Computer Induced Insanity

Picture me with my head spinning around like a character in a cheep horror film. That is the way I have felt most of the past 24 hours.

It all started Monday night in the Atlanta airport when I tried to connect Pat’s laptop to their wireless network. I connected to SOMETHING wireless, but I’m still not convinced that it was the airport’s wireless system because I got a peer-to-peer connection and never was able to check e-mail or connect to any websites. I might have been connected to a teenaged hacker sitting nearby—who knows?

I got nervous about the situation and quickly disconnected. Everything seemed ok after we returned home about midnight and as of 2:00 AM Tuesday morning as I was able to surf websites and check my E-mail. Pat’s company E-mail server was down.

I collapsed on the sofa to sleep and awoke early and attempted to again connect to Pat’s companies’ E-mail server through Microsoft Outlook to begin downloading 10 days worth of E-mail for her.

The server was apparently down—AGAIN. Arghhhh!

By that time I was for some reason also having trouble connecting to Yahoo and Google. The pages were loading slower than a dial-up connection, and I was using the wireless connection to the cable modem.

As I absent mindedly closed a couple of browser windows I noticed a “Public Dialer” program being downloaded in the background. What the heck is a Public Dialer?

AHHHH, I was being Spybotted.

I quickly disconnected from the Internet and shut the computer down. This was about 6:30 AM. I spent the next two hours doing a virus check and a spybot sweep and when Pat awoke I sheepishly told her about the problem. I though that it was my fault that we had caught something in the Atlanta Airport.

By 9:30 AM we decided to contact Pat’s company’s IT support hotline. A nice young man named Nathan spent THREE HOURS on the telephone with me trying to dissect the problem to no avail. We couldn’t figure out why the computer was so slow.

Finally I got the bright idea to try using my computer on the wireless network and guess what? It was slow as Christmas also.

Pat then called Adelphia and learned that THE NETWORK SERVERS HAD A VIRUS AND THEY WERE WORKING ON IT.

As of 3:00 AM we are still forced to use our dial up back up service. Why is it that trouble always comes in twos or threes? We still have a spyware problem on Pat’s computer, but the Adelphia network problem served to disguise and exasperate the problem and delay our solution. We can’t get to the approved spyware removal program using a slow dial up connection, so Pat is paralyzed until Adelphia gets their act together.

I finally got the time to post “You have to Stand for Something” in the last hour. I wrote it about 7:30 AM Tuesday morning. I’ll see what else I can come up with to write, but I’m afraid that today is going to be spent dealing with network issues and getting Pat back online so she can work from the Condo.

Wish me luck…