Two hours after Cosmo Boy did his victory lap dance, some kind of malware snuck past the firewall, kronked my PC, and seems to have destroyed the Fios router.
I am typing this on the Spousal Unit’s work laptop, using dialup. Can’t even read the longer threads, much less add anything useful. Someone let me know when Scottie gets busted in an American-Idol-related kickback scheme… which I figure will happen within two infotainment business days of his maiden speech.
And for those of you who feared, or hoped, that the past day’s fustercluck might have caused me to slash my wrists:
General Winfield Stuck
You still interested in the photos? If not, that’s cool.
Brian J
What is this referring to?
Linkmeister
Are you suggesting there’s a causal relationship between his election and the malware?
PeakVT
If you use Acrobat browser plugins, update the package to 9.3 ASAP. A pretty tenuous piece of malware exploited the Firefox plugin on my comp last Friday.
4jkb4ia
I report that Scott Brown has his picture on the front page of La Repubblica. Haaretz and Yediot appeared to have no interest in him.
4jkb4ia
@Brian J:
His daughter was a contestant on American Idol. I think.
Anne Laurie
@General Winfield Stuck: Yes, still very much interested, but I can’t access my email until the PC is working again. Tomorrow, I hope.
General Winfield Stuck
@Anne Laurie: Yea, I commented before reading your post. Computer death is not a pleasant experience. Anyways, my site is set up and ready to go.:-)
Anne Laurie
@4jkb4ia:
Yep, and one of the local newspodpersons suggested young Ayla’s 13th or 16th-place not-win was partially responsible for Daddy’s “populist” victory. No actual AI scandal mooted… yet.
AkaDad
Some people say it was Rahm Emmanuel that crashed Anne Laurie’s computer.
Brian J
@Anne Laurie:
Oh, so it was more of a joke than anything else? Guess it’s time for me to go to bed.
MikeJ
@4jkb4ia: With the quote from Obama, “Vado avanti con le riforme.”
Dennis-SGMM
@General Winfield Stuck:
‘Photographs, ay?’, he asked him knowingly. Snap snap, grin grin, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more?
Brian J
@AkaDad:
With the help of ACORN, of course.
freelancer (itouch)
Don’t be afraid, you’re already dead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBy1NUHi1I8&feature=youtube_gdata
love is simple.
freelancer +8
asiangrrlMN
Anne Laurie, thank you for that video. I have never seen/heard it before. I really liked it.
Man. I am wiped out. I demand moar animal photos and moar food pr0n.
@freelancer (itouch): Very nice, man. But, not true. Love is fucking complicated.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I’d say if love is simple, u r doing it wrong. Nothing that has all the dimensions and layers that love does can ever be simple. Sheesh no wonder I avoid that word like the plague.
Hi hon. I agree on the wiped out part. I may just take a mental health day tomorrow from work.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: There you are! Was wondering if I’d see you tonight.
Love is a loaded word. It means different things to different people. It has texture and complexity. It shouldn’t be used lightly.
Do take time off if you need it. I would say you deserve it.
freelancer (itouch)
@asiangrrlMN:
Of all people, I can attest to that. That song is addictive, and love is simple to the one feeling it. It’s others that fuck it up. In our heads, love is simple, it is easy, and it is needless. To quote Tom Reagan, “Nobody knows anyone. Not that well.”
The deadly syndrome – I hope I become a ghost
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3b14TxCZRU&feature=youtube_gdata
those two tracks are from the new bobcat (yeah, that bobcat) movie World’s Greatest Dad. It was just added to Netflix instant, and I highly recommend.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I’m lurking around, just checking out the rendering of garments I expected to find here. Amazingly enough I’d rather take the vast majority of sanity I find here than around the Interwebs. Plus it was a bit busy at work today, so I didn’t get to comment much.
I decided I’m going to make the call about whether I go in tomorrow in the morning. Just found out my older brother had emergency surgery today (he’s fine) and my parents made an offer on a house. Life is going forward as normally as possible. Oh and I did decide even if I do get promoted I’m still going to job scour after I get back from Arizona in April. Unless one lands in my lap before that.
freelancer (itouch)
@Yutsano:
I know this isn’t really aimed at me, but feel lucky you missed the lion’s share of today’s threads.
asiangrrlMN
@freelancer (itouch): Love has never been a simple feeling for me, but that may be because I overthink things. I like the song; I am not sure I would like the movie. Will have to think about it.
@Yutsano: Yeah. I can’t read all of the entries today. I just can’t. It’s more about me than the commentary, but I’m just not in the mood.
I hope your brother is ok. It’s always good to keep your options open.
@freelancer (itouch): Yeah. That’s kinda how I felt after skimming a thread or two.
Yutsano
@freelancer (itouch): @asiangrrlMN: I more or less skimmed. That led me to about what I was expecting. At least Haiti is stomping down the Brown victory lap quite a bit. We need to chill out and let the leaders figure out what they’re going to do next, whatever that is. And honestly? Let the Reps stop every single bit of legislation, but the Dems better crows to the High Heavens about who’s stopping it.
gwangung
Reading them just reminds me why I should never be in charge of something important; like everyone else, I’d be running around like a chicken with no idea of what to do next.
Wish more politicians would realize that…
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I am of the belief that if the Dems are going down as all the naysayers on the left and right are saying they will, then they should go down swinging. Courage of conviction and all that. But, I think we (society, media, pols) have to stop reacting to every goddamn statement with such intensity. I kind of got that during the stimulus argument when I went AWOL for four days during the debates, as it were. One talking head offhandedly said something about, “Of course it will pass, but”….Say what? The media was fomenting all this ‘outrage’ while openly acknowledging that something will pass. I quit watching the debates, and I instantly felt better.
