Cranky

I've got the coughing, head achy, sides sore from coughing blues. Restless. Headache not responding to acetaminophen which is what I take now. I have been ibuprofen-free for a couple of weeks. Acetaminophen has the same results as Pez candy.

My doctor thinks ibuprofen may be the reason for my heartburn. Not. I still have a lot of heartburn. I am on a daily medication of  PPI (proton pump inhibitor),  too. The pink stuff was my best friend last night.

Anyway - the cough. My sister had it and my daughter still has it. The doctor sent my daughter to the hospital for chest x-rays etc... she thought she might have pneumonia. She didn't (doesn't). No medication for viral infection.  Just acetaminophen or ibuprofen. They both ran a temperature. I didn't. I never do. I cannot recall ever having a temperature higher than 98 or 99. This could be what the acetaminophen is doing for me.

How convenient that this malady should strike exactly on the four days I have off from work for a long week-end. I don't have to take any sick days off. That is contingent on the fact that this illness is gone by Monday.

Let's see. What did I watch? A movie? I can't recall. My day was a blur yesterday. Oh - I watched a bunch of documentaries. So easy to sleep to. I wake up, glance at the TV - learn me something then drift back into a fitful sleep. It was "Return of the Plague - TB", "The Elegant Universe - String Theory",  and "Photographing Africa".  String Theory is especially a good show to put you to sleep. Trust me on this one.

Malware mindset

Above is a map I lifted from the Internet. You can read the article here.

First of all, let me reiterate the fact that I am by no means an expert on the issue. I don't claim to be. What I do tend to be is patient and capable of explaining technical jargon into laymen terms. That is what folks say to me. That I explain things to them that they can more readily understand.

How many of you (especially those of you still working) run across a tech person who rolls their eyes and snorts when they see you using the computer or come to help you with a problem? It sort of makes it hard to ask them for help again, doesn't  it?

I truly want to help people. I truly empathize with the average end user. I've made some crazy mistakes with the computer and I never put anybody down. For a tech person to help an end user and "LORD" over them is rude and just shows how ignorant they really are. Disclaimer: I do rib friends and family. I can't help it. That is who I am. I laugh "with" them - never AT them.

Now, for the mindset. I feel that this topic is too massive to bore you to tears with one post. So my first post will be about your mindset. Fear. Fear of the unknown.

Let us step back into the past and think of the automobile. When it first came out on the market. Did anybody foresee all the accidents that would happen 100 years later with the advent of this machine that we cannot live without? Once you start driving a car, do you just say - "Oh, it's too dangerous, I am going to quit."  Not likely. Of course there are the few that do stop, but it is not common. Once we begin driving we are hooked. It is a necessity to live in our part of the world. 

The computer seems to have become a necessity, also. Like it or not. A lot of folks would say "Buy a Mac - then all your (virus/malware) problems will disappear."  Again, not likely. Reverting back to my automobile analogy what if people told you "Buy a diesel, your fuel pump problems will be a thing of the past!"  How many of us would ditch our gasoline-fueled vehicles and opt for a diesel? Eh? Yeah. That's what I thought. If everybody purchased a Mac (Apple product) then the devious attackers would just focus on a way to infiltrate that machine. Thieves find a way.

This ends my first post on malware. Your mindset. Is there a solution? Not likely. Just as there is no solution to the vehicle accidents that happen all the time. Your best defense is to be vigilant. You take a risk each time you drive your car. You take a higher risk if you drive your car without insurance. If you run your computer without anti-virus you are being foolish. I am not convinced that the "free" anti-virus programs are worth the risk. I could be wrong. I purchase Norton Anti-virus religiously and update it. I purchase the 3-pack license and put it on all my computers. Note: I am not an advocate of their 360 product, however they may have improved it since I ran it on my machine.

McAfee/Kaspersky/Sophos/Trend Micro and many other products are surely just as good. I prefer Norton because that is what I was first exposed to when I began working with personal computers. Problems? Sure. But they were ironed out and Norton went above and beyond to help me and then they throw in an extra 100 days or something equivalent to compensate you for your trouble. That's kind of hard to beat in my book.

With that being said - a virus is different from malware. Your better antivirus programs will protect against both.

