Tuesday. December 4, 2001

those were different days

"There is weeping in my heart
Like the rain falling on the city."

Paul Verlaine, Romances sans Paroles

We are so dependent on our computers. It's the way we communicate today. Yeah, I know. Everyone seems to be talking on cell phones. But no, it's e-mail that counts and WEB stuff.

So there was a virus going around today. This screen saver thing.

And FFP clicked on something before he thought. The good news is that he doesn't use Outlook so it didn't seem to damage much and it didn't send everyone in his address book a virus since he doesn't have addresses in Outlook. The file lingered after the virus found it, though, and I had him call in an expert to be sure.

Well, before computer woes, I had a work day, of course. Picked up SuRu at the Honda place where she, FFP and I all take our cars for service. We had lunch together at Thundercloud Subs. I was going to use a coupon but then it wasn't for our location. I'm not good with coupons. We wandered around Barnes and Noble a bit and I noticed one table that had a sign on one side 'New Nonfiction' and on the other 'Understanding our World.' A sleazy collection of New York junk and Islamic information.

I had a meeting and continued my research which revealed, of course, that there was no silver bullet. No magic way to make the task at hand easy.

So, yeah, I got home and FFP was all worried about his virus. And I was afraid to tackle the instructions on the Virus Scan site for finishing the clean-up. Fix the registry. Could probably do that. "Reinstall NAV files." Hmmm. Must mean Norton Anti-Virus. The virus tries to delete some files. The stuff still seems to be operating. It came with the machine and we download updates through a subscription. So, yeah, I told him to call Computer Nerdz. I'm a wimp. Then I thought about my mom. I called and warned her not to click any attachments.

Later, she called mumbling about strange problems. I couldn't tell what was going on.

So I went over there. Nope, she didn't have the virus. In fact, no one had sent it to her. No, someone had sent her a Christmas greeting with attachments. Attachments of a bmp and something else, totalling 15MB. And, not realizing it was still trying to download she tried to exit Outlook Express and it seemed to exit but was still running, trying to download it. I finally figured this out, got the virus protection completely up-to-date and let the download of that monster run (anybody know how to leave attachments at the server with Outlook Express?). Geez.

Then I went home and tried to print my family calendar. I got crosswise with the program and was producing copies without some events and then I had to change the black ink cartridge.

I hate computers. At the same time, I love them.

JUST TYPING
Computers.
Connect us.
And become badly behaved children.