Now, I don’t think HCR is a done deal (either way), but a lot of the squawking on all sides seems overdone to me.
@gwangung: You have to be self-aware to realize that. Unfortunately, many in Congress aren’t. The cold, hard fact is that there are many stupid people in the world, and a great deal of them end up in politics. They feel pressured to have the right optics and say the thing that will win them the most votes, but many of them can’t really grasp the issues at hand.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: And how much pantswetting has preceded all the legislation that ended up passing anyway? If you think about it, Obama really has gotten his way with Congress more often than not. How many vetoes has he had to issue so far? How many major pieces of legislation have really been stopped by either the Republicans or the Conservadems? We all need to relax and realize Coakley losing is not the end of the universe.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: 97% of the time he really pushed for something, he got it (h/t, my honey, Rachel Maddow). That’s more than any president since the office of mumble mumble started keeping track, fifty years ago.
I am more dispirited by the reaction to the loss, from all sides, than the actual loss itself–though that hurts, too. I am just sick of the shit.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Let’s see..the nigra got elected, got the economy from completely falling apart (still a work in progress) and got further on HCR than any other president EVER. And now that it’s almost done Congress lets it fall apart? I just don’t see that happening. Not to mention a jobs bill (do I bother to point out the New Deal was a constantly developing series of laws rather than one single act?), an immigration bill, and even possibly a climate bill (though I’m not holding out too much hope on that one). Not to mention the fact that Iraq is winding down ahead of schedule and he’s actually making progress on Gitmo. I’m at a loss to think what more the man could honestly do at this point.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: The magical pony. You forgot that. Plus, the optics are bad. People can’t SEE (physically) how bad the economy would have gotten without intervention. They can SEE that unemployment is still rising (though at a much-slower rate). They don’t SEE the prez prosecuting the criminals from the last administration (and, honestly, I am on their side on this one).
All the stuff you mentioned is difficult to quantify and isn’t flashy like getting single-payer healthcare passed (like that was ever going to happen). Plus, to be fair, the American people have gotten fucked over by the government more often than not in the past however many years, so it’s difficult to believe it won’t happen again.
And, with all the benefits of the internet, the drawback is that every little thing every politician does, says, twits, is reported instantly. It creates a false sense of “Oh my god, this is the end of the world. No, this is. No, this is.” Like I said, I’m tired of it.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN:
Ewww. You said that word. I think it was you who was either proposing or fiercely advocating for its ban, and I’m inclined to agree. Plus do you think Obama is all that worried about mere appearances? Whatever happened to getting shit done?
I agree with you totally about the need for the 24 hour news beast to feed itself, therefore every minor things gets ramped up to the Nth degree. That could be why I’m trying my damndest to glean facts wherever I can and discard the rest as background noise. Plus if you get off the Intertubes you’ll find what people are really worried about, and yeah jobs is number one on that list. It just sucks that instead of doing and it getting reported honestly Obama has to be P.T. Barnum constantly. 30 years of trying to fuck over education has really worked out I tell you what.
Wow, I think I just ranted. Maybe I should take tomorrow off if for no other reason than I’m moody as fuck. At any rate I’m gonna go find my pillow and have Dawg dreams. Night hon.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Yeah, that was me, but I used the word deliberately here because it’s what most people focus on. Optics, that is.
I agree with your rant. I agree you need to sleep. I really hope you have sweet dreams of your Dawg. Night, hon.
MikeJ
Can we have a moratorium on complaining about the use of the word optics? I’m not a huge fan of it, but it’s been around a quarter of a century in this context and the incessant whinging is more distracting than a neologism I don’t particularly care for.
matoko_chan
Anne Laurie, the simple truth is that if Coakley had been white and male like Ted Kennedy she would have won.
You were right to compare her to Hillary, she brought out the AWMF (angry white male factor). It was enough for 5 points.
witness how little coverage the curling iron remark got vis a vis Obama’s lipstick on a pig remark.
the village analyzed that for days.
And there was never any guarantee the blue dogs and lieberman wouldn’t have clusterfarked HCR into 2011 if allowed to.
The longer this goes on the closer it gets to 2012 and the better for the teabaggers.
I’m pretty sure Obama knows this.
Herding cats is never pretty or easy.
I say pass it with dem only votes, whatever it takes.
My Kepler-Trigo threat/risk assesstment matrix says this will happen, and the bill will never go back to the senate.
I might be wrong….
Glocksman
Knocked out the router??
I have cable broadband and not FIOS, so this is a guess.
Routers usually run either a proprietary OS or some flavor of Linux.
Neither one is normally vulnerable to Windows malware.
If your router is down I suspect hardware failure and not whatever malware you have damaging it.
Unless Verizon will replace the router for free, I suggest the Linksys WRT54GL.
I’ve been running one for years with no problems whatsoever.
Glocksman
To add:
Have you tried using a cable to connect directly from your husband’s laptop to the router?
If you can connect that way, the problem is definitely malware that most likely wiped out the winsock stack on your computer.
Unless there is data you absolutely must have, my advice is to nuke it from orbit.
Or put another way, wipe the hard drive and do a clean reinstall of the OS and applications.
Use the media that came with the computer or so a ‘destructive’ recovery if you have the bad luck to own a machine that has a recovery partition instead of separate OS/application installation media.
Anne Laurie
@Glocksman: Thanks. The tech expert (Spousal Unit) says Acronis saved my information, but restarting the router seems to have fried it. Verizon is shipping us a new router but I’m keeping your suggestion just in case. Mostly I’m pissed that I can’t hold up my end here, now of all times.