What goes around comes around.

Met up with the ex last night for dinner and a movie. It was actually a pleasant evening, though I found myself babbling throughout. He has a tendency to leave big, awkward silences, which I feel compelled to fill. He’s taken care of getting my name off the old bank accounts finally, and says I have a small amount of mail waiting for me at the old house. It doesn’t sound as though anything vital is awaiting my attention there, though. We went and saw a movie after dinner, “Sexy Beast” with Ben Kingsley. It was a great movie, but it had some of the most violent scenes in it that I’ve ever seen in a movie. Even though the movie telegraphed well in advance what was going to happen, I wasn’t prepared when it did happen.

The Professor seems comfortable that I keep in touch with The Engineer, though he also seemed quite gratified when I got home nearly an hour earlier than I predicted I would last night. We lay in bed just talking until after eleven o’clock again. I seem to have reached a nice settled plateau in my life right now, and it feels good not to be worrying about how everything is going to work out.

As mentioned earlier in the Diary, I co-administer a forum in cyberspace, where I’ve met a number of very good people, some of whom I regard as close friends. One of the things I have taken responsibility for is maintaining a small directory of sorts, which lists general information on all the regulars. I kept this at httpcity. Httpcity and I had a falling out a few months ago when they abruptly cut off hotlinking with no notice, and then deleted a post of mine to their administrative forum that complained about their actions. I’d planned to move the files to a new site, and even opened the site up and had started the move. I dragged my feet on it though, and figured I could put lots of attention into finishing the move when The Professor was in California at the end of August and I would be alone in the apartment.

Httpcities was hacked last week. I laughed in public when I heard the news, proclaiming that “paybacks were a bitch”. Apparently, httpcity will be getting the last laugh on me though, since all my files have been irretrievably lost. I need no lectures about keeping back-up copies – I know I should have done that. I had, in fact, kept back-up copies of most of it, but an incident I call The Great Format-C Disaster of 2000 wiped most of them out, and I’ve been too lazy about recreating them. I’m in the process of confessing to my virtual community about what I’ve done, but I feel terrible about it. I almost broke down in tears when I first read the alert from httpcities, and I still have that awful sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.