I teach law at a university  .. I also run the website here ...  php 
with a mysql backend ...


- I have been designing a client side administration tool which allows 
you to setup both the html input form to request from a database and 
format the way the results look and are returned ... so that academics 
can setup and run their own databases ...

- of course during setup and debugging I ran from the /temp directory of 
the website (we dont have a test machine)

- after debugging was over i forgot about the extra copy of this script 
in the /temp directory and forgot to delete it ..(there was no security 
on the script)

- what i also forgot was that in my last lecture series I had left the 
presentation files for the students in the .. you guessed it ... /temp 
directory  ..

- the students .. being students didnt actually look at the lecture 
notes very much, and i had deleted them ..

- however its exam time  ... and all of them in a flurry logged on to 
the site ('/temp') ... but instead of finding the lecture series they 
find this strange control panel with lots of weird buttons...
- web user + strange buttons on page => bugger ...

so about two weeks ago the site started to go haywire ... links stopped 
working .. databases started screwing up ..

- i had entirely forgot about the contents of the /temp directory ..
- i was going INSANE trying to continually fix the site ..
- i thought we were being hacked and ran a constant netstat, logged all 
visitor activity and made two separate complaints about what seems now 
were innocent web users ...
- i didnt sleep
- my girlfriend nearly dumped me ..
- i was sure there was a conspiracy at hand ..

- I only stumbled on the /temp directory when i began rebuilding a new 
site to replace what I had now decided was a comprimised code base ... I 
started in the /temp directory of course ;)


- I am sure there is a lesson here somewhere .. I think it is probably 
more valuable just to laugh at ..

ps thanks for all the help on the last run of stupidity I had (re 
!#@$!#$ regular expressions posts here)

happy programming!


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