%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  Because I am the most interesting person I know |
| I lead the most boring life. I have challenged myself to write about my life so that it seems interesting. |
| I dragged myself out of bed early this morning for a vet appointment. I don’t know why I was so concerned with being on time. The vet always runs late. I could show up 30 minutes late and still have to wait. Nevertheless, I was up and at least semi-conscious within ten minutes of the alarm sounding. First things first. A visit to my litterbox, then treats for Furball, followed by breakfast and fresh water for the four-legged members of the family. The one change in our morning routine was a quick trip upstairs for a carrier. I thought perhaps it would be less threatening if I got it out ahead of time. The Fur Patrol likes to play in and around empty carriers that are sitting innocently around the house. It’s not unusual to find one cat inside the carrier while another one lounges on top of it. With any luck, the right one would be inside and all I would have to do would be to close the door on the unsuspecting feline. Then it was back to the morning routine of making my own breakfast and coffee, and curling up on the loveseat with my current reading material while I finished waking up. Something was missing this morning. Where was Rory? He always jumps up on the loveseat while I’m sipping my coffee and reading my book. He loves to knead my belly, sinking his claws deeper and deeper into my flesh until I brush him off right before he starts drawing blood. After a few minutes, he comes back and begins the game again. He was nowhere to be seen this morning. He couldn’t possible know that he was the one visiting the vet today. Perhaps he was hiding because he guessed that someone was going to the vet and he wanted to make sure that it wasn’t going to be him. I finished my coffee, got dressed and started hunting. I searched the house top to bottom twice. No Rory. The only place I didn’t look was the dusty, cobwebby crawlspace. There are too many places too small for me that are the perfect size for a cat to squeeze into. The clock was ticking down the minutes to Rory’s appointment. What to do, what to do. I didn’t want to have to reschedule the appointment. Desperate times call for desperate measures. There is one thing that is guaranteed to bring everyone running. I called out the familiar dinner invitation: “Who wants wet food?” and started opening cans. Sure enough, Furball and Bandit showed up immediately. Rory came bounding down the stairs a few seconds later. I scooped him up, stuffed him into the carrier and off we went. We were a few minutes late, but still had a lengthy wait. After going to great lengths to stay out of the carrier at home, Rory had to be pried out of it in the exam room. He has gained weight since his last appointment which is strange because I am feeding less. He must be eating Furball’s portions because Furball lost weight. Rory also has a rash. His belly is all scabby. Well, not exactly his belly. The part between his back legs. Also strange because he hasn’t been scratching. We returned home with an oral antibiotic. Rory registered his displeasure with the morning’s proceedings by pooping in his carrier and forcing me to drive home in a malodorous vehicle. For more cat tales, check out "Tails of the Fur Patrol"  |
| This post was inspired by "The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week" prompt: You hear a noise in the house, but thought you were alone. Share what happened in a poem or story. Back in the mid-eighties when I bought my first house, renovating old houses was all the rage. So it wasn’t surprising that we bought an 1890s Queen Anne style Victorian in dire need of TLC. It had everything: a wrap-around porch, a turret, two fireplaces, a butler’s pantry and a ghost. We didn’t know about the ghost when we bought the house although we had hoped for one. The ghost made his presence known as soon as we moved in. Every night he angrily stomped down the attic stairs, across the hall and then down the stairs to the first floor. We were scared out of our wits and so never opened our bedroom door to watch his passage. After a few months, he adjusted to our presence and stopped his nocturnal displays of temper. Then stuff started to disappear. I should say, stuff started being moved. Always small items like scissors and keys. For instance, I would be sewing in the dining room and the phone would ring. This was back in the days when phones were stationery because they were plugged into jacks in the walls, so I would have to leave the dining room and go into the kitchen to answer the phone. When I came back, my sewing scissors would be gone. I would hunt all over the dining room without success. Later that day or sometimes the next day, I would find my scissors in some unlikely spot like the bookshelves or on top of the microwave, places that I would never put my good scissors. Eventually I figured out that the ghost was responsible for the mysterious migrations of domestic objects. Most of the time, it was just mildly irritating but occasionally it provoked a crisis. Say, I was cooking dinner, discovered I lacked a crucial ingredient and needed to run to the store but the ghost had “hidden” my keys. At first, I would scream in frustration, stomping all over the house until I had calmed down enough to figure out an appropriate culinary substitution. In time, I noticed that when something crucial like my keys disappeared, if I “demanded” them back, the ghost would return them within a few minutes. