My horrific weekend
Let me tell you about my weekend.
Woke up yesterday morning, to discover a rampant infection on the ONE and ONLY used (OK the Macbook still gets used too) PC in the house. Woot. It's so entrenched, after trying to clean the eeePC, I couldn't actually reboot. It just kept rebooting. So, from around 10am yesterday till past 11pm last night, I was physically at the PC, trying to clean the sucker off. Couple of people on Whirlpool figured what I had was a dysfunctional piece of very popular malware, so not even the normal easy-to-get-rid-of-it method worked. I had it in Safe Mode With Networking for about 12 hours. DUDE. It was a form of the Antivir malicious software, where it sneaks aboard and installs itself, then proceeds to freak you out (or in this case, poor scotsnow out) by telling you in many different ways and forms, really suddenly and from multiple directions, that there are infections! and trojans! and OMG don't open that! and give us money and we'll clean it up! And whilst this is going on, and you're trying to figure out WTF is happening, your brain's going 'I don't remember installing that'. And for us, it was a matter of "WTF we don't HAVE antivirus on this thing". And it wasn't a virus, it was a dysfunctional, deformed piece of malware. Which we had something on the computer to get rid of it with, but the malware wouldn't let us open it. Then, because it was so dysfunctional, it attacked the rootkits (whereever they live) and it wouldn't let me get past the login screen to normal mode of Windows, and just kept the system rebooting. So started my Saturday. And, many hours later at the end of Saturday, it ended. But it wasn't really what I was planning for my day, let me tell you. We do have, however, a very clean system at the moment. But, Chrome doesn't work anymore, and IE has it's own little issues of getting redirected (which may have something to do with Chrome not working), so it's back to Firefox for now. Thinking about Safari, to be honest.
I slept in today, figuring I earned it (after getting to bed around 2am this morning). Eventually loaded all the laundry in the car to take it up to the laundromat, and the car wouldn't start. And wouldn't start, and then I flooded it. So I waited a few minutes, and by gosh I got that car started by SHEER FORCE OF WILL. (Kinda like fixing the PC I guess.) Massive amounts of blue smoke from the extra petrol in the engine, so I'm thinking I need new spark plugs. Got up to the laundromat (after taking the car for a little drive around town to get it going) loaded everything in the machine, and then discovered that the machine's coin slot was STUFFED with $1. OF COURSE IT WAS. So, I had a moment, then unloaded everything, and took it up to another machine. Then a guy that was sitting there noticed and said "Coins stuck, huh?" Eventually we got $6 out of the slot with the help of a coat hanger, and by GOSH I used those $6. So, everything went back in, and as I was getting other things ready to go in a smaller machine, I turned away to get my coins... to turn back to see another woman STUFFING her crap in my machine. OH YEAH THAT'S MY WEEKEND. I looked, then calmly turned to another machine, put my money in, and got it going. Eventually, everything went in the dryers, and when I went back to the laundromat to get them.. TA DA - one dryer hadn't actually pumped out any heat into the dryer, so my clothes were STILL DAMP. Now, I had prepared for this scenario by taking some extra $$$'s down, because hey - my weekend was going that way. So, I loaded my stuff into the dryer that just dryed my sheets so efficiently, and got it going.
This is how my weekend went. Not to mention, I just remembered that at around 1am on Saturday morning (Friday night, really), I noticed Mum had rung about 3 times, so I called her back. And she told me that my step-father's massive heart operation (OK it's not massive, but it's not a small thing - it involves I'd say open heart surgery & a heart/lung bypass machine. Does that make it massive?) has been brought forward by 7 weeks because the heart surgeon's thinks it's a bit more pressing than originally thought. Which means her trip over here must get put off. That's OK, she'll be here for my birthday in any case.
Snazzy, huh.
However, on Friday night we watched 4 whole episodes of Band of Brothers (which I found randomly @ the library), 2.5 of which at least I hadn't seen before, and I crocheted & whole dishcloth. Then on Saturday night, whilst I was still working had at the above issue, we watched Oceans 13 (previously unwatched, which was a GREAT shiny distraction) and Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince which we hadn't seen either, and I have to say I was VERY impressed at, and it'll be getting watched again. Possibly even bought (which I haven't done with the 4th & 5th movies).
