Monday, December 6, 2010

No progress

No progress this weekend, due to happy and not-at-all events.

Happy events included a Christmas walk where my mom, aunt, and I got to ride on a horse-drawn wagon.

The unhappy events involved falling prey to a sneaky virus-like program. I assumed it was part of Windows Vista and telling the truth that my computer was about to go kaput. It took me about 12 hours to backup my data and remove 40 GBs of pictures from the harddrive. Then I scan disked. Then I let the program run. It did a few things. Claimed other things were still unfixed. The minute it asked for money, my spidey-sense began to stir. I went back into safe-mode, eventually stumbled across my Temp folder. Inside it, were several exe/applications that went into the trashcan. Why? Because it is extremely unlikely for any legit program to run from Temp. Once I did that, I was ok. Well, except a harddrive free space discrepancy--in safe-mode, I have about 82 GBs free. In regular mode? 70 something. Can't quite recall but I believe it is about 78 or 79. Where did they go?

Anyway, lesson learned. Any program that claims critical problems? Check out where it is running from. At least something else was gained from this. First, I cleaned up my harddrive some, because these newer computers hate for you to dip under half-way mark on free harddrive space. Second, I have several backup copies of important files. Third, I had to pull out my older computer. It is slower but more reliable--love Acers--and is now my writing computer. My other one, which seems to get a couple viruses a year is now my Internet/Movie watching computer. Even so, internal harddrives are about the most reliable form of backup media. So my writing files and like are going to be backed up from Old Reliable to Panic-Attack Computer from time to time.

So, those are my excuses. Should have time to write today and snippet tomorrow.

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