Monday, December 27, 2010

Adventures in Computing

Monday dawned cool and cloudy. What is up with that ? It's summer for crying out loud ! I want to know where the sun is because it's not here or anywhere else in Australia if weather reports are to be believed and I know it's not in the Northern hemipshere becaue I keep seeing pictures of 12 foot high snow drifts.  Anyhoo- I did my usual morning routine of hazily finding my way to the kettle (I usually do this with my eyes still firmly shut) shuffling down to the computer , hitting the on button, and staggering off to the bathroom.

Once all that is done I make my coffee and come and sit here to catch up with whats been going on with everyone on the other side of the world while I've been getting my customary 6 whole hours of shut eye, only about three of which I actually sleep because Mr. P snores like a freaking freight train.

Monday was no different. Except that when I sat down with my coffee and finally opened my eyes. I saw that my computer had been hijacked by a nasty trojan virus.  Flashing warnings, pop ups,  dire messages,  lights and alarms-it was like the carnival had come to town but nowhere near as fun, especially since I hadn't had my coffee yet and there wasn't a clown in sight.  

I panicked.  "Breathe , Breathe"  I told myself. I wasn't so much worried that my computer was about to crash and that I would lose 234 half finished blog posts, photos of Little P's birth and all our financial records. I was more worried I'd be offline for DAYS , possibly WEEKS because our computer guy is taking a holiday until at least January 4th. While I muttered about what a selfish bastard that made him, I tried to do a system restore only to find the System Tool Virus had disabled all my programs including my ability to run virus removal, access my email, and in fact run any programs at all except Solitaire, which effectively made my computer the worlds biggest bloody Atari. Uncustomarily, rather than shake Mr. P awake at 6.30am with news of this tragedy, I decided  to shut the computer down and  wait for  the computer whizz to wake up.  I went and cleaned out the bathroom cabinets. I felt very virtuous as their annual cleaning is not due until January. 

I own 8 hairbrushes, have 300 hair ties, and discovered a hair straightener I'd forgotten I had. I tossed the makeup I've had so long that blue eye shadow is back in fashion. I can stop buying soap because I have the world market cornered and  I had so many out of date prescription medications I probably could have opened up my own Russian Roulette Pharmacy.  

When Mr . P got up two hours later,  I didn't even say Good Morning before I said: 

 "Mycomputerisbrokenandinfectedbyavirusandyouhavetofixitrightnowbecauseivebeencomputerlessfortwohoursnditskillingme,andbythewayialsoneedmorecoffee" (which  I clearly didn't)

90 minutes later Mr. P had restored my computer back to health. The rest of the day was largely uneventful. I never want to be shocked awake like that again.

How was your day?



19 comments:

  1. I thought I had a trojan virus Christmas morning it came up with all these warning etc etc etc but I ran our virus scan and nothing could be found. I turned the computer off and back on did another scan and nothing. Bloody computer and even worse those heinous people who sit in dark rooms making virus' to ruining peoples mornings..

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  2. Oh God, I would be beside myself ! How lucky you are to have a computer genius living with you even if he snores!
    Cheers
    Helen

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  3. So, did you scream? I would have. Those virus inventors are mean. So mean spirited and they live very small lives I think. Happened to me a couple of months ago. Lucky Mr P was on the scene!

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  4. I only have one thing to say.....

    "get a mac!'


    ok, so I have more than one thing to say.... "if you have a mac, you don't get these nasty surprises in the morning, or at any other time in fact!"

    gee, I hope you don't already have a mac.... if you do, then you have made history!

    oh yes... sorry, mac computers cannot do ANYTHING about Mr P snoring :-(

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  5. Oh, I hate it when there are computer issues and my guy (also nicknamed computer guru) is out of town (or even worse out of the country). Thankfully we have more than one computer, so if one is really badly broken, I do have options. Glad Mr. P was able to get your back in business.

    My guy is a big believer in backing up files, so much so that for my birthday last year he gave me a huge external drive so I can back up my files. It's come in handy more than once.

    OK now I have clean cabinet envy! I'm afriad to look at what we've got stashed in the bathrooms!

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  6. Ooh! I'm so glad everything computy turned out okay. We caught the nasty virus this summer. Thankfully, we were able to save the most important files...my pictures from the past 12 years of my kids. I really need to get an external drive. Maybe that should be a new year's resolution?

