My Computer Needs A Flu Vaccine

If my access to the Internet had a doorknob, somebody would most definitely have a broken foot due to my door slamming on same with great force…

I’ve smugly bragged many times in the past to friends and strangers alike that in all my 15 years of owning my own personal computer I’ve never had a hard disk crash and that I’ve never had a virus on one of my computers…until now. Well, something evil has descended onto St. Simons Island and, as a result, I’m afraid that my posting may be limited this week because MY COMPUTER HAS BEEN INVADED BY FORCES FROM HELL.

Late last Thursday night or early Friday morning (I don’t remember exactly when) I had an “event” that occurred while I was writing a blog post. I had about a half dozen Internet Explorer windows open at the time and I didn’t think much about it at first, but it seems that I’ve been “spybotted” or “virused” or something and it has one of our two computers acting like a drunken sailor on shore leave. My girlfriend, Pat, left town this morning with the healthy computer in her luggage and now I’m sitting here running virus scans, diagnostics, doing voodoo chants, Indian (sorry… make that Native American) rain dances, and generally patting this old Dell notebook on the back trying to get it regurgitate whatever is ailing it.

I am not inclined to make my blog efforts into commercial sites yet, so any pop-up ads or advertising you see while reading my efforts is probably the result of some of the modern “door-to-door” salesmen (ok, ok, ok, salespersons) out there that refuse to take “go to hell” as an answer and continue to poke their feet into our doors through our computers and inject their products into our online lives. I’ve had about enough of their marketing efforts. The bug in my machine slows everything down as it reads the files I’m looking at and highlights words in the text like they are hyperlinks. Then when you click on the link, it sends you to a “barganbuddy” page with ads on the specific word topic you click on. For the record, I don’t need a date, a mortgage, Viagra, a cheep vacation, or anything else your pop-up ad or other intrusive internet ad may be selling. Actually, I could use something for my bloodpressure about now…AHHHHHHHH!!!!

I’ve scanned and removed and repaired and just when I think things are back to normal, I reboot and it all starts all over again. Whatever happened to me last week, this computer can’t open a browser window and act normally and I have as yet to get the $#%@*& problem fixed.

For the old folks out there, it feels like I’m using an old IBM PC-XT with a 300 baud Hayes acoustic modem (the ones you had to dial manually and lay the telephone handset on top of.)