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum, I would walk into the living room, announce my need for the missing item and then leave the room for a few minutes. When I returned, the missing item would be laying in plain sight on the couch, on the coffee table, on the mantle, etc. I grew so accustomed to this entity, that I would forget that other people didn’t live with ghosts. I was constantly perplexing guests by saying things like: "Darn, my oven mitt is gone, could you check the living room for me?" It wasn’t unusual for people to ask to whom I was talking when I was requesting that the remote be returned so that the kids could play a video game. I have to admit that it was kind of fun to watch their reaction when I told them that I was talking to a ghost. Some people were truly frightened, but most just thought I was crazy. I was too busy juggling a career, a young child and a crumbling marriage to do any research on the history of my house so I never knew who the ghost was. One thing I did try to discover was where he hid things when he took them. I searched the entire house from attic to basement but was never able to find his cache. When it came time to sell the house, I was torn over whether or not to reveal the existence of the ghost to potential buyers. It would have made a great selling point (Ghost included!) for some people but others might be put off by it. In the end, I decided that since he was harmless, I would let the new owners discover the ghost for themselves. For more ancient history about me, check out "Living in the Past" |
| This post was inspired by "The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week" , prompt: Write a STORY or POEM about a student starting their first year of college -- the only catch is, this student is 40 years old. You may write in either first or third person. I was 45 when I went back to school . . . I always said that when my daughter reached high school, I would change careers. I had spent 25 years working in the financial industry all the way from chaotic trading floors to wining and dining international bankers to finally ending up as a lowly sales assistant in a local branch office, a position that allowed me to be home for dinner every night and to take time off during the day to deal with teacher conferences, day care emergencies and other duties of the modern parent. The question was, what next? My first career had been chosen for me. My major in college was chosen by my father. My first job on Wall Street was chosen by a recruiter. Having never thought about it before, I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. A helpful friend made a list of my skills and went through the want ads with me. I still had no idea what I wanted to do. She suggested going back to school as she had done after her divorce, but I didn’t know what I wanted to study. She proposed computers, pointing out that I was the most computer literate person she knew. I even owned a PC! This was back in the Dark Ages before most people had home computers. I was also the on-site computer expert at the office, troubleshooting daily problems and interfacing with the IT department at the main office. Suddenly this whole career change idea seemed simple. Having read all the Dummies books on computers, I already knew everything there was to know about them. All I needed was a diploma from a reputable school attesting to my proficiency. Some quick research revealed that Chubb was the best and most reputable IT school in New Jersey. After attending an open house, I made an appointment to take the entrance exams and discuss financial aid. Naturally, on the appointed day, I was suffering from the flu, but I kept my appointment and passed the exams with flying colors. They were most impressed with my scores on the so-called “logic exam”. Based on those excellent scores, they recommended I enter the network engineering program. I had always loved school and was full of confidence on my first day. Or rather, night. I continued working full time during the day while attending school at night. By the end of the first week of classes, that confidence was completely shattered. I realized that I knew nothing about computers. The network engineering program was divided into four