Digital Impulses

Fun Saturday

This morning I took a little time to go to the Sports Authority in Hawthorne to look at the Elliptical cardio machines.  They have a bunch of models, with some that have some neat features and that will accept an MP3 player as an entertainment source.

After checking out the Elliptical machines, I stopped by Denny's in El Segundo for some breakfast that was great. After breakfast I came home and just puttered around the house and my office until it was time to go to Bert's parent's house for dinner.

Dinner was fine and the atmosphere at the table was pretty good also.  Scrabble in PV was excellent, as I won both games, placing 3 bingos and scoring +450 points in the first game and then placing another bingo and some other high-scoring words to win the 2nd game by a healthy margin.

Nice!

Dinner at McCormicks and Scrabble in PV

This evening we met up with the Rojas for dinner at McCormick's & Schmicks seafood restaurant in El Segundo.  We had dinner reservations at 1815 and we arrived on time, but, typically, we had to wait for The Rojas to show up.   Thankfully, we only had to wait a few minutes since they were not running that late.

Dinner was pretty good and the service was very good.  Amazingly, even Bert found little to complain about.  The only real negative of the evening was the fact that after a tip, the bill came to an even $300.00

After dinner, I dropped the wife off at home and drove off to play Scrabble in PV, where the atmosphere was pleasant enough and I won one out of three games.

Busy Saturday

Wow, what a day...

XBox shipped to Microsoft in Texas for repair
The first order of business was that I dropped off my son's XBox 360 at the local UPS office to send to Microsoft for repair.

Copying old VHS movies to DVD
After that I drove over to a video rental store that does movie transfers from VHS to DVD and left two old VHS tapes to transfer to DVD. I was quoted $50.00 and was told they would be ready by Tuesday 5/27/08.

Mom leaves on Vacation to the East Coast
After the errands in the morning, my mom and sister came to pick me up and we went back to my mom's for me to help her load her suitcases and then head off to the airport.  The trip to the airport was uneventful and we pulled up at the American terminal.  I assisted my mom with the curb-side check-in and the tagging of her luggage.  I gave the American porter $15.00 for his help and hugged and kissed my mom good-bye.  That was much less stressful than I expected.

Dinner at Tony's for Feliz's Birthday
This evening I didn't eat at Adela's as today was my mother-in-law's birthday.  Instead, my son and his girlfriend, my wife, her mom and I drove over to the Redondo Beach Pier to have dinner at Old Tony's restaurant.

The food was great, the atmosphere was even better and we had a great time.  After dinner, I came home to wait a little while before leaving for Palos Verdes to play Scrabble with Bert.

Scrabble at Bert's
Scrabble at Bert's was sos-so.  I one 1 out of 3, and that made me 2 out 7 for the weekend. I am not playing badly, it just seems like Bert is on a gold strwak of getting the power tiles and/or incredibly friendly tiles at the time that he needs 'em.  Ah, well.  Nothing for it but to trudge forward and wait for the tide to turn.

A wedding reception and dinner in PV with Bert

So this afternoon after work, I drove with my wife over to a friend's house where there was to be a reception for the wedding of her son to a girl who is a friend of my wife's also.

I knew a few people there and the atmosphere was pleasant enough.  the food was really good and I was able to snap a few pictures of the bride and groom and some other folks there.  After being there for a while after dinner, I took off and drove over to Palos Verdes.

I arrived there a few minutes before 1900 and went inside the house.  Since Bert was taking a while to come down, I stepped into his backyard and entertained myself taking some pictures with my ever present iPhone.

eventually I went back inside and chatted with Bert while he cooked dinner.  We then sat down to eat dinner with his boys.  the food was good enough and there were no issues at the table.  After dinner we got an early start playing Scrabble and were able to get in a rare 4 games.  I won the 1st game but then proceeded to lose the next 3 games.

*sigh*.

Re-Imaging the Kitchen PC in Palos Verdes

So, in combating the Great Virus and Trojan Horse infection of 2008, this evening after dinner at his mom's Bert and I drove up to Palos Verdes early to get a head start on re-imaging his PC.

