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Crazy, Delicious (gluten free) Meatballs! And Laptop Drama…

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

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Well dang, what a roller coaster few days it’s been!  Starting off with a major blue screen crash of my beloved 7-year-old (!) Dell Inspiron, tricked out with Windows XP, 1 GB RAM and Office 2003.  2006 anyone?  Hey, back in the day she was a pretty decent machine.

So I shouldn’t be surprised that I was running on borrowed time.  I knew Microsoft was going to pull the plug on Windows XP support in 2014, and I knew that that old laptop couldn’t hold much more than what she already had on board.  Outdated IE, outdated Office, painfully low RAM…it was a flashback every time I came home!  But she was fabulous…and I’m hoping I’ll be able to recover data and move forward (the nice people at Dell are sending me an XP CD with hopes we’ll be able to do an OS reinstall).  Serves me right that I danced on the tightrope, so to speak, with no safety net such as an external hard drive.  Nope, I rode hard and fast.  Someone even told me, “Fivenineteen, if you got seven years out of your laptop, that’s like driving 500,000 miles on your car and never needing it repaired.”  Wow, that puts it in perspective alright!

Now I am the proud and happy owner of a Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, sporting 8 GB of RAM and a solid state drive for starters.  With Office 2013 and Windows 8.  Wow, I need a seatbelt she boots up so fast!  One gotcha I discovered right away is that this Ultrabook does not have any Ethernet ports.  So until my docking station arrives, I purchased a USB-to-Ethernet adapter and it’s working great.  Another gotcha:  this machine is completely wireless.  So if you were like me with no wireless router in the house (the old Inspiron was too clunky to be portable) it was