f1d0

2024.04.25 22.52

041216
coffee breaks

041211
short nightmare

041207
telehealth ontario

041129
the netherfield ball

041107
victorian subscription ball

041101
halloween

041025
more practice required

041008
brother

040929
aches and pains

040904
overheard on the subway

040848
the time it takes

040818
the last six cookies

040818
040809
040802
040405
040331
040318
040305
040211
040111
031228

040929 aches and pains

Today was a funny day. It started last night, as I consider working is like the beginning of my day. Ok, I'll go back a bit more.

Yesterday. THERE.

Yesterday I helped a friend and customer with a computer entirely taken over. Whenever she started internet explorer, not only would the start page go haywire, but everything got slow, and eventually stopped. It kept referring to http://4-counter.com. DON'T follow the link, but if your computer has similar issues, call me to come over and fix it.

She paid me. Remind me to go deposit the cheque.

But that's the beginning of a good day, see? I not only went to a customer's but also manually did what the programs Ad-Aware and Avast Antivirus only talk about. You see, both of those programs recognized the software had hijacked the browser, but weren't successful at automatic cleanup.

These scams run a few Daemons, that is, programs which start up, and remain running until very forcefully shut down. Good daemons are the print program, which listens for you to print something, and turns it into the language the printer understands, then sends it over for you. The evil daemons have a few important jobs to do. They watch the computer's registry for changes back to normal, and change it RIGHT BACK, usually within a second. No error message, no complain, just change the settings back. Another daemon will watch to see if all of the evil programs are running. If they're not, they get re-installed somehow, and all restarted.

So imagine this. Imagine I go in, and stop 90% of the problem, but miss one daemon. Yep! One, two, three, the whole problem is back, like I didn't do a thing.

These background programs (another word for daemon) have names which make you hesitate stopping them. They look like the Fax Daemon, for example.

We at Frogstar are creating a program which will look like the bad program, but in the end will do nearly nothing. We'll leave that program where the bad one was, so it loads up ours, sees that all is well, and doesn't attempt re-infestation.

Work was exceptionally good. No particular reason. The customers experienced a busy store right until 122am. I stayed until 230am. But even at its worst, I asked how long they were waiting for checkout, and the maximum was 10 minutes. They all expected instant service, which is one of the reasons people shop so late. Oh well.

It was too busy for me to eat much during my break, so I had it before coming home. Left the store at 300am, arrived home circa 400am. Didn't do any more for eating, but went to bed.

I heard something, and got up briefly at 730am, but just long enough to check the time, and go back to sleep.

I didn't get up again until after 1230pm. I was surprised!

Still groggy, but functional, I did some Frogstar work. Had some cereal, and look!, I'm groggy again. So I laid me down for a moment. Yah, right.

I guess Cindy came over while I was unconscious. I'm thinking Jeff said she was going to drop in. I missed most of her time here. Woke up around 530pm, thinking I should get dressed and leave promptly, and get the workout I've been missing.

Yes, I missed working out after the service call. I should have left right away, at 600pm from there, as arranged, but I kept doing little things on the computer until 630, and once I was in transit, the subway was slow, so I couldn't go into the gym, just to work.

So I was happy to get a mini workout. Yes, another mini. I stayed watching whatever they had on the television instead of just leaving. It looked interesting. It was The Simpsons. The episode where the dog (Santa's little helper?) gets Dr Hibbard's poodle pregnant, and they give the puppies away, including one to Krusty, who notices he never had a Bar Mitzvah. The remainder of the episode deals with that I think-- I left finally, cursing myself for having been sucked in once again.

At Bally Fitness, they are really trying hard to get their personal trainers work. I tell you, they talk to me each time I'm doing Ball exercises, giving me pointers, adjusting my form, telling me what things are good or bad.

Sometimes I don't mind, but I'm not at the gym to talk. With less than 30 minutes from start to finish, I have to work HARD to make a sweat and do more than usual.

The club has trouble with Instability Balls. They should have more, and they do, and they're all locked away. All but three. So I had to wait a while for mine. So I used the eliptical trainer for the 8 minutes. I should not have had trouble, right? I exercise enough so it's easy, right?

Well, I must have done something to my knee. I'm still limping as I go. I didn't feel it right away, to be sure. I noticed it at English Dance tonight.

And now that I'm home, I'm feeling testicle pain. Joy of joys. I must have done something wrong, and I doubt it was the instability ball routine. Pun intended.

That's all I know.

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