Woke up yesterday morning, to discover a rampant infection on the ONE and ONLY used (OK the Macbook still gets used too) PC in the house. Woot. It's so entrenched, after trying to clean the eeePC, I couldn't actually reboot. It just kept rebooting. So, from around 10am yesterday till past 11pm last night, I was physically at the PC, trying to clean the sucker off. Couple of people on Whirlpool figured what I had was a dysfunctional piece of very popular malware, so not even the normal easy-to-get-rid-of-it method worked. I had it in Safe Mode With Networking for about 12 hours. DUDE. It was a form of the Antivir malicious software, where it sneaks aboard and installs itself, then proceeds to freak you out (or in this case, poor scotsnow out) by telling you in many different ways and forms, really suddenly and from multiple directions, that there are infections! and trojans! and OMG don't open that! and give us money and we'll clean it up! And whilst this is going on, and you're trying to figure out WTF is happening, your brain's going 'I don't remember installing that'. And for us, it was a matter of "WTF we don't HAVE antivirus on this thing". And it wasn't a virus, it was a dysfunctional, deformed piece of malware. Which we had something on the computer to get rid of it with, but the malware wouldn't let us open it. Then, because it was so dysfunctional, it attacked the rootkits (whereever they live) and it wouldn't let me get past the login screen to normal mode of Windows, and just kept the system rebooting. So started my Saturday. And, many hours later at the end of Saturday, it ended. But it wasn't really what I was planning for my day, let me tell you. We do have, however, a very clean system at the moment. But, Chrome doesn't work anymore, and IE has it's own little issues of getting redirected (which may have something to do with Chrome not working), so it's back to Firefox for now. Thinking about Safari, to be honest.
I slept in today, figuring I earned it (after getting to bed around 2am this morning). Eventually loaded all the laundry in the car to take it up to the laundromat, and the car wouldn't start. And wouldn't start, and then I flooded it. So I waited a few minutes, and by gosh I got that car started by SHEER FORCE OF WILL. (Kinda like fixing the PC I guess.) Massive amounts of blue smoke from the extra petrol in the engine, so I'm thinking I need new spark plugs. Got up to the laundromat (after taking the car for a little drive around town to get it going) loaded everything in the machine, and then discovered that the machine's coin slot was STUFFED with $1. OF COURSE IT WAS. So, I had a moment, then unloaded everything, and took it up to another machine. Then a guy that was sitting there noticed and said "Coins stuck, huh?" Eventually we got $6 out of the slot with the help of a coat hanger, and by GOSH I used those $6. So, everything went back in, and as I was getting other things ready to go in a smaller machine, I turned away to get my coins... to turn back to see another woman STUFFING her crap in my machine. OH YEAH THAT'S MY WEEKEND. I looked, then calmly turned to another machine, put my money in, and got it going. Eventually, everything went in the dryers, and when I went back to the laundromat to get them.. TA DA - one dryer hadn't actually pumped out any heat into the dryer, so my clothes were STILL DAMP. Now, I had prepared for this scenario by taking some extra $$$'s down, because hey - my weekend was going that way. So, I loaded my stuff into the dryer that just dryed my sheets so efficiently, and got it going.
This is how my weekend went. Not to mention, I just remembered that at around 1am on Saturday morning (Friday night, really), I noticed Mum had rung about 3 times, so I called her back. And she told me that my step-father's massive heart operation (OK it's not massive, but it's not a small thing - it involves I'd say open heart surgery & a heart/lung bypass machine. Does that make it massive?) has been brought forward by 7 weeks because the heart surgeon's thinks it's a bit more pressing than originally thought. Which means her trip over here must get put off. That's OK, she'll be here for my birthday in any case.
Snazzy, huh.
However, on Friday night we watched 4 whole episodes of Band of Brothers (which I found randomly @ the library), 2.5 of which at least I hadn't seen before, and I crocheted & whole dishcloth. Then on Saturday night, whilst I was still working had at the above issue, we watched Oceans 13 (previously unwatched, which was a GREAT shiny distraction) and Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince which we hadn't seen either, and I have to say I was VERY impressed at, and it'll be getting watched again. Possibly even bought (which I haven't done with the 4th & 5th movies).