Malware hijacked my Google toolbar and killed search
I normally don’t get infected with malware, spyware or viruses. I shouldn’t – I make my living keeping people’s computers and networks operating properly. However, there are exceptions to every rule.
Like DEA Agent Lee Paige, who shot himself in the foot while telling a class full of students how he was the only one in the room professional enough to handle a gun, I became the victim of my own overconfidence yesterday. We use Trend Micro’s OfficeScan corporate anti virus protection in our environment.
Anyhow, the long story short is that part of my job entails checking up on what our employees are doing on the Internet. I receive reports containing links every time someone attempts to surf somewhere our monitoring software thinks they shouldn’t be. Yesterday I clicked one of the links provided in the report and almost immediately realized I was in trouble. My computer began spewing popups left and right. I use Mozilla Firefox, which is generally not affected by spyware and malware, but in this case, both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox were infected and hijacked. The popups were kind enough to inform me that my PC was infected and came with an entreaty to click various links where I would be able to install software to remove the infection – for a price. What sort of twisted human being writes code that blackmails a computer user? I’d love an opportunity to code that coder’s ass.
My first attempt to remedy the situation involved running a full virus scan using Trend Micro. Unfortunately, although Trend was able to detect several infected files, it was wholly inadequate at fixing the issue. Several reboots later, and after having also run the “grayware” detection provided by Trend, I decided I needed to bring in additional firepower.
Since my two main browsers were both incapacitated I used Apple’s Safari browser to begin Googling for a solution. I downloaded PC Tools Spyware Doctor and installed it. The full scan found several hundred nasties that all propagated from the single short sighted link click. After another several reboots, my browsers were no longer spewing popups at the rate of several hundred per hour. The spyware was still partially active on my system though. The Google toolbar in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox was disabled and IE was crashing repeatedly on launch.
Time to call in the big guns. Enter SmitFraudFix and Combofix. Both of these free products will remove spyware but they come with risks and are not as simple to use as commercially available tools. Combofix can potentially make a PC operating system unbootable and should be run as a last resort. In my case, it was the tool that made the difference – restoring my ability to use search features in both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 7.
Moving forward, I will be clicking those links in a virtual operating just in case. We’ll also be reassessing our use of Trend Micro’s products and looking for possible alternatives.
Just shoot it in the head
If you don’t like your dog, just shoot it in the head. I guess that is what ignorant people are taught by their parents because my wife found this dog on the side of the road today. It had been shot in the head with a small caliber weapon and left to die. Instead of having the common sense to do so, she decided to keep living.
Now she is in a safe place. Luckily, the bullet didn’t get into the brain cavity as far as we can tell. This poor little girl was covered in ticks and her skin was falling off from the acid in the pus draining from the wound. She was literally starving to death.
Someone who thought of himself as a human being brought this dog out in the middle of nowhere, shot her in the back of the head and then drove off. She found us. Now we’ll try and help her heal. If providence smiles on that process we’ll work on finding her a good home.
I will post updates on this loving Black Lab’s condition as she tries to heal and get back to a healthy weight. Her wounds could heal or she could die. She is chronically malnourished. My wife will do her best to nurse this poor little canine back to health. She is a very smart dog, and has already adjusted from a fearful, skittish animal back into a doting, loving typical Black Labrador. The breed tends to be very smart, and Beauty (my wife’s new name for her) is no exception. She wants human attention which is typical of her breed.
Familiarity breeds contempt
It’s an old saying, and a relevant one. Human beings, for some reason, have a tendency to take for granted the things with which they are most familiar. Take for instance, your spouse. Perhaps that is why so many marriages end in failure. When two people take each other for granted the marriage is doomed. Another example of this phenomenon is easy to spot on the road. Look at that lady putting on her makeup. She is taking for granted her driving skills and those of every single vehicle around her. She is taking for granted that the road will not suddenly end in a wall or under a semi truck. And she is asking for an accident by doing so.
The contempt that people sometimes develop for the routine things in their life is not limited to lowly private citizens. And that is how we come to stories like this one, where a public servant almost shoots himself with a loaded weapon.
A firearms instructor in southern Massachusetts has been assigned to other duties after his gun accidentally went off while he was teaching a class on weapons safety. Officials say the Glock handgun discharged while Maj. Donald Lamar was demonstrating to Bristol County deputy sheriffs how to safely holster the weapon.
Much like the DEA agent who shot himself in the foot in front of a class full of gubmint students just after proclaiming he was the only one in the room qualified to have a gun, it is ironic that those most qualified to handle weapons often make the dumbest mistakes while doing so.
