Perpetual Ruminations

Wednesday

I'm writing this entry in a different site, one called 750 Words. The name says it all, it's just a blank page for a person to write out 750 words a day, as a way of zapping their creativity into high gear. I could explain it better, but they do the best job and if your curious, just jump over to the site, 750 Words at 750words.com  and look around. I did this for a while, but when things at work started to take up all my time, it was kind of difficult to get this many words written. Even now, I know I will not meet that goal, and will not be able to get in here every day. See, I enjoyed this, it was a great way to brush up on my typing, get things off my mind, and to generate ideas. But, with limited time, it was a choice between here and Writing dot Com, and of course, Writing dot Com won.

Even though I have not used the site for months, possibly a year -- it could be over that if I took the time to figure it up -- I still get reminders in my e-mail and have not closed anything out, since I would enjoy the challenge if I ever get enough time again. I will be optimistic and say, "When I get the time."

For now, I will pop over here from time to time to write my journal entry, then copy and paste it into my journal in Writing dot Com. That way I can kind of get a little of both sites. It will limit me to just making an entry here from time to time, and I will not meet the requirements needed to get badges and points, but like I said, that was just the fluff, and I enjoy the rest even more.

It's been forever since I was in here. I used to log in via my Google account, but that page doesn't even load anymore; I had to use my email and get a password sent to me. I'll have to look around and see what else has changed in here. First, however I will get this journal entry written out and then copied and pasted into my journal at Writing dot Com. Did I mention that what you write here, at 750 words is private? No, well it is, and that can be a nice thing, sometimes. Like when your having one of those disagreeable times with someone and want to blow off some steam, but don't want it anyplace they will come across it and make it into a big deal, possible reigniting the infernal you wrote to try and end. You know what I mean.

Anyway, it was a rough day for me, again. Sunday really drained me, Monday, working a double shift with less than three hours of sleep almost done me in, and then I had to stand firm and push to get Tuesday off. In so doing, however, I also ended up with only one day off, but I knew I would be pushing myself too hard to work another day without getting some rest. Rest? I don't think it could really be called rest, but it was a break from working on site, I did get more sleep, and I did get a chance to take it a little easier. But, with so much on my to-do list, I didn't get to relax and do the things I wanted.

In fact, I spent a great deal of my day trying to remove a tool bar I found that I don't know how I got it. I suspect it came through another site, and just kind of installed itself. I uninstalled it, but it came back a couple of days later. So, I went through and did a full uninstall, removing any traces I could find after the program was gone. The next day, when I opened up Chrome, there it was. Now, the tool bar never did show up, but it continued to change my opening page to a search page, called Connect. The tool bar and program responsible, however was called Conduit. I found this all out by researching it online.

I also downloaded an anti-spyware program and it did clean out the program. But, it still showed signs after a reboot. I downloaded another anti-spyware and it also removed more of the program, and I thought I had it gone. I could not find any traces, but then my web browser started to run slower and slower. I opened Internet Explorer, and guess what? Yep it was back. I did find a solution online, but had to go through and do a full search in my registry and remove any related items. That helped, but I still had signs of it showing up, so I looked into more information and seen that Connect and Conduit were one and the same, and then while cleaning my registry, found items from Zynga that contained parts of the program.

So, once again I removed the item from my browsers, then I removed my browsers, just to be safe. Next, I removed any items I could find on my drive, then cleaned the registry of any items from Conduit and Zynga. Now, it seems to be gone, my newly downloaded web browsers are clean and my system is running much faster. Oh, did I tell you I also have a Netbook with Chrome on it? No?

Well I do, and of course they are in sync with each other. So, after I got my laptop cleaned, I went in to my Netbook to get the downloads and put them in my cloud storage so I could put a web browser back on here. When I opened Chrome in my Netbook, there was the damn Connect page. I have not had the Netbook for very long, and did not have much to lose by refreshing it back to the original setup. It removed anything I did not save, then reloaded the system with factory settings. That cleaned up the mess faster than if I had gone through the registry again, and with it being Windows 8, I wasn't sure just how to get around inside the workings.

But, after spending most of the day on this task, it's nice to not see it show up again and to have things working back to normal.

Hey, look at the counter I'm over a thousand words already. Yes, the site here counts the words, auto-saves, and gives a nice breakdown of typing speed, time spent writing, and a nice breakdown of what was written. Seriously, you should check it out; who knows, you may just enjoy writing in here.