sections. The first section was the hardware section, basically a review course for A+ certified computer technicians, the guys you call when your pc isn’t working who open it up, root around in it for a bit, and then close it back up all the while mumbling stuff in Geek Speak. And therein lay the problem. I had never learned much about the insides of my PC. The diagrams in the text book made no sense to me. Nor did the accompanying text which was written in Geek Speak. The only foreign languages I knew were French, Spanish and a little Japanese. By the second week, I was seriously thinking of dropping out. Nothing was making sense. At least to me. It seemed that everyone else not only knew what was going, they had spirited debates about . . . to be honest, I had no idea what they were talking about. Obviously, I had made a horrible mistake. It was time to stick my tail between my legs and slink quietly out the door. But I couldn’t do it. I had never failed at school before. I knew that I wasn’t stupid. I was twice the age of my fellow students and older than the instructor, but that didn’t make me any less smart. If they could figure this stuff out, so could I. I hit the books. Hard. Two days a week, I went to work and then to school. The other five days, I spent all of my spare time studying. My first quiz resulted in an 80. I was mortified because I had always been a straight A student. But I was also encouraged because I hadn’t failed it. I continued studying day and night. My hard work paid off at the end of the first section, which introduced the basics of computer networking. All of a sudden, everything I had been studying made sense. From a networking perspective, it all came together for me. The rest of the program, all three sections, was a breeze. I never earned less than a 92 on the rest of my exams. It wasn’t a breeze for everyone, though. We started out with 27 students. 17 graduated. Four women started, two finished: the oldest (me) and the youngest. I may have been the oldest class member, but I was the first one in our class to earn a professional certification. I studied for the exam while working and going to school, taking practice exams on my lunch hour. I was also the first in the class to land a job in the IT field, doing so before I had even graduated. And to think I almost dropped out! Read more about me in "It's All About Me!!" |
| Written for "The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week" prompt Write a STORY or POEM about someone turning 50 "Invalid Item" See what else I've written for contests, "Pick me! Pick me!" |
| I am waiting for the rain. The earth is parched. The plants are drooping. It’s been weeks since we had significant rainfall. Thunderstorms are predicted for tonight. I hope one pops up in my town. I used to enjoy thunderstorms when I lived in a Queen Anne style Victorian home with a wrap-around porch. I loved that porch. I furnished it with wicker furniture and hung flower baskets all around the perimeter. Summer mornings found me on my porch, sipping coffee, reading the newspaper, listening to the birds. Stormy afternoons were the best. I could sit in the shelter of my porch and watch the storms approach, their tall black thunderclouds periodically lit by lightening. As they got closer, the wind would pick up, blowing away the heat and the humidity replacing them with cool air scented by the approaching rain. Then the storm would be upon us. First a few rain drops, then more and more until it was raining so hard that I couldn’t see more than a few feet from my porch. The lightening was like fireworks and the thunder so loud that the house shook. I would have to retreat into the house or be soaked by the wind driven rain. Inside the house, the scene was always the same. My daughter clutching her cat Sneakers, the two dogs pressed up against her, everyone quaking in fear. It’s just a little thunder, I would tell them, it can’t hurt you. I miss my porch. Check out what else is going on at "It's All About Me!!" |
| Everyone seems to think that because I am single and live alone, I live a life of leisure free from the importunate demands of a husband and children. Alas, I wish it were so. I am nagged literally from the time I get up in the morning until I go to bed at night by my three cats, collectively known as The Fur Patrol. I don’t need an alarm clock. I have three furry alarms who pace in front of my bedroom door loudly meowing when they feel that I have gotten enough sleep and it is time for me to get up and feed them. I am not even allowed a quick trip to the bathroom before dishing out kibble and refreshing their water bowl. They whine and scratch at the door despite reminders from me that I don’t bother them when they are using their litterboxes so I would appreciate the same courtesy when I am using mine. Afternoons are prime nagging opportunities. I feed them their favorite canned food before leaving for work. They try