We are so paranoid and blindly afraid of firearms in this nation in 2008. That national condition is largely the result of classroom conditioning by government officials, who, also ironically, often hold armed private citizens in contempt. Anyone can shoot him or herself in the foot. Anyone can crash a car. Anyone can wear a uniform. Anyone can preach from a pulpit.
If you plan on doing either of the latter two, I suggest you follow your own rules and teachings religiously if you expect the rest of us not to laugh at you. Talk to your spouse as if they might walk out the door never to return and they’ll probably stay. Drive your car like you are about to have an accident and you probably won’t. Handle your firearm like it could accidentally discharge at any moment and it probably never will.
When we take anything for granted in life we are just asking for trouble.
‘Our hero’ Ted Kennedy
The recent amount of sycophantic soundbites praising Ted Kennedy as a hero, champion of the people, defender of the realm and the king of bravery is kind of sickening. I understand the man has brain cancer – a condition that strikes a chord of fear in many people. I understand that the condition is most likely inoperable and fatal. I understand that this is traumatic and heart wrenching for the man’s family. Life is tough.
Everyone is suddenly whipping out speeches extolling the man’s great virtuosity and pretending he is the greatest patriot since George Washington. This is a man who has been working for longer than I have been alive to take away choices and freedoms that I hold very dear. I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of idiotic and costly legislation that the man has sponsored.
His biography shows him to be one of the helmsman of the decline of intellectualism and free thinking in the United States. He is a staunch supporter of the idea that Uncle Sugar should care for us all from cradle to grave, dumbing us down and making us catatonic and ignorant along the way. He is an advocate of theft and mediocrity, preaching the mantra that high achievers should have a portion of their wealth taken by force and redistributed according to his visions. Ted Kennedy believes that government managed socialism will actually make the quality of life in this country better in the long term. And on that issue, we are fundamentally at odds. Government programs almost always make things worse.
I am not celebrating Ted Kennedy’s misfortune. Neither will I sit quietly while others laud him as our great national champion. Ted Kennedy is not a hero. He is not a saint. He is a man who may have done some good things for some people some of the time but it was always at the expense of the American taxpayer. The media and his fellow politicians are doing us all a disservice by pretending otherwise just because he is afflicted with a fatal condition.
A malignant brain tumor is a terrible thing. But Ted Kennedy is not my god and I will not pretend that the man has been championing the American people and steering this country on a course that I agree with. That’s simply not the case. For his political enemies to pretend otherwise is disingenuous and a disservice to all those of us who disagree strongly with Mr. Kennedy’s political views and the agenda he strongarms in Congress. I wish him and his family well as far as health goes, but I don’t want to hear all this utter nonsense every time I turn on the TV or the radio. Ted Kennedy is not my friend or a man I respect. If Ted Kennedy is the lion of Congress just because he developed a brain tumor then I am the Pope. Quit singing hosannas to the man. What the hell is wrong with your gray matter?
At best, I can say that I strongly disagreed with Ted Kennedy on almost every issue. Now that he is effectively retired, I wish him well in his battle against the tumor.
Blue Zones finds places where people live longest
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Lots of people are looking for long life and health, including Dan Buettner. The answers are really simply if you are willing to make some lifestyle adjustments.
If you are looking for a Fountain of Youth, forget pills and diet supplements. Adventurer Dan Buettner has visited four spots on the globe where people live into their 90s and 100s and outlines how they add years of good life in his new book, “The Blue Zones.”
The answer, Buettner says, includes smaller food portions, an active lifestyle and moderate drinking.
“If someone tells you they have a pill or hormone (that extends life), you’re about to lose money,” Buettner says.
Buettner identifies four hot spots of longevity: the mountainous Barbagia region of Sardinia, an island off the coast of Italy; the Japanese island of Okinawa; a community of Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, Calif., about 60 miles east of Los Angeles; and the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, in Central America.
[amazonify]0345490118:right[/amazonify]The Blue Zones book has received positive reviews, enough for me to add to my Amazon.com wish list. I will be shocked however, if I find more useful information in it than I have taken from Healthy at 100 by John Robbins. I’ve already made several dietary adjustments based on advice from that book, and I will review it here in the near future.
The long lived Okinawans are mentioned in both of these guides to healthier life – it is unfortunate that the virus we call modern culture is infecting younger Okinawans and ensuring that their elders are going to outlive many of them. In our modern memewars, Western civilization is winning. Unfortunately, Western eating habits contribute to a bunch of drooling ignorant slobs roaming aisles of abundance in motorized carts and making the worst possible choices. I’m not sure why it has taken me 37 years to wake up to the fact that we eat terribly in the United States, but I finally have. Now I am busy investigating what adjustments I should make.
