alexandraerin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexandraerin) wrote2009-05-24 10:48 pm
alexandraerin) wrote2009-05-24 10:48 pm
Entry tags:
The Trojan War Ended Not With A Bang, But A Whinny.
My E key came off my laptop the other day. I managed to get it back on. It's loose but doesn't appear to be completely broken. I have to be careful how I hit it, which is annoying because it's a fairly popular letter and when I'm writing "in the zone" (which is how I do both my best and my fastest work) my fingers are pretty much flying and hitting the keys like flying jackhammers that fly at the keys and hit them.
The long term solution is to get a better laptop. I think the medium term solution is going to involve superglue, but I've got a feeling I'm going to have to be careful about how I do that.
So, motivated in part by that, I've been kind of single-mindedly focused on de-crappifying my compy for the past several days, but I believe it's paid off... yesterday I found a program that could identify the main backdoor trojan that was still bedeviling me (and letting everything else come creeping back in whenever I dared connect to the internet), and then I was able to find manual removal instructions. After much work, today I was finally able to get Windows to download and install updates. It was being blocked in multiple ways, so I had to keep Microsoft's knowledge base open on my lappy while I was working my way through the error messages.
I've left the computer connected to the internet since I fixed it around 4:00 and I haven't had any pop-ups with threat warnings from AVG (or spurious "OMGZ U NEED R PRODUCT NAO!" warnings from fraudulent spyware removal programs)... previously fresh disaster would strike within an hour of connecting, and often much sooner. I'm going to leave it running overnight, check in the morning, and then let it run fresh scans just to be sure, but I think it's well and truly done.
Considering that this weekend was WisCon, which I almost attended (and which many of my dearest, distantest friends did), it was kind of a bummer... but it was also good to have something to keep my mind off that. Luckily, my air conditioner got fixed on Friday or it would have been pretty bad. Though now that I have working AC, we've been getting some rain and clouds to cool us off... meh. Oh, well. Can't complain too much. I've been really paranoid about opening my email and doing other even remotely sensitive things until the problem was solved, but my project for tomorrow night is going to be to tabulate all the new sponsors and get them added to the lists. Didn't think it would take a week to get this thing cleaned off, so it'll be interesting to see how many there are.
Happily enough, it looked like a couple of people upgraded themselves from lower sponsorships to the five dollar level today. I especially thank everybody for supporting me even when things are distracting/detracting from the writing. I guess people feel comfortable doing that since I've proven that I'm in this for the long haul. I like to think... and I've been told by several of you that you do, too... that my work's been improving in quality, which I'm sure helps.
In the unhappy event that I wake up tomorrow to find that my system is infected again/still, I'm going to give it up for a lost cause... get somebody to help me back up my files and reinstall Windows. (I don't think I even have the CD anymore.) rather than losing more time to it. I can't say why I was driven to fix it myself in the first place... it's probably the same reason I try to do everything myself, though. The fact that I used to troubleshoot computers for a living doesn't help. I used to be better at this stuff. But I wasn't writing anything at that time... it's like a whole different frame of mind for me. More than that, it's like a whole different mind. Tech AE is not writer AE.
The long term solution is to get a better laptop. I think the medium term solution is going to involve superglue, but I've got a feeling I'm going to have to be careful about how I do that.
So, motivated in part by that, I've been kind of single-mindedly focused on de-crappifying my compy for the past several days, but I believe it's paid off... yesterday I found a program that could identify the main backdoor trojan that was still bedeviling me (and letting everything else come creeping back in whenever I dared connect to the internet), and then I was able to find manual removal instructions. After much work, today I was finally able to get Windows to download and install updates. It was being blocked in multiple ways, so I had to keep Microsoft's knowledge base open on my lappy while I was working my way through the error messages.
I've left the computer connected to the internet since I fixed it around 4:00 and I haven't had any pop-ups with threat warnings from AVG (or spurious "OMGZ U NEED R PRODUCT NAO!" warnings from fraudulent spyware removal programs)... previously fresh disaster would strike within an hour of connecting, and often much sooner. I'm going to leave it running overnight, check in the morning, and then let it run fresh scans just to be sure, but I think it's well and truly done.
Considering that this weekend was WisCon, which I almost attended (and which many of my dearest, distantest friends did), it was kind of a bummer... but it was also good to have something to keep my mind off that. Luckily, my air conditioner got fixed on Friday or it would have been pretty bad. Though now that I have working AC, we've been getting some rain and clouds to cool us off... meh. Oh, well. Can't complain too much. I've been really paranoid about opening my email and doing other even remotely sensitive things until the problem was solved, but my project for tomorrow night is going to be to tabulate all the new sponsors and get them added to the lists. Didn't think it would take a week to get this thing cleaned off, so it'll be interesting to see how many there are.
Happily enough, it looked like a couple of people upgraded themselves from lower sponsorships to the five dollar level today. I especially thank everybody for supporting me even when things are distracting/detracting from the writing. I guess people feel comfortable doing that since I've proven that I'm in this for the long haul. I like to think... and I've been told by several of you that you do, too... that my work's been improving in quality, which I'm sure helps.
In the unhappy event that I wake up tomorrow to find that my system is infected again/still, I'm going to give it up for a lost cause... get somebody to help me back up my files and reinstall Windows. (I don't think I even have the CD anymore.) rather than losing more time to it. I can't say why I was driven to fix it myself in the first place... it's probably the same reason I try to do everything myself, though. The fact that I used to troubleshoot computers for a living doesn't help. I used to be better at this stuff. But I wasn't writing anything at that time... it's like a whole different frame of mind for me. More than that, it's like a whole different mind. Tech AE is not writer AE.
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