To be continued.

Watching Shrek

I babysat for this little tyke last Saturday. He is the son of my nephew's girlfriend. We watched Shrek and an Elmo video (that had to be repeated no less than three times). I had not seen Shrek in a couple of years (perhaps longer). It was interesting to hear about onions and layers and building walls to keep people out.

I repaired the computer that was in my sister's home. A song had been downloaded from the dreaded "Limewire" program that carried a virus. It took a while to clean up the system and perform all the updates. At one point I found a complete and unopened box of an anti-virus program which I proceeded to load onto the unit. They should be good to go. Of course they got a little lecture from me about downloading from this dreaded site (Limewire) and I told them about a program that I use at mp3panda where the songs are a nickel each. Yes, that's right: a nickel apiece.

Edit: I just logged into the site. Songs are now ten cents each and albums are no longer 99 cents but $1.14. BOO! I can see where this is going. In a few months they will be a quarter each and before you know it they will be a dollar each. Sigh. It never ends.

You must have a credit card or some way of starting out though, and that can be tough to come by for this younger generation who do not have any credit established.

Meanwhile, we are off to a wonderful week-end here in the Peruby household. It is full of people during this Easter holiday. I am going to kick into "Mom" mode and start to cook and bake and feed people. 'Cause that's what I do best. Besides fix computers, that is.

More wintry mix

My back yard lamp post from Friday night

We are scheduled to get more of the white stuff today. Over a hundred schools are closed in my surrounding area. I was to meet a C!sc0 rep at one of the schools today. I told him to call me first to see if we were closed. I don't want him driving all the way in from Columbus for no reason.

I do not look forward to shovelling more of the white stuff. It is what it is. I should get myself a new shovel. One with the bent handle that is supposed to be better for you. I was afraid my old flimsy shovel was going to break when I was cleaning off my driveway Sunday morning so I could get my car out.

My brother's test results came back. He had a biopsy taken from a growth on one of his vocal cords. He showed me the picture from the scope on Sunday. He said that one vocal cord was vibrating correctly when he spoke and the other didn't move at all because of the growth. His was benign. They said they got it early enough and he must quit smoking.

He is 52. I think he has been smoking since he was at least 15. If my memory serves me correctly. He overdid the talking on Sunday and had a sore throat on Monday. That was from not speaking for a week after surgery and having a houseful of family and friends Sunday night. I had to leave at half time because the cigarette smoke was so bad. Sister 1949 and I were the only 2 not smoking. That and the little children, I think. It was a smoking chamber in their house that evening. He was smoking. He is looking at getting Aeros. I wish him the best of luck.

I didn't get to see many of the commercials. Sigh. I laughed at the dog collar one with the guy sitting on the bench. But I don't recall the product so it wasn't a "good" commercial. What was Kiss thinking? Bad move. Bad, bad move! Soda pop? Really?!

With the ad about Leno, Winfrey and Letterman sitting on the sofa, I so wanted O'Brien to come up behind them and pour a bucket of Gatorade over their heads or something. Now THAT would have made me laugh!

I had a registry file recover on my system when I turned my computer on today. I am still having some Norton anti-virus issue. Something not working correctly with the live updates. I am not working today, so maybe I will dedicate a few hours to troubleshooting this system with Symantec and their product today. Should be fun! YAY!

Saturday Afternoon

Another batch of cranberry-nut bread. My first attempt to make it less crumbly was by adding some small sliced apples to the mix. When I sliced the bread all was perfect until the very last edge and then it crumbled again. Not bad. For some reason this batch seemed a bit more sour. I used cranberries from another grocery store. Maybe? Or could be I mis-judged on the sugar. I doubled the batch and I was distracted several times, so it is possible that I did not add enough sugar. (Sorry, blogspot - www.dictionary.com says that "mis-judged" IS spelled correctly).

My Great (Grand) niece came up to stay with me yesterday. This is the reason I was distracted in my measuring of ingredients in the bread. After watching a movie she crashed. (My nephew said I should refrain from the word "crash" for at least a year because of my deer incident - LOL!).

She was not the only one who napped the afternoon away. Here is my baby Slade (above). I have nick-named him Eeyore because of his common dejected demeanor.

