Oxygen @ Sea Level / Fighting a Virus

Happy Anniversary Dear - 7 Years

I was up and out of bed near 7am while the rest of the household remained asleep. Felt good to be in my own home, having coffee, and playing on the internet in complete silence. Even Eiknarf was still asleep upstairs with Mindy. I wasn't any hurry to do anything. Save for my run, I had absolutely nothing planned. I spent the first couples hours kicking back, sipping coffee, and reviewing vacation photos. Headed out for a run mid morning. Most of my regular running stuff was packed away in my suitcase, so I ran in back-up gear. Just before heading out, I took Mindy a cup of coffee and wished her happy wedding anniversary - officially our 7th.

And after 7 daily runs in high altitude with a steep incline, my run at home was comparably simple. After my run and before heading back in the house, I took the time to shovel away the once large pile of snow that was sitting in front of my Accord for the past 2-3 weeks. I also used a square garden shovel to break-up the hard packed sno/ice on the passenger side of the Pilot just off the driveway. After a series of very mild days preceding our return home, it was very, very slick - dangerous even.

Before heading back in the house, I unpacked our skis that until then were resting on the garage floor still in the ski duffles. Mindy and the kids were and milling about. Spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon unpacking Utah and putting everything away. Truth be told, I wasn't motivated to do much.

Sometime mid afternoon Mindy and the kids headed off somewhere. While they were away, I fiddled with my GoPro videos. And never being satisfied with the video quality playback, I opted to visit the GoPro site to do a little research. Learned that many players, including those often embedded in photo software such as my version of Elements weren't designed to playback HD video. The net result would often be choppy, non-HS quality playback - the very symptoms I was experiencing. Until then, I thought something might be wrong with my camera. GoPro suggested downloading VLC player and even pointed to their website where it could be downloaded for free.

Eager to give it a try, I headed there promptly. Got the player downloaded and was amazed at the eye popping HD quality. However, there was a problem, and big problem. Seems that along with the VLC player was some adware/malware. From that point forward I couldn't web surf without getting pop-up add after pop-up on most websites. My heart sunk. ( As vigilant as I've always been, here I had apparently downloaded a virus. I was pissed, especially since I followed the advice of the GoPro folks.

I quickly went into PC repair mode. Fairly quickly, I found two pieces of adware/malware and was able to remove and delete them from the hard drive. I thought i had it whipped until 10 minutes or so later more pop-ups appeared. I then accessed my Norton anti-virus software and ran a few deep scans which netted zero results. I was pissed. In Task Manager I could see yet another new program installed along with the VLC player. It was called something like PursuePoint. No matter what I tried, I couldn't remove it. Wouldn't allow it. Said I needed to close the program it was running in first. I closed everything several times but still no joy.

Now frustrated and heartbroken, I suddenly felt like I was fighting the clock. It was 430pm and I knew that Mindy wanted to go to dinner at 229. I badly wanted to resolve my PC issue before all else. Sad to say, but my lifestyle requires access to my PC, not to mention the thousands upon thousands of files I have that are irreplaceable. I was sick to my stomach. I guess on a positive note, all of my critical files are double backed up, first to an exterior HD and then also burned to DVDs on a monthly basis. Still, the thought of losing my hard drive made me sick.

I toiled with the possibility of allowing Norton access to my machine remotely to try and remove the malware. They charge $100 for the service but there's no guarantee. Stress! Mindy and the kids were home near 5pm. I remained focused on removing the virus. And I explained my dilemma to Mindy. I suppose she understood, at least on the surface, but she also seemed largely unfazed. I, on the other hand, was a complete basket case. I'll admit it.

I tried running a few more scans though unsuccessfully. Soon Mindy let me know that it was time to leave for dinner. Unfortunately, I was still wound up like a watch. I could focus on nothing more than my damn PC problem. Rather than push back, I went ahead and freshened up for dinner out. I think it was near 6pm when we left in the Pilot. I was largely silent both on the drive there and then once inside. In fact, for all intents and purposes, I was your run-of-the-mill asshole.

All I could think about was losing my data and having to fork out a couple K for a new machine and then painstaking hours spent migrating data files. Ugh!!!!!!!!! And buried beneath it all, I was extremely disappointed in myself for allowing it to happen in the first place. My selfish demise rolled over to Mindy, who was eager to celebrate our 7th anniversary with dinner at 229. She enjoyed a glass of wine while I could drink only water. Beer or liquor was not in the cards in my world. The kids were largely silent too. I think they were concerned that I might explode. :)

The way I felt inside, dinner was the last place I needed/wanted to be. In retrospect, I should've begged for another hour, or better yet, asked for a reschedule for Monday evening. Definitely wasn't anyone's fault but my own, but no matter the blame, I just could bring myself out of the funk. Adding to my mini dram was the thought of returning to work and the need to focus all of my energy on that - not my personal PC issues. At that moment and time life sucked eggs!

Mindy ordered a steak, Jacob his favorite chicken sandwich, and Bella one of their yummy cheeseburgers. I ordered only wings, and even that was a stretch because hungry I was not. Oh, almost forgot. Mindy ordered pork belly appetizer, the one she loves. The chunk I got was nearly 100% fat. Figures. When asked by our waitress, I told her as much. She started to interrupt me by saying that pork bellies are all fat. However, having had them there before I knew otherwise. Literally, it was all fat. Later, one of the managers came by to share that he was removing them from our bill. While he was there, I asked if there was a way to turn of the AC that was blowing on both Bella and I. Hell, it felt almost as if a window was opened. Said they couldn't control the airflow - poor design, but did have a good solution. He placed rectangular shaped dinner plates over the airflow grates effectively blocking the cool air from rising up and blowing on me.

Mindy was noticeably sad. Made a couple brief comments that I was ruining our anniversary dinner. Certainly not my intent, but I must admit, I wasn't a quality date to be sure. Mindy paid the tab and soon we were on our way back home. Another largely silent drive. I couldn't wait to get back home and take another swing at my PC problem. Getting away for an hour or so did provide enough of a gap that I could put together some semblance of a game plan. I planned to run one more full security scan, search for a possible deinstall program, and lastly contact Norton and pay-up. Certainly forking over $100 would be worth it if they could make the problem go away.

The security scan found yet another piece of malware that came onboard with the video player, but also one that I had already deactivated. It didn't find the one that up to that point I couldn't stop or remove. I guess it's because it looks like a viable application. Anyway, just before I hit the purchase button for Norton virus removal, I went back to my programs X86 folder. This time when left clicking on the malicious icon, I found a deinstall application link. How did I ever overlook that earlier? Who knows? Couldn't hurt. I gave it a whirl. Worked!!! Bam! Shaz Zam!

To be sure, I ran a full scan and then rebooted. It didn't come back. I was elated - on cloud nine. Wasn't 100% sure it was fixed but was about 90%. I went and found Mindy who was still sulking after a spoiled anniversary dinner and apologized, fully owning up to my heinous behavior. I wasn't trying to justify it, per se, but did try and explain why I was so fixated on my PC instead of focusing on our special day. She forgave me, at least I think.

She headed to bed around 9pm. I stayed up just a little while longer.