Reinstall

I only managed three hours of sleep last night.

When I'm not over-engineering complex solutions to rather simple problems, I sometimes fall prey to them. Yesterday I download an *.exe file and thought to myself, "I bet that's a virus." But because I work for a technologies company who provides us very robust tools, I laugh a viruses, mostly because I don't use Windows. That day, however, I was on my XP box. Not to worry, I scanned the file and it came back with a clean bill of health. Unfortunately, the moment I double-clicked it, well...let's just say my virus software finally became aware of the problem. It dawned on me that my company doesn't give us the best anti-virus solution, rather, the most cost-effective. Fortunately, I also run Spybot's registry resident, which blocks all changes to my registry. Unfortunately, the virus in question persistently probed the operating system for access, resulting in thousands of popups, two every half-second. Growing tired of this game, I finally selected, "remember this decision" and chose 'block.' At least, I thought I did. For whatever reason, the resident doesn't fully draw its buttons, so I actually ended up choosing, 'allow' at which point Spybot notified me one last time of my choice, and the virus shut down my computer.

I booted into linux and ran f-prot on the windows partition, deleting several of the executables:

sudo ./f-prot -a

[Found security risk] {W32/Backdoor.BVZK (exact)} /media/sda1/bndafai.exe

Disinfect (Y/N/A/Q) ? Y
Yes
[Warning] {Error closing file: Success} /media/sda1/bndafai.exe
[Deleted] /media/sda1/bndafai.exe

But it was all downhill from there. Despite my dizzying array of malware-hunters I was unable to locate the trojans which infected me, and reinstalled. Yes, I was up all night. Fortunately, separate volumes house all my data, so I only had to blow away the OS disc. And while this was a tremendous pain in the ass, re-installing my apps was quick and painless and as an added bonus, my 4-year old computer again runs like a scalded ape. And to think I was considering a new computer. The only thing I have left to do is reinstall the liunx boot-block.

And I received the new iPods yesterday! While I was importing my iTunes data into the new installation I paid particular attention to cover art, and had a discussions with stuf123 who's going to draw album art for the new Indiana Jones Soundtracks Collection for us! Interestingly, the Nano cannot sync video podcasts - the number one reason why my wife wanted them. I'm still baffled by this discovery, but the apple support forums are already ablaze with accusations, so I think I'll sit this one out and wait for the firmware upgrade. The first thing I put on my iPod was Excelsior! followed by Indiana Jones.



Thanks babe!


The only break I took during last nights activities was to play a game of three-way 'War' with my kids using a deck of Star WarsRebel and Imperial cards shuffled together.

I lost.

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And finally, that meme going around - I saw it first at wyldemusick:

If you saw ME in a police car, what would you think I had been arrested for?