After arriving at his house and getting down to business, I did some preliminary research to get the hardware specs and drivers and manuals information for that PC.  For the record, I found the following:

• Purchase Date: 12/16/2005
• Model Name: Dell XPS 400
• Hard Drive Space: 500 GB in (2) 250 GB hard disks
• 4 GB of RAM

After looking at the PDF docs for that system available from the Dell support site just for entering a system tag, I determined that the magic keystroke combination to invoke the factory "system restore" image was "Ctrl-F11" at the Dell BIOS screen during the boot-up sequence.

invoking that command brought us to the Symantec 'System Restore' program and that trundled for a while, finally failing with a cryptic error message about a problem reading a file from drive 'X'.

Rebooting the machine we then struggled to get Norton Ghost 10 installed,  Eventually, we did manage to get it installed and were then able to restore the computer to an image that was created on 12/25/05, about 9 days after the PC was originally purchased.

The Restore took some time but once it was complete all that was left was to install Windows Live OneCare and uninstall a whole bunch of the crapware that Dell includes with the computer.  After All of that and then installing Windows XP Service Pack 3 and the interminable number of reboots that are associated with that, the PC seemed perfectly fine and ready to go.

We installed the latest versions of iTunes, AOL, Firefox and the Google Browser sync add-on and made sure all systems were go including drive sharing and connecting to the printer downstairs in the den.

All that is left now is for Bert to restore the individual ITunes libraries for his children and make sure his wife has access to everything she needs.

We will see how long this latest re-image lasts.  For Bert's sanity, I really hope it lasts lonmger than just a few months.  Sheesh.

Dinner with the Rojas at the Redondo Beach Pier

So this evening around 1830 I arrived in separate cars with my wife at the Redondo Beach Pier to meet Bert and Patty for dinner at New Tony's Restaurant.

Bert and Patty were sitting outside the restaurant looking put upon, but ended up being good sports about the entire affair.  The wife arrived just a few minutes after we had sat down and we got down to having a good meal and good conversation.

About the only thing that marred the evening a little bit was that there were quite a few flies at in the window at our table and as such, we had to close the window to trap them on the screen.  Other than that, the food was delicious and the service was good too.

I myself had a great  time watching the seagulls DIVE BOMB the fish in the water trying to procure food for themselves.  The clam chower was awesome as always and my steak was great.

In PV after dinner during Scrabble I pulled the truth out of Bert regarding his opinion of the restaurant.  He didn't like it, thought the old but very nice waitress was a pain, thought there were too many flies, thought the place was too "70's retro" and then stated that Patty's shrimp was cold.

I don't know what I was thinking inviting them somewhere that is out of their comfort zone.  These people rotate between a set of 2 or 3 regular restaurants and don't want to do or try anything new or different.

*sigh*

A trip to PV to try and clean up a computer from a Virus Infection

So this afternoon I arrived in Palos Verdes at 1513 to see about cleaning up a Malware/Virus infection on the kitchen PC of some friends of mine.

4 hours later we sat down to dinner with his parents after I made almost no progress on fighting the infestation.  The *only* thing I was able to do was stop the massive pop-ups that were coming up on the screen of their own accord.

A yearly subscription to Windows LiveOneCare for 3 computers cost $49.95 and is good until 5/15/09.

Aside from having dinner and some pleasant conversation, the entire episode was an utter waste of time, as the PC is *still* infected and we will be re-doing it yet again, over the next two days.  This is one of the most severely  infected computers I have ever seen, as one of the profiles on the computer had the desktop wallpaper REPLACED with a giant, screen-wide, flash-based NETFLIX AD that was irreplaceable.

The Desktop wallpaper on that profile on that PC was locked down to where you could not change the desktop wallpaper image at all, not even with a change of themes.

Nothing for it but to nuke the hard drive down to bare metal and re-image the PC back to the factory shipping status.  Yuck.

Will I ever learn, Or, Keep my fucking hands on my own computers, PERIOD.

Well. There you go, Alberto.  Are you happy?  Huh?  Is what you are feeling right now ENOUGH to ram the message through that you need to CONSTRAIN your computer activities to those computers that BELONG TO YOU???

DATE:  Thursday, May 15, 2008
TIME: 0838

Bert just called my desk at work and immediately launches into a story about how his kitchen computer is virtually unusable and upon startup has something like 50 browser windows popping up all over the desktop.  He also states that his son's desktop wallpaper has been replaced by an animated image of some kind.

