You win some; you lose some
I haven't posted in awhile because I've been jousting with a computer virus for the last several days. This is one of my least favorite things to do, because it is so time consuming. We've been virus and spyware free for a long time, the programs we've been using doing a good job of protection. But a particularly tenacious and irritating virus got through. I tried several different things in the evenings after work to fix it, various scans and file deletions that had worked in the past, but this time to no avail. Finally today I turned to the nerdy, geeky, techie guys.
I love the nerdy, geeky, techie guys. I'm borderline nerd myself (once upon a time I carried a slide rule around; not just any slide rule, but a circular slide rule, just to be different; and early in my engineering career I dabbled in artificial intelligence programming), but don't ultimately have the patience for the detail that being a good nerd requires. Boy am I glad, though, that there are people who love that stuff.
I found one of their web sites with detailed instructions on how to do a thorough, deep clean of our computer. I ran programs we already have; I downloaded and ran new programs. Some of the scans took forever. Some six or seven hours later I got to the last of the initial (yes, initial!!!) steps, after which I'd be able to re-boot the computer and see if they had worked. I was pretty sure up to that point that the problem still existed, because I hadn't seen the particularly offensive culprit identified and eliminated. Like finding your car keys in the last place you look, I believe that last step got rid of the problem.
Re-boot.
Victory! The dark side was defeated.
Which is more than can be said for the Huskies, who came close to beating the Evil Empire today. And it's more than can be said for the Dodgers, who got swept out of the playoffs today as well (but those #%*& Yankees were tossed out, too - huzzah!).
Nevertheless, while they were losing we got a healthy computer back again.
Fair dinkum.
I love the nerdy, geeky, techie guys. I'm borderline nerd myself (once upon a time I carried a slide rule around; not just any slide rule, but a circular slide rule, just to be different; and early in my engineering career I dabbled in artificial intelligence programming), but don't ultimately have the patience for the detail that being a good nerd requires. Boy am I glad, though, that there are people who love that stuff.
I found one of their web sites with detailed instructions on how to do a thorough, deep clean of our computer. I ran programs we already have; I downloaded and ran new programs. Some of the scans took forever. Some six or seven hours later I got to the last of the initial (yes, initial!!!) steps, after which I'd be able to re-boot the computer and see if they had worked. I was pretty sure up to that point that the problem still existed, because I hadn't seen the particularly offensive culprit identified and eliminated. Like finding your car keys in the last place you look, I believe that last step got rid of the problem.
Re-boot.
Victory! The dark side was defeated.
Which is more than can be said for the Huskies, who came close to beating the Evil Empire today. And it's more than can be said for the Dodgers, who got swept out of the playoffs today as well (but those #%*& Yankees were tossed out, too - huzzah!).
Nevertheless, while they were losing we got a healthy computer back again.
Fair dinkum.
