Ok, so depite all the technical wizardry sitting around my "dungeon" (a loving title assigned to my computer room, or "pit" as my wife calls it) I will be the first to admit I struggle trying to keep up on these "techy" things. But on to my adventure.
I'm not even sure what I was doing, but the computer started to go crazy on me. My little Security/Virus Protection program just started multiplying. The little icon that usually sits so placidly in the bottom right hand corner of the screen with all it's other little icon buddies just started replicating itself, until at one point there were over thirty of them,...and all the other little icon buddies were no where to be seen! I figured out they were just hiding from the gang of security icons who had taken over. It was annoying, but I could live with it, for a while anyway. Then the next day as I staggered upstairs to the "dungeon" with my hot cup of coffee at 5 am to see what happened in the world while my Blackberry and I were recharging our batteries, a strange thing happened. Everything seemed to be ok but suddenly up pops this stupid window message telling me my copy of Microsoft windows was not "genuine"! Now long ago in my mis-spent childhood with computers (mostly Apple back then) I was known to have a few "bootleg" things on my 'puter. However when I was forced to become a "Windows Slave" a combination of my total fear of the blue "screen of death", all the stories and rumors about the "evil empire" of Microsoft and it's covert plan to rule the world through it's software and then it's raw power of control over people. (I had visions of whimpering little people, begging and pleading just to see the titles on thier incoming e-mails, a "Super 'puter" that charged you unilaterally set fee's for use and simply took them from your bank account, you know, things like that!) Well I cleaned up my act and absolutely refuse to have a single thing on my 'puter not approved, bought and paid for, with receipts, backups, and original disks and manuals stacked in the four foot piles here in the "dungeon". (Light just popped on, ..maybe that's why my wife calls it a pit! I think of them as reference materials but I can see where someone may think the piles are more like those stalagmites or stalagtites you find growning in caves. Note to self: try and pick up the place a bit tomorrow afternoon.)
Then it started doing it's own thing. Like downloading my e-mail and leaving it open just long enough for me to read the titles and WHAM, the whole program just closes up and is off the screen. (Yes Virginia there really are "thought police", I have seen them, they are in my 'puter this week!)
After three or four days of the usual stupid operator stuff, you know, un-install almost everything you have and hope with each "continue" button you hit the problems all miraculously go away, I had to give up. I was going to bed running mental lists of programs and installation sequences, living in fear that tomorrow would be the last time my 'puter would function, and then I'd be stranded, just like the "Survivors" on some sterile, 'puterless Island, forced to use #2 Pencils and that paper stuff. God know I've been using 'puters so long now I don't even know if I remember how to write words any more as opposed to typing them. (Note to self: check the garage and see if I kept an old typewriter as a backup or emergency stash)
By Tuesday I was desparate! Then I saw "the computer guy", our companies outside technical consultant, walking through the office. "Yo, Chris, got a minute?"
Seems he does do outside work sstuff for a fee so I grabbed him quickly and he happened to be available that evening. I had a Board of Directors meeting I couldn't get out of at 5:30 so I had him meet me in the parking lot of my office at 6:30 and we'd head out to my house to "fix" things. (First Board meeting I ever held standing up! But we got it done and I was the first one dashing out the door after the motionto adjourn was seconded.
Stay tuned for tomorrows installment as we raced through traffic to perform the emergency lobotomy on my 'puter that would save it's life and my sanity.
Is it a worm?
Is it a virus?
Is it just a stupid operator error??
Or is 'puter in deeper water that we first suspected?
Would the techy turn sadly to me after beating the keys frantically for ten minutes and simply recommend "hospice care"?
We'll all find out tomorrow!
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