continuously to move back the time when I start opening cans by nagging me earlier and earlier each afternoon. This technique works best on weekends when I am not rushing to get out the door on time. I can afford to drop whatever I am doing and satisfy their cravings. Weekends are also a time when I am home in the evenings and they can nag me for food, water, attention, SOMETHING, right up until I retire to bed and close my bedroom door with a sigh of relief. As if three relentless indoor naggers were not enough, yesterday I was nagged by a woodpecker. I had a busy Saturday and wasn’t able to make my weekly pilgrimage to the grocery store. The birdfeeders were running low but had to wait until a belated grocery run on Sunday to be re-filled. I had barely made it home and unloaded my groceries from the car when I heard a familiar squawking from the birdfeeder. Expecting to see "Invalid Item" , I instead espied a young red bellied woodpecker minus the red cap and with the muddy plumage of a juvenile. I begged for time to at least get my perishables into the fridge and freezer, but the woodpecker wasn’t having it. The feeder was almost empty. No more waiting. It had to be filled NOW.I decided this must be T.R.’s younger brother or maybe a sister. I’m calling her “Eleanor”. Yes, I am aware that in real life Eleanor was Teddy’s niece, not his sister. But I would like to think that Eleanor the Woodpecker was advocating for all of the hungry birds just as the real Eleanor advocated for rights for all people. Who am I kidding? Eleanor didn’t give a rat’s patootie about anyone else. She was hungry and has been taking lessons from her big brother. For more true tales from my birdfeeder, fly on over to "Memoirs of a Garden Goddess" For more feline shenanigans, check out "Tails of the Fur Patrol" |
| When I hung my first birdfeeder, I considered only what was best for the birds. I placed it in a shady corner at the back of my house adjacent to my lilac bush. I often paused while weeding or planting my gardens in the backyard to watch the Black Capped Chickadees and various types of sparrows vie for a place on the feeder while other birds perched in the lilac bush waiting for their turn. Mourning Doves and Cardinals eagerly pecked at the seed that fell from the feeder to the ground below. Eventually I realized that I had made a big mistake when I chose the site for my birdfeeder because I was unable to see it from inside the house. I could only “birdwatch” when I was outside in the backyard. When I installed the second feeder, I made sure to place it where I could see it from a kitchen window. It was especially important to me that I be able to see this one because it was supposed to attract woodpeckers. I had been hearing woodpeckers drumming on trees for years. They were present at both houses that I have owned, but I had never seen one. During my first trip to the NJ Garden Show, I came across an Audubon Society booth and allowed them to talk me into buying a birdfeeder specifically designed to attract woodpeckers. Although skeptical, I took it home, filled it with seeds and nuts as directed, tacked a poster of Common Feeder Birds of the Northeast on a wall in my kitchen and waited. It wasn’t long before the birds discovered the new feeder. It’s a good thing I had my poster. All kinds of new birds that I had never seen before showed up. Tufted Titmouses, White Breasted Nuthatches, House Finches, Grackles, Cowbirds and best of all, two types of woodpeckers, the tiny Downy Woodpeckers and the much larger Red Breasted Woodpeckers. This birdfeeder has been endlessly entertaining, allowing me to observe all sorts of unique avian behavior. I’ve discovered that White Breasted Nuthatches never fly directly to the feeder. They prefer to fly to the nearby oak tree, walk headfirst down its trunk until they are in a direct line with the feeder and then fly to the feeder where they eat while hanging upside down. The House Finches always come in groups. I know without having to look out the window when they are present because they have the sweetest song. Downy Woodpeckers are almost tame, allowing me to approach to within just a few feet of the feeder while the Red Bellied Woodpeckers are so skittish that just moving the curtain aside to look out the window causes them to flee the feeder. The most fun to watch are baby birds. As soon as they are old enough to fly, they follow their parents to the feeder where they perch on the nearby fence and cry for food as their harried parents fly between the feeder and their ravenous offspring. This year, I saw a baby Red Bellied Woodpecker for the first time. It was a few weeks before I was able to identify the baby as a male because he hadn’t yet developed his distinctive red “cap”. It was a father-son duo who showed up day after day, the son loudly demanding food while the father made seemingly endless trips to the feeder. Eventually the baby began coming to the feeder by himself but whenever his hapless father showed up, Baby would immediately revert to infantile behavior and perch on the fence demanding to be fed. The father has learned to outwit his devious offspring and only comes to the feeder now when Baby is not there. Meanwhile, Baby has turned from bullying his father to bullying the much smaller finches and sparrows. Any smaller birds who attempt to use the feeder at the same time as Baby, are pecked until they fly away. Baby refuses to share the feeder with them. I’ve begun calling him “T.R.” as in Teddy Roosevelt who is often caricatured as shouting “BULLY!” To see what else is happening in my garden, check out "Memoirs of a Garden Goddess" |
