Notes from the Back Office
The trouble with invisible work is that it’s easy to undervalue until the day it matters. So this blog is where we make some of it visible. We call it Notes from the Back Office: real problems from real sites, written so no client is identified, with what we learned and what you can check on your own site.
What We Did the Day PHP2Shell Hit
On October 21, 2026, PHP released emergency fixes for two flaws that let an attacker take over a web server with a single request, no login required. Attacks started before the fix was even public. By that afternoon, every site we manage had been checked, and every one that could be patched was patched or confirmed patched.
What 911 Taught Me About Keeping Websites Up
I’ve been building and running systems for about thirty years. I spent 1997 to 2009 at IBM, where I was lead developer on ThinkPlace, an innovation platform run out of the CIO’s office, and later led the team behind IBM’s virtual worlds initiative, exploring 3D collaboration spaces years before the idea went mainstream. After that came 911Buddy, an emergency connectivity platform I co-founded and ran as CTO. Then digital operations at a marketing agency, fifteen years looking after a regional data platform in Southwest Florida, and now Kinetic Thoughts.
Yes, We’re the Back Office
Most of what we do, nobody sees. That’s not a complaint. It’s the job.