Attack of the Nortons

To those of my readers who have been patient with me and are still checking my blog after my long period of low-quality/no-quality posts I am very thankful. As I mentioned previously I have recently acquired a high-speed Internet connection at home. Hopefully this will assist me in keeping a steady stream of if not high quality, than at least less poor material on my illustrious web log.

Part of the reason for my posting sabbatical was a truly unfortunate series of events that had the lamentable effect of crippling a great deal of my communication productivity. It is my sincere desire that after reading the account of these happenings you will find it in your hearts to forgive me.

The initial reason for my precipitous drop in post frequency was the onset of final exams and the even more dreadful Final Projects of Irrational Length and Complexity. I believe that I am not wrong in assuming that many of you can understand and empathize with this. My accounting class ended with the Mother of All Worthless Projects, an extensive and dreary analysis of American automobile manufacturers’ financial statements and stock/bond valuations. Business Law was less trying in that it only had a standard final, complete with a large assortment of questions on material that the Instructor ran out of time to teach. And lastly but certainly not insignificantly, I had a five-day Japanese final. If my finals schedule were the only thing hindering me, I would not blame you for abandoning my blog and letting it slip in to the abyss of obscurity. But as you will see, assuming you don’t get bored and quit reading, it most certainly was not.

Did I mention that while I was scurrying about trying to prepare for my finals I was infected by a malicious computer virus that ground my poor, defenseless computer into the hard, cold ground and then proceeded to kick and stomp it with unbridled contempt and lack of mercy until it was completely unusable? Whether or not I mentioned it, it definitely did happen. I thank my creator that I was able to hold off the inevitable long enough to copy my files to my father’s computer and email them to myself at the college where I was able to complete the last of my preparations. But little did I know, my suffering was not yet over.

I brought the ill-fated, contaminated hulk of my computer to my good friend TBQelite’s birthday LAN party. The malevolent programs on my computer prevented me from taking part in the majority of the gaming but things were about to take a turn for the better. TBQelite, Neemund, Bobthegolden1 and Shadow Walker were more than willing to assist me in reformatting, reinstalling and in all other ways get my digital self back in order. I have done reformats and installations of Windows at least a dozen times myself and I must say that that was the smoothest installation and recovery I have been witness to. You might think that this is the happy ending of this story. It is not.

When I left the LAN party I had everything I needed reinstalled with the exception of games and….anti-virus software. You might think me stupid and clumsy at this point but I knew the danger my beloved box of circuitry was in and I was determined to find myself an effective anti-virus program. I just wasn’t quick enough. Yesterday afternoon my boss, who is very generous and an altogether pretty cool guy, gave me a CD. At this point I am sure all of you are hearing ominous music but at that time I was oblivious to the peril emanating from the disk. I put the disk into the appropriate drive and installed the program as prompted. Early this afternoon I was horrified to find that I had unwittingly installed a virus on my computer. It is a common affliction and I am sure you have heard of it; it was called Norton Internet Security.

Norton effectively disabled my computer. It locked my legitimate programs down and cut off all connection to my home network and the internet. When I attempted to change the settings of the program I was informed that I was not authorized to make any changes because I was not logged in as a supervisor. I didn’t know it at then but it turns out that Norton account setup is prone to corruption on installation. The buttons necessary to manage accounts or login were missing. I tried to use Norton Help and Support but they were located online and Internet Security had rendered my internet connection inoperative. I tried to uninstall Norton but the program is set up to protect itself and would not allow me to delete it, unless….. I was logged in as a supervisor. I was running out of options and so I took the drastic step of deleting some of Norton’s key files but the program just recreated them as fast as I put them in the trash. My dad tried to help me but he was as baffled as I. Finally, in a burst of intuition I figured out how to get rid of the Norton Curse. I realized that I could use Windows System Restore to return my computer to settings before I installed the frightful virus. Once I did that it, the self-protecting mechanisms were disabled and I was able to permanently delete the files.

After the final battle I went online and purchased a proper security program and have been running it without problems for nearly an hour. To unwind from my long struggle I opened my newly restored internet connection and typed a long blog entry, the one which you are nearly finished reading. Hopefully now that you have read of these events in this narrative you will be able to excuse my lack of posting quality in the last few weeks.