Bert is under the impression that I had something to do with these problems because this past Friday or Saturday I downloaded a few .AVI movie players in the hopes of trying to get some movies I had recorded on an SD memory card to play correctly on his kitchen computer.

The behavior he is describing to me is Malware or virus-related, from the looks of it.  Bert wonders if my surfing for the .AVI movie players caused some kind of Malware to be installed on his PC.  His reasoning is that 2 days after i install some software on his computer, it acts like it has some kind of infection on it.

Now, there are multiple vectors of possible infection for a computer running Windows XP, as we all know.  Chief among them are rogue websites and poison attachments delivered via email.  Even with computers that are ensconced behind the relative safety of a router and that have both an active firewall and a regularly updated virus program, infections are possible.

Of course, I have NO ONE TO BLAME BUT MYSELF for being in this brier patch.  Had I behaved like the responsible computer professional with 20 years experience that I like to think that I am, it would have never dawned on me to ***DOWNLOAD ANYTHING**** on a computer that DOES NOT BELONG TO ME.

IF I had not sat there and tried to get those AVI files to play, Bert could not point a finger of suspicion at me. 

That I had to tolerate/stomach being told that he suspects that there is a chance that It was I that caused the current problems with his computers is outrageous and insulting and it makes me THROW UP A LITTLE BIT IN MY MOUTH.

Once again, here I am, at the age of 41, being treated with a complete lack of respect and treated like some idiot, reckless and irresponsible teenager who traipses blithely around the Internet clicking mindlessly on links with no regard for the possible dangers of downloading executable files.

Damn, but this shit pisses me off royally. I am mad at myself for placing myself in the position where I can be treated with disrespect. 

The bottom line is, had I not gone within 10 feet of that computer, much less downloaded and installed anything on it, I wouldn't be sitting here right now with acid indigestion, typing harder on the keys of my laptop than I should be, sitting in utter disbelief that anyone could possiblhy even *think* that I might succumb to downloading and installing a piece of malware onto a computer.

I am too old and I have way, way to much experience and I have amply demonstrated my expertise countless times to countless people to be in this situation.

I NEED TO LEARN THE LESSON ONCE AND FOR ALL:  IF I DON'T TOUCH A COMPUTER, I CAN'T BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ***ANYTHING*** THAT HAPPENS TO IT. 

It's simple, really.

I think this time I have learned my lesson for good.  This past weekend was the last time I use Bert's computer for ANYTHING.  There is *NOTHING* I need to do on his computers while at his house that can't wait until I have access to the 7 or 8 FUCKING COMPUTERS THAT I CURRENTLY OWN.

Never again.  EVER.

Bert fights FunLove.4099

Bert has spent the last 48 hours fighting the FunLove.4099 virus at the factory.  He showed up at the factory on Friday and found a notice from Windows Live OneCare saying that it had stopped the FunLove virus from executing on his computer.

This morning he bought and installed Windows Live OneCare on all four of the computers at the factory and scanned them all.  All four scans turned up clear and so he feels like he has dodged a bullet for now.  I have tried and tried to get him to get a Windows Home Server to backup his computers but so far he has resisted it.

I sometimes feel like Bert is purposely avoiding being fully responsible about the state of his data so that if the day ever comes where he has some kind of catastrophic computer failure, he can just throw up his hands and rail at the gods for his misfortunes.  Maybe he subconsciously craves this day of Armageddon so that he can rid himslef of the albatross that is the factory.

I hope he finds a way of working things  out without having a complete emotional breakdown.

1st day post stint removal

A nice relaxing day spent putzing around the house and in my office until it was time to go to Asela's for dinner.

Upon arrival, a few minutes later my buddy's in-laws arrived to show his parents the new 2007 Lincoln MKX Crossover car they had just purchased from Cerritos Lincoln.  The car was very nice and is in a color called "Creme Brulee", which, as far as I can tell, is exclusive to Lincoln.

After the hoopola with the car, they left and we eventually sat down for dinner (which was awesome) and had a nice chat with his parents.  After dinner we drove up to Palos Verdes and had a very enjoyable Scrabble session that consisted of two gmaes which I lost.  That was all mollified by the fact that I felt really, really good for like the first time in a month.

The Kidney Stone / Stint nightmare seems to be finally behind me. 

Praise God and his Angels!