Blogs Are Stupid

Doesn't anyone believe in Dear Diary anymore? What happened to the joy of putting actual pen to paper? And why does every ordinary Jane and John think they can write well enough to burden the world with their scribblings? It’s a mystery that badly needs solving. My first entry contains my thoughts about blogging and will set your expectations. The rest will probably be stream of consciousness garbage, much like you’ll find on any other blog. Perhaps we will both come away enlightened.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

No More Internet Porn For Me

Remember this? My laptop is toast. Was toast. Is still sorta toasted but at least functioning although I have little more than an operating system and the will to blog.

Apparently, that little trojan fugger (WinAntivirusPro 2007) that infected my pc was not really gone, but hiding. And it is very, very smart. It turned off my firewall, disabled my antivirus protection and overrode all my security protocols. Then it hung a neon Coor's sign in the window, crushed some peanut shells into the carpet and called all it's friends.

So I was doing my morning internet thang...sippin some Starbuck's Espresso roast with a hint of fat free hazelnut creamer...pulling up the internet trifecta; email, Bloglines, Sandbox (small private ladies' internet group)...when all of a sudden....BLAMMO! I got the same message that had sucked me into the soulless blue vortex of doom the last time. This time though, I knew that I was well and truly screwed so the panic set in a lot faster.

Luckily, Husband was working from home today and was sitting beside me doing his morning internet thang. Help was readily at hand.

I hollered "SHIT!"

Husband jumped and narrowly avoided scalding his privates, but quickly inferred that something was horribly awry. He's really intuitive that way.

"The hell???" he asked indignantly.

"I got that message again!!"

"What messs-"

"Hurry!! Shit is HAPPENING!"

Windows were popping up willy nilly, a task bar appeared and began progressing with distressing speed. I was paralyzed with fear and indecision. Husband jumped out of his chair and rushed to my side.

"NO!" he growled. "Don't let that finish!! DON'T LET THAT FINISH!! Shut it down!Abort! Abort!"

He wrested the computer from my grasp and began typing furiously.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" he said.

He typed some more, fingers flying over the keyboards with preternatural speed that only programmers and uber geeks can boast. They were all but invisible as he wrestled with the slick, sophisticated little digital demon that is WinAntivirusPro 2007.

Finally, with a resigned groan...he hit the kill switch and my poor little laptop winked into blackness. Husband stood there breathing heavily and glowering.

Timidly, I asked "Did you....?"

He looked at me with a mixture of defeat and sympathy.

"Baby..." he said softly, "I can't save it. There's just been too much damage. I'm going to have to...."

I inhaled sharply, knowing what was coming but not wanting to hear the words.

"I'm going to have to reformat it. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay. You did everything you could. I know how hard you tried."

"If we had just known." he sighed. "I thought...I thought I got everything. But all this time, the bastard's been hiding deep inside, corrupting files, overriding security protocols...it was a total system failure, baby."

With a dissolute shrug, he picked up my laptop and gingerly carried it upstairs to begin the delicate job of data retrieval and reformatting the hard drive, while I tried to pick up the pieces and carry on.

My day was pretty busy, so I didn't have time to dwell on my loss and that's a good thing. When I got home, Husband told me had managed to save my iTunes files onto his hard drive, (almost 4GB worth) and luckily, after the last battle with WAVP2007, I had backed up all my documents onto a flash drive and have been doing frequent backups ever since.

But my email addresses (thousands) my bookmarks (hundreds), my images (also hundreds, but mostly borrowed from public sources) some photos (sent to me by others, so not my own, and not original files), my passwords (yes, I'm one of those idiots who stored my passowrds ON my computer, but the file was cleverly disguised as a recipe), my backgrounds, my desktop....it's all gone.

My trusty little laptop seems so naked, so vulnerable.

Well, now I begin the process of rebuiling. It will take a while, but I will perservere.

People, if you encounter this thing...for God's sake, shut your computer down immediately and get some professional help. This is not a virus, but a very sophisticated Trojan and it is MURDER to get rid of. It can do incalculable damage to your system and may even damage your hard drive irrevocably. Husband says it's been a long time since he's seen anything this nasty.

Despite my titillating (and, er...wholly in jest) title, you can get this insidious little thing even if you don't surf for porn (and I'm betting most of you don't). You can get it from an infected email even if you don't open attachments. You can get it just by visiting a site that is a portal. You won't even know because they are very well disguised and completely innocuous looking. You can even get it by GASP! reading blogs. I asked husband how to keep from getting this thing again and his wry response was, "Stop using the internet."

So, just a little PSA from B.A.

Now...I have to go replace all the fancy window dressing on my pc. I can't stand to see it shivering and denuded.

And when I'm done with that, I'm going to compose a scathing commentary about the miniscule man parts of those who create and unleash such menaces. You know...I'm sorry you can't harbor life within you, but that doesn't mean you have to be a giant gaping asshole.

Forgive my lack of commenting today. I was with you in spirit.

28 Comments:

  • At 9:44 PM, Blogger dawn224 said…

    ooohhh the BSOD sucks. Macs have varying degrees of the same, one is when you boot up to see a mac staring back at you with a sad face, but the worst is when it just flashes an icon of a disk with a question mark on it. Like your computer is blank eyed and drooling and going wtf?

    My condolences over your laptop.

     
  • At 9:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    OK, perhaps now I know why my laptop is dying a slow death. Shuts off indiscriminately for no reason. Took it to geeks. They can't find anything wrong with it so they can't fix it.

    Now I"m on the desktop. New laptop ordered.