This one (above) is my big baby Casper. Our first pet (after the bird).

And, this is Jasper (above). Curled up and dreaming of sugarplums and catnip I suppose.

On a side note, to make all of you out in blogdom feel better; I had a horrible problem with my computer Friday. It got hijacked or something. Well, maybe it wasn't that bad. I could not do anything! I got frustrated. I was able to fix it Saturday morning. You must have a ton of patience and calmly WAIT, WAIT for the system to respond and run your anti-malware programs. I recommend the following:

malwarebytes from www.malwarebytes.org

ad-aware from www.lavasoftusa.com (do not confuse this with the adware malware)

spybot search & destroy from http://www.safer-networking.org

I am sure there are other good programs, but the above three usually take care of my woes. I don't purchase any of the above. I use the free programs. I do pay for anti-virus software.

Back at it

Back to work and back to finding e-mail worms.

Fishing and Phishing/Malware and Virus

This stock photo is an example of how unstable the Internet can be

We are standing on a shaky pier, looking out into the murky depths of an unforeseeable future in the vast unknown.

So, I have been fishing. This particular virus is known to run over port 3127. I know. Many of you are probably asking "What the heck is a port?" To see a list of ports, you can go here. To see a description of what ports are, you can go here. I don't recommend it for the weak of heart. If you work with computers you quickly come to realize another old saying. The more I know, the more I realize what I "don't" know.

The more I researched this particular virus, I came to discover that it is designed to look for port 3127 on a machine. If that port is in use by another application, it then attempts to use port 3128. So on and so forth until port 3198.

I did not have the time to monitor all these ports, so I selected about ten and placed the monitor list on. The amount of log files that came back was seriously overwhelming. I took the monitors off and reported the findings and hoped that what I had found were indeed "false positives."

Which brings me to malware. There is a lot of malware out and about on the web. I use three programs to scan for it on my computers. Malwarebytes, Ad-aware, and Spybot Search & Destroy. I know there are others, and I have used them. I do notice that from time to time I have to remove and re-install Ad-aware. Ad-aware and Spybot tend to conflict with one another, but I do my best to keep my machines covered. Keep in mind that I use the free versions of these products. I know I stated earlier that you get what you pay for, I do pay for anti-virus protection. Malware is a different entity.

Let me take a moment to warn you about installing free software. Many times the free software has made a deal with Yahoo or Google and will try to slide a "toolbar" into the installation. Read each window before clicking the Next button. I recommend that you remove the check mark from the toolbars (or anything else they might be trying to sneak past you) unless you know specifically what the toolbar is and what it does. I don't like them.

Another interesting fact is that because there are so many different anti-virus applications, and they all tend to be in competition with one another, they usually cannot agree on a name of any particular virus. One product may call a certain virus mydoom, while another calls it Novarg. Then there are various versions of the virus. The first one may be named mydoom, the second wave may be titled mydoom.b, third mydoom.c and so on and so forth.

Then there is the generic groups. Where an application will group many different kinds of malware into one generic pile. One example is the Mal/Generic-A virus. For all the different types of threats that fall into this category, you can go here.

This particular virus has been accused of being a false positive. This indicates that an anti-virus program has tagged a file that looks suspicious and claims that it is a virus or malware. Other anti-virus packages state that the file in question is indeed "NOT" suspicious and that the other program has what is relatively known as a false alarm. See here.

Regardless, all of this can boggle the mind of an average computer user. You may say "How in the hell are we supposed to keep up with all of this malarkey?" The short answer. You can't. I can't. I have problems with my computer from time to time. My best tool is Google search. I read ten hits or more on each problem I have. Are other folks having the same problem? If so, how did they fix it?

Anyway, in conclusion - it is a mess out there. We do the best we can. I always compare it to driving. Traffic on the Internet gets congested. We can run over a chuck hole or a nail at any time and get a flat tire. As careful as we are, there will always be risk. And, remember. There is always that little window where a new virus is created and can wreak havoc before the anti-virus companies have time to create a fix for it. Especially with the speed of the data these days. It can almost take the fun out of it for us. Hopefully, things will get better. Things will get safer. Products will improve.

