Sunday, November 21, 2010

Well, That WASN'T Frugal!

So today I'm like totally at the radio show.
We (Sally P, Jill M, and I) start out in the production room and then 10 minutes before Peace Radio starts or so, we head into the studio, where the magic happens (or not). As usual, I wen tin early and used the wifi and got info for my movie reviews and something I wanted to report on. I had the report and another web page for the show pulled up on the laptop. When we move to the studio, I just unplug the computer from the wall outlet in one room and replug it in in the other. Well, apparently between production room and studio...separated by a thin wall, a trojan hit my computer. And I don't mean the condom.
A fake "disk scan" window popped up. The graphic was sort of "off" from the Windows defrag icon and the font was a bit off and "scanned" was spelled "scaned"....hmmm. And then, I got a warning that my hard drive was corrupted so I better click the open window and allow the defrag and that a hard drive couldn't be found and that I had no RAM. Hmmm...I checked the task manager thingy and all was well, but there was too much activity for the programs I had open. So I shut it off...and it wouldn't shut down. That's not good.
I tried again. Then I forced a shut down.

After the show I called Pam who recommended I take out the battery for a while to force the computer off and a restart. I did and more of the nonsense. I did manage to download a fresh antivirus freeware program and do a scan. This took over an hour. Then I did a scan and sure enough, trojan. That is now quarantined along with another suspicious program. I did a real defrag and another scan and so far, knock on wood, things are going OK.

Must remember to back everything up! Not clever. AND to make the "restore" disk like the computer has been trying to make me do for MONTHS. Okay... YEARS. If this goes bad before I get it backed up I'm going to have to pay for data recovery or lose my Europe photos and blog backups and all sorts of very important things...like the black bean sweet potato chili recipe that I can find on the internet.

Anyway, I'm staying in Moscow tonight because I have an appointment tomorrow morning and we're expecting CRAP weather. First major winter driving of the year. That's not a time to be on the road. And it was already freezing rain by 4pm today. It's good to have a job. It may not seem frugal to take a hotel room for 50$ when I could drive the two ways for 20, and yet frugality is about spending money where there is value. The amount of stress this is saving me is HUGE.

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