    How do we avoid or gt rid of this things beside your dear husband's suggestion of abandoning life, I mean, the internet???

     
  • At 9:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I am soooo sorry -- I've been through that virus crap, and it's way no fun. I in fact just bought a big backup drive so that everything I care about will be in two places (at least)...

    Take care.

     
  • At 9:50 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Total bummer. My husband said the same thing about how not to get such stuff...don't use the internet.

    Well, that won't happen.

    Good luck with rebuilding.

     
  • At 10:21 PM, Blogger S said…

    Oh, man. That totally sucks. I am so sorry.

     
  • At 10:32 PM, Blogger flutter said…

    little rat bastard trojan fucker! I would kick its digital ass, but I fear for my life.

     
  • At 11:01 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I am exactly where you are. My laptop bit the dust a few weeks ago and I have no email addresses or favorites. I had about 15 posts written. Gone. I lost a bunch of pictures. And I'm not a very good about backing up my files much to husband's chagrin. Gah. I hope it's not true that you can get it just from blog reading. If so, I'm sunk.

     
  • At 11:40 PM, Blogger Girlplustwo said…

    it's amazing how dependant we've become on these little boxes.

    shame on us, really. but i am very sorry for your loss and the necessary rebuilding.

     
  • At 12:53 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Oh man, that sucks. I am now living in fear. If were my laptop were to quit on me I would be in a world of hurt. Serious. I need to go dig out the external hard drive and back up like now. Gah.

     
  • At 7:03 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I'm just jealous that your husband is computer literate. I feel like I'm working with the hard of learning when I try to explain computer stuff to my husband.

    Hugs from my laptop to yours.

    Jane, Pinks & Blues Girls

     
  • At 7:29 AM, Blogger Ruth Dynamite said…

    Most of this post reads like an episode of ER (from the early years when it was good).

    I'm sorry for your loss.

     
  • At 7:45 AM, Blogger tracey.becker1@gmail.com said…

    You all are scaring me. I've been hearing about it, and I haven't gotten it, YET, and I don't have most of my stuff saved or flashed or whatever the hell you're talking about. I'm just shutting down shop till I can talk to a professional.

    After I just do a few more things.... :)

     
  • At 8:07 AM, Blogger Mimi said…

    Ohhh ouch! You poor thing. I think I would crawl into a ball and hide for a while...

     
  • At 8:09 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    You have my every sympathy. We had that a few months back. It's taken me ages to sort everything out, although ours wasn't a virus just a little drop.
    Cheers dears

     
  • At 8:39 AM, Blogger Fairly Odd Mother said…

    What comes around, goes around. Those fuckers that create these things will get their just desserts, someday, I hope. Although, I don't believe in hell, so, crap! I hope it happens to them soon!

     
  • At 8:49 AM, Blogger Sarahviz said…

    Sort of sounds like a contagious STD that just keeps spreading, doesn't it??

    I'm keepin my legs closed!

     
  • At 8:55 AM, Blogger Bea said…

    There's something kind of freeing, I found, in starting completely from scratch - only 5 bookmarks in Firefox, only a few fresh emails in my Inbox.

    At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

     
  • At 10:54 AM, Blogger Christine at Watch Me No Watch Me said…

    I'm scared.

    My laptop does the same thing as kvetch's...just shuts down for no reason.

    I'm sorry you've gone through this, BA.

     
  • At 12:51 PM, Blogger painted maypole said…

    i always wonder what kind of total jerk writes these things and then sends them out in to the world. Get a real hobby, would you? Why not put some of the brilliant underused knowledge into solving homelessness or the healthcare crisis or rendering all nuclear weapons null and void. Arg.

    sorry for you.

     
  • At 3:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Bloody hell get an external HD. I haven't encountered this little character *yet* - have they found a cure for it yet, rather than undressing your computer?

     
  • At 3:41 PM, Blogger That Chick Over There said…

    "Stop using the internet"

    I understand all of these words individually, but for some reason this makes no sense to me at all. None!

     
  • At 3:55 PM, Blogger Amy Y said…

    Oh that sucks!!!
    Hang in there ~ and good luck getting your laptop back to normal!

     
  • At 6:25 PM, Blogger Chicky Chicky Baby said…

    *playing taps*

    Poor, poor laptop. He fought so hard. He was so brave. But in the end he went where all our laptops will someday go - the great Circuit City in the sky.

    My thoughts are with you during this difficult time.

     
  • At 7:11 PM, Blogger thailandchani said…

    Oh, geez! That's terrible! I'm not sure whether AVGFree is capable of catching something like that but I hope so!

    I can't imagine the mentality of people who would choose to write something like that and spread it around.


    Peace,

    ~Chani
    http://thailandgal.blogspot.com

     
  • At 8:32 PM, Blogger Liv said…

    Oh, that so totally blows. I hope I don't get nothing like that. I will say that on the whole, my Mac conversion has been incident free when compared to my years of PC usage. But, I still should stop living life as a maverick and get an external hard drive.

     
  • At 8:32 PM, Blogger Phoenix said…

    Macs can't get that right? Right?

    right?

    Every time something happens on our work computers, our IT guy says it's all the music. Not sure if it's true or not, but I limit mine now.

    I hope you can find everything again.

     
  • At 12:36 AM, Blogger Crazed Nitwit said…

    I know you're not new to me but I'm recommended your blog for blog day 2007 because your writing is so incredible.

     
  • At 2:58 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    It's not funny but how you wrote about it is very funny. This happened to me a year ago. It was a nightmare. I feel for you.

     

Post a Comment

<< Home