Notice: The author of the blog does not profess to know it all. The thoughts and words in this post are what I currently understand at this point and time in my life. It may not be completely accurate and I might even disagree with it in the future. I do the best I can to understand and absorb and then attempt to explain the subject with how I perceive it. Do not take my belief as gospel, but ask or research many different views on the subject at hand to come to your own conclusions.

It is an October sunrise

Just not this year's October. It is from 2006.

My head hurts.

I'm too busy for my blog

Too busy...said Right Said Fred. Here is sister 1949. Her daughter wants to have a party for her sixtieth this year and has asked me for some photos form the old family album. The above photo is from 1961 where she is 12 or so. I don't know what is going on with that hair-do. She always had thick and wavy hair. Maybe it was wild and unmanageable this day.

I've told people how I used to get my hair rolled up the night before picture day at school and had to sleep on big (almost) soup-can rollers. You would have to sleep on your face because it was so uncomfortable. After a night of little sleep, and roller marks on half of your head, you wound up with some wild, dented hair. Perfect for a school picture day. NOT!

I spent over six hours today getting a virus off of a relatives computer who had not purchased anti-virus software. After the virus removal, she went home with anti-virus loaded on it today. Huge kudos to malwarebytes anti-malware program.

Work has been keeping me busy, too. I've been trying to figure out where all the traffic is coming from in a school district. I think I have nailed it. One machine appears to be communicating with hypster's site.

Bugs!

Another view of the bugs that ate my pumpkin. Or, at least they gave it their best shot. My Anti-Virus program has acted up since I updated it in July. This time when I called, they gave me the update to 2009 for free. I had forgotten that when I purchased the product in 2005 I had purchased for 3 computers. They gave me the product key and serial number for when I went to install it on the other 2 computers.

Eh. I forgot. My daughter will get hers updated, but my niece no longer lives here. That leaves me with an extra copy. My work laptop? No. I have the corporate edition there. My old work laptop (that work gives us) - maybe. It isn't worth much. 256MB of RAM in the poor thing. I guess that leaves me with an extra copy. Maybe I'll put it on a sister's computer.

I have more books from another library south of me. Web Design. More HTML, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript coming up. If I get the motivation maybe I'll change my blog background and have some fun. I also have an autobiography of John Denver. The Untold Story of The Eagles. The Mapmaker's wife. And, The Mothman Prophecies. The movie was weird, but I also got it because it is pretty close to Ohio. It was a bridge that connected Gallipolis to WV. That's close to where the Bob Evans farms are, by the way.

At work I am busy installing and learning Ubuntu. Fun stuff all around. My previous experience was with the flavor Mandrake. I think I will be returning to that flavor of Linux.

I finally mowed my grass. I cannot remember the last time it was cut. I had strange sprouts of weeds poking up here and there. In a couple of dry spots, I couldn't tell the line where I was supposed to mow. And it was dusty in places. We had a little rain a couple of days ago. Big booming thunder storm the other night, too.

I've been taking our cat, Moose into my bedroom with me every night so the cats don't fight through the night and wake my daughter. Moose is comfortable in there and I was hoping that we would bond a little more. All went smoothly for a week or so. Until last night. Cats are not dogs. I didn't take the necessary precautions. I was roused from my slumber by some scratching. I slapped my hand on the bed to make her stop. In my drowsy state it didn't occur to me what was going on. Can you tell where I am going with this?

Then it dawned on me. I jumped out of bed and snapped the light on. Too late. Moose was in the crouched position on my runner (thank God it wasn't in my bed!) on the floor. My daughter came in at the same time to tell me the telephone was making strange noises. I cleaned up Mooses' mess and unplugged the phone. Grumbling I went back to bed. It was 2:30 A.M. I sighed and rolled over. That's when I discovered the other mess. The wet mess. Oy vey. Peruby. You should have known better. I didn't sleep much after that. It kind of reminded me of when my daughter would throw up in the middle of the night. Pull sheets off the bed and throw them into the washing machine. Put a towel on the mattress or turn it over and put new sheets on the bed. And try to get back to sleep.

I should sleep good tonight with fresh, clean sheets, a deodorized mattress and no cat in my room tonight. They can kill each other out there for all I care.