Tuesday, April 12, 2005

The Princess and the PC

The entire weekend caught up with me. In case you missed it (and care) the wife and I went to Athens (Georgia, not Greece) this past weekend to visit the Little Princess, who's a student at the nation's oldest state-supported university. The purpose of the visit was the "Daddy/Daughter Day" game. The visit and all went well, although the game didn't. But it was great to see Princess.

While we were there, she mentioned some issues with her computer. I worked most of them that first night, and finished it up the next day before we left. That still left her desktop PC. It had some of the same issues: viruses and spyware, plus it had out-of-date utilities. I got some of it fixed, but not all of it. So I brought the PC home and didn't touch it first night. When I got in from work last night, I set it up and continued the fix-it-up process. And stayed at it until 9:00 and I heard Keifer Sutherland say "Previously on '24'" and went into the bedroom to watch. And, for about the next hour it was watch a little '24' then snack a little then watch some more '24' and snack a little and so on.

Suddenly, the alarm clock was going off and it was time to go to work. And I hadn't finished her computer. Or prepared a post for this morning. Or anything.

So, I looked in on her PC while getting ready for work. All of the critical updates were finished (including Windows XP SP2). I still need to look over the rest of the recommended and see what needs to be done there.

I've been a slack parent insofar as getting her desktop PC finished. I'm thinking I could have finished it last night. But, her laptop seems to be working just fine (she e-mailed me the previous night), so she's not doing without.

But this desktop PC, it's a real bugger. Lots of the spyware I've found with Xterminator keeps coming back. I bought another Spy Sweeper to go on there, since Xterminator (Pest Patrol) isn't able to do the job, it seems.

Still to be confirmed is the removal of all viruses. This will be fun, no doubt. And once all this is done, I've still go to get the PC back to her. Not sure how that's going to fall in the schedule. I'm thinking I might get sick one day this week.

It's okay; the boss doesn't read this.

5 comments:

  1. "Lax as a parent?"

    I bet its just a way to see her again.

    My friend found a piece of spyware on his comp that is immortal. He tried everything short of reformatting his computer, and it didn't budge.

    I subscribe to the Dave Barry school of pop-up blockers and spyware detecters. "Ideally it would (a) detect every popup ad and suppress it before it appeared, while simultaneously (b) ramming a hot poker deep into the right ear of the person responsible for the ad. But I'll settle for just the suppression."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dave had a full understanding of the problem.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "lax as a parent" not a chance, sounds like you are right on the money in that department!

    ReplyDelete
  4. check out Spyware Doctor. Free on the net. Worked wonders for me.

    ReplyDelete

Please choose a Profile in "Comment as" or sign your name to Anonymous comments. Comment policy