My Netbook has contracted a nasty virus—don’t know what it is, yet, since my three antivirus anti-spyware programs (which I update every blessed morning) don’t seem to see it.
Luckily I have backups of my documents everywhere—including hard copies, since I like to red pen my revisions. I’ve learned that lesson,* if not the one about not allowing my family to use my computer while I’m at the day job.
If anyone knows what nasty computer bugs\worms\wolverines fill up the taskbar with little red shield warnings and the screen with messages asking me if I really want to scan my system with infected programs (booga, booga) ,while throwing up multitudes of Internet pages,** please let me know.
And if you might know how to get rid of the $#%$ thing(s), have pity on me. I’m running Windows XP from an EeePC Netbook***—or I would be, if I could get through! I’m going to try a system reset as soon as the latest scan is done.
In the meantime, it’s back to legal pads and library computers^ for me . . . which might not be a bad thing. Maybe trying a different format will help me get back in touch with my characters. And I could use the time to summarize what I’ve done so far, maybe work up a timeline.
So, maybe it’s not such an injury after all . . . until I give up and have to pay someone $150 to clean my Netbook. But by that time, I might have something worthwhile to type up.
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*Holy Cow, have I learned that lesson. I have flashbacks about learning that lesson. Way back when floppies were all one had (the 3.5″ ones, not the big ones, which I do remember, thank you and shut up), I lost a twenty pages of a twenty-three page term paper the night before it was due. Because floppies are delicate creatures and I only had one copy. Oddly enough, the computer lab hadn’t kept a copy on whichever workstation I’d been using before. . .
And if that wasn’t enough, I also once lost 53,000 words of what was clearly a potential Pulitzer-Nobel-Booker-Los Angeles Times-Faulkner-National Book Critic Circle–Etc. Award Winner, once I finished it and found an agent and a publishing house willing to take a chance on my creative vision. It was about a 1906 librarian who was swept from her own time and place to lead a quest to a Manticore to exchange a mouse for the True Crown of the Kingdom of Wendell. Okay, well . . . my mother liked it.
**Ads for anti-viral software, viagra, and a variety of porn, what a surprise.
***If you’re an Apple user, please don’t bother with the smug comments. If I could afford an iAnything, I’d buy one.
^Note to my day job supervisor: before work and on breaks, I swear.
Earful of Cider 