| This post was inspired by "The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week" contest, prompt: "Write a STORY or POEM about finding something unexpected while weeding a garden". It got me thinking about the really weird stuff that happens in my garden. Strange things happen in my garden. Seriously strange things. Stuff that no one would believe, like a primrose that bloomed in the fall. For horticulturally challenged readers, primroses are those plants with impossibly bright colored flowers that are commonly sold in March. The operative word being “March”, as in spring. Primroses are not supposed to bloom in the fall, in fact, they should be dormant by then. Nevertheless, I have photographic proof that one of the primroses in my garden bloomed in September of 2007. Then there was the foxglove that bloomed backwards. Normally, foxglove flowers hang vertically from a spike, all of the tubular blossoms on one side of the spike. There are some new varieties now that have flowers all the way around the spike but I prefer the old fashioned kind. I bought the foxglove in question from a (reputable) mail order catalog as a plant. When it arrived in the fall, I planted it and crossed my fingers it would make it through the winter. I grow mainly from seed because I don’t have much luck with plants but in this case, I couldn’t get seeds, only plants. It survived the winter, sprouting right on time in the late spring and bloomed . . . backwards. All of the flowers faced the back of the bed. It continued to bloom backwards every year until I moved it to another flower bed. Just for giggles, when I transplanted it, I rotated the plant 180°. Sure enough, it bloomed facing the front of the new flower bed. For non-gardening readers, plants do not normally have a front and a back. Then there were the shade-loving lilies. When I moved into my present house, there was a clump of what I call “Old-Fashioned Day Lilies” but the rest of the world refers to them as “Ditch Lilies”. Dark orange, early summer blooming lilies one step removed from weeds. Once I had liberated them from the underbrush that was strangling them, they did what Ditch Lilies do best: spread. Only these lilies insisted on spreading into the deepest, darkest shade in my entire yard. Ditch Lilies hate shade. They can’t grow in shade. They die in shade. Except in my yard. By far the strangest thing that ever happened in my garden was the disappearing Lily of the Valley. My first house. My first yard that I could do whatever I wanted. I had big plans. Grand designs. Part of that design was scent. Lilacs by the back door, hyacinths and lily of the valley by the front door. No matter which door you stepped out of, you were greeted with the sweet scents of spring flowers. I started small. A half a dozen pips (lily of the valley rhizomes), planted in the fall by my front steps. When nothing came up in the spring, I thought that I had either gotten bad pips or planted them incorrectly. I threw in some annual flower seed and forgot about the lily of the valley. Until they sprouted three years later. Granted, they could have been dormant all that time. There are some lily bulbs that remain dormant up to two years after planting. The really strange thing was that the pips had multiplied. What had originally been 6-8 pips had become over a dozen plants covering a larger area than the initial planting space. After that, they came up faithfully every year, flowering and multiplying but never offering any explanation as to what they had been doing during their three year absence. See what other madness happens in my garden: "Memoirs of a Garden Goddess" |