    At least you spent that nervous energy doing something productive, right? Kudos for cleaning the cabinet. And you're so nice...I'd have awakened everyone in the house with language that doesn't suit their delicate ears. LOL

    Happy Monday night, friend!

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  7. Oh, my day was nothing like yours. I'm feeling sorry for myself because the snowstorm missed us. I had 1/2" that blew away in last night's crazy wind. WAH!! I want to see snow in the country, lots of it!

    In the meantime, DH felt the smallness of our house this Christmas and no longer cares if he has hunting rights on his own property, he wants to have a real house real soon. I don't want to rush. This will be an interesting couple of weeks.

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  8. Oh, my day was nothing like yours. I'm feeling sorry for myself because the snowstorm missed us. I had 1/2" that blew away in last night's crazy wind. WAH!! I want to see snow in the country, lots of it!

    In the meantime, DH felt the smallness of our house this Christmas and no longer cares if he has hunting rights on his own property, he wants to have a real house real soon. I don't want to rush. This will be an interesting couple of weeks.

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  9. For the most part, I'm lucky enough to be my own computer guy. I've got my whole laptop (well, okay, not today's work) backed up on my external harddrive and I've got a tablet and two palm pilots ready to pick up the slack should anything happen.(I also have 5 USB sticks, 2 SD cards and a Transflash in my handbag, but maybe I'm a little overcautious)

    Since I'm rarely even awake during that side of the morning, I've never woken up to that before, but I remember once eBay going down at about 1am and not being able to go to sleep till it came back at about 6.30am.

    That was horrible.

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  10. yep, seems to be happening everywhere ... i've now banned craigslist, ebay and facebook browsing from the office computers. not sure where this crap is coming from but don't want to "catch" it.

    daily backups at the office and at home too i still worry more about a drive failure than a virus or hacker ...

    someday i want the computer to brew my coffee while it's powering up ... that would be the ultimate!!!

    happy new year....
    and oh .. the sun is shining today ... let the melting begin!

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  11. So glad your computer is back up and running - I too LOVE my computer more than most family members (okay - extended famiy members). My handsome hubby snores like a freight train also and most nights ends up in the guest room across the hall - one of the few advantages of living in an old, small house with tiny bedrooms instead of a new, modern one with a giant 'master suite' -we each get our own tiny bedroom.

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  12. That is too shocking for early morning, I sympathize. You exhibited extreme restraint by not shouting to the rafters (or in Mr. P's ear) about it and waiting until he got up, albeit your cupboard got a lashing. Whew! Good thing its fixed!

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  13. Oh how awful, What a dreadful thing to wake up to, and so very very frustrating. I suppose one good thing, your bathroom is de-cluttered.
    I second Helen, get a Mac, no viruses! The only downside to a Mac, you can" t use EQ7
    Lucky Mr P was on hand to fix the problem.

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  14. I second the get a Mac, though I did put a virus thing on a couple of months ago when my credit cards had fraudulent transactions on them just for piece of mind. Sometimes the jokes don't work if they have wav files otherwise life is good with a Mac. I'm the computer guru in this family so if I can't fixed it we are stuck.

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  15. Oh, what would we do without the techies in our life? Good share! you had me nervous.
    !

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  16. Hi Shay:

    You are so funny. I cant stand it when I think something is wrong with the computer. My husband is not at all techy. I am know enough to be dangerous. But I have awonderful IT guy at work who always fixes me right up. Except when I am on vacation like right now. Oh what would I do if I have a problem in the next 7 days? Now you have me worried. Glad your DH got it fixed for you.

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  17. I would have had a hissy fit as well....my bother is my IT person and he never gets out of bed before 10 in the school holidays, lucky Sydney is on daylight saving as it means one less hour to wait :-) I'm thinking up upgrading to a mac thru those computer hire people, will have to check it out properly first but lots of people swear by a mac!!

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  18. so glad that Mr P came through in the clutch! Maybe you were rewarded by an easy fix because you let him sleep in :)

    Hope the rest of the week is uneventful!

    great job cleaning out the bathroom cabinets while you waited! We have open shelves in both of our upstairs bathrooms, which is nice because it forces me to keep things minimal.

    off to make cinnamon rolls~

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  19. That is an UGLY way to wake up. Glad Mr. P could fix it.

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