have automated ways of detecting vulnerabilities around the www and exploiting them it is impossible to tell. It seems like one individual from overseas that is intent on having his way with LDV.

Because the website is so big and uses so many different programs all patched together with complicated relationships, there is no simple way to untangle the mess and smoothly rebuild the site with a much cleaner , secure system, as we have been planning to do since long before Tim died. It would be akin to separating conjoined quintuplets.

I am nothing if not creative, so we are working to solve the dilemma. Each day the site is down, is a day of lost revenue, and financing the rebuild is also going to also take creativity. If the hacker intentionally came after LDV for whatever reason and wants to shut it down, this is probably sweet news to him - and if the hacker just wanted to exploit LDV, it's disappearance will cut off the nose to spite the face. Regardless, this is an important resource and it is my livelihood, and I'm not surrendering it to a hacker.

I am setting up another way to offer our store items in the interim. I am setting up a way to get lessons to subscribers. Come back very soon to see the solutions we are putting in place.

Best regards,

Debra Woods

Joseph Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont on December 23, 1805

The youngest class in Primary is called Sunbeams - who shine for Him each day

Apricots and popcorn have a unique relationship to latter-day saints

Several years ago, we called the Nursery Class Moonbeams, and the 4-7 year old classes were Stars

Just so you know its really me writing this