| When preparing one’s home for sale, the first thing any realtor will tell you is to “declutter”. For most people, that means throwing out items that have outlived their usefulness and giving away gently used toys and clothing to friends, relatives or charities. The “stuff” that one is left with is either stored neatly away in a convenient attic or basement or, better yet, in a rented unit in a storage facility. None of the above advice is helpful when one lives with a hoarder, or as in my case, successive hoarders. My ex-husband was a classic hoarder. He saved everything. He collected everything. He picked up broken items that had been left on the curb for garbage and brought them home swearing each time that he would fix them. Of course he never did. Eventually our roomy Victorian house became so full that aisles had to be created so that we could move from room to room. We were forced to sit on the floor because the furniture was precariously piled with junk. Very few people came to visit, not just because of the junk but also because the outer doors were blocked by the junk. The only way into the house was to shove the outer doors as hard as you could and then slide sideways through the narrow opening. After our divorce, I began to gradually throw stuff away or move it to the already crammed attic and basement. Getting rid of garbage is always a problem in New Jersey where landfill space is at a premium. Fortunately for me, the town I was living in had contracted garbage collection to a private company so when it came time for me to move, they agreed, for a reasonable price, to pick up anything I didn’t want to move. I’m sure they weren’t prepared for the huge piles of stuff that lined my 50’ driveway. I thought I was being smart when I moved to a small cape lacking a family room to assign the top two bedrooms to my daughter to sleep, study and entertain her friends in. Unfortunately, her father had passed along the hoarding gene to her. It didn’t take long for her to fill both tiny rooms and the crawl space with clothes, toys and art supplies. Occasionally the mess would start to creep down the stairs and I would have to push it back up to her lair. Like her father who had moved into a studio apartment in Manhattan leaving his junk and his dogs behind, when my daughter moved out, she took only what would fit into her backpack and a pillowcase, leaving her debris and her cat behind. When I decided to sell the house, I “decluttered” by moving everything I didn’t want into the basement. My biggest problem became getting everything out of the basement which was now filled floor to ceiling. The town where I live has municipal garbage collection and very strict rules about what they will pick up and how much they will pick up. They only do one “bulk” pickup per year and, along with the content restrictions, will only pick up junk equivalent in amount to the size of a desk. At that rate, I would be cleaning out my basement until I’m ready to move into a nursing home. The solution was to hire a junk man. Trying to be terribly modern, I ventured into the wilds of Craig’s List. After perusing several pages of ads, I settled on half a dozen that I thought could handle the job. Three saw fit to answer my inquiries. The first junk man who came to give me an estimate pulled up in a pick-up towing a small trailer, similar to the ones landscapers use but only large enough to fit a single mower and a few gas cans. He had been told that the job was to clean out my basement which was “totally filled” with junk but I got the distinct impression that he thought I had been exaggerating. Perhaps I should have said “filled floor to ceiling with the results of ten years of hoarding”. He mumbled something about “several trips with my trailer” but mostly he talked about the hardships of being unemployed. That he was doing this to make ends meet because he was unemployed. Gradually it began to dawn on me that he was hoping I would feel sorry for him and hire him even though he was clearly not equipped to handle the job. The second junk man made an appointment to do an estimate, re-scheduled the appointment to the following day and then showed up over an hour late in a minivan with a small child riding shotgun. Small Child Riding Shotgun was left in the minivan while her father ventured into depths of my basement. He too was taken aback by the sheer quantity of stuff, but recovered quickly. He grew expansive and offered to take the old stove (that was part of a second kitchen) and refrigerator. I said I would call a plumber to cap off the gas line. His confidence building, Father of Small Child Riding Shotgun assured me that there was no need for a plumber. His brother-in-law “knows about that stuff” and could tell him what to do and what tools to bring. Without even asking if his brother-in-law was a licensed plumber, I sent him on his way. I want to sell my house, not blow it up. That same day, the third junk man called from his truck to make an appointment for an estimate but upon discovering that he was just a few miles away, offered to come over. He arrived in a rental van commonly used for moving. I was quite impressed when he offered me a business card. We decamped for the basement where he did a classic double-take but quickly recovered his composure and assured me that he and his “crew” could handle it. When he also offered to take away the old stove and refrigerator if I had a plumber come in first to cap off the gas line, I hired him in the spot. My first inkling that this was not going to go as smoothly as I hoped was when he called me on the day he was supposed to come over to clean out my basement and announced that he and his crew were running about an hour late. They showed up two hours later. They got right to work and I did my best to stay out of their way. The demands started about halfway through the job. First he wanted water. I handed out all the bottled water I had on hand. He wanted more. I told him I only had diet soda. He insisted on looking through my refrigerator himself. I don’t know what he expected to find. I’m a single woman who lives alone. There is never anything but water and diet soda in my refrigerator. Next he wanted tools to take apart the refrigerator because it was too large to get up the stairs. Which begs the question of how it got down the stairs in the first place. And what man doesn’t carry tools? I opened my toolbox with its meager collection of tools and told him to help himself. Then he wanted more money. What could I do? If I refused, he could simply drive away and I would have to hire someone else to take away the remaining junk. It was cheaper to pay him what he wanted. Finally, even though his truck wasn’t full, he asked if he could leave “a few bags that won’t fit” behind. I said fine, as long as it wasn’t more than half a dozen and that they were very light. I have been ticketed for having a full garbage can that was too heavy forcing me to divide up my used cat litter into multiple bags. The half dozen bags morphed into two dozen, each so heavy I was unable to lift them. I said either take them now or come back for them, I can’t leave them at the curb, the town will refuse to pick them up. He opted to come back for them. Which he never did. Nor did I ever see any of my tools again. Can you imagine how much fun I’m going to have hiring a mover? See what else I'm ranting about at "It's All About Me!!" |
| I bought my first PC in 1995. Among technophiles, that’s laughable. They were buying PC’s a decade before that. I’m just a late bloomer, I guess, but I “bloomed” rapidly. Every three years like clockwork, I bought a newer, bigger, faster PC. I was in love with the internet before there really was an internet. I was dating online, shopping online, researching online while my less-geeky friends were still trying to figure out email. More than one friend thought I had lost my mind when I installed a faster modem (remember modems?) in an early PC. In their world, the concept of “upgrading” a PC was just that, a concept. The more daring took their machines to “professionals” and forked over hundreds of dollars so that the High Priests of Tech could work their magic. One didn’t work on one’s PC oneself. That was risking the wrath of the computer gods. Six years after purchasing my first PC, I was in computer school learning computer networking; how to make computers talk to one another. I work in a data center now, responsible for the care and feeding of several hundred servers. These days, I don’t think twice about yanking a server out of the rack, opening it up and messing with its insides. Now I am one of the computer gods. I’ve been bragging for the past fifteen years that despite the hours I have spent online, the far corners of the internet that I have explored, my PC has never been infected by a virus. I’m paranoid about security. I have an entire suite of anti-virus protection: regularly scheduled scans, real time background scans, intrusion alerts. There is no way that a virus could possibly make its way through my redundant defenses. Until now. Last night, I opened my email to find automated responses from help desks to emails that I hadn’t sent. A little confused but not terribly worried, I answered friends’ emails, posted some writing and checked out the new Kindle on Amazon.com before going to bed. This morning, I awoke to very bad news. A close friend forwarded one of those bogus emails to me asking if I had truly sent it to her. Another friend IM’d me asking about the same email. My heart sunk. Either my email address was being spoofed or my PC was infected by a virus. I shot a quick email to my buddy in the office who does desktop support and spends inordinate amounts of time chasing viruses off users’ PCs. Then I checked my own anti-virus software. A full system scan hadn’t been run since June 14. The lack of air conditioning in my house and the sizzling summer temps have prevented me from turning on my PC more than an hour or two per day. I haven’t been leaving it on overnight so the scans have not been running. I manually ran a scan: three Trojans were found. I ran a scan using another anti-virus program that my buddy uses. More viruses. So the next time you hear about “victims” of the heat this summer, you can add my PC to the list. My high tech defenses were defeated by a decidedly low tech heat wave. See what else I'm ranting about by visiting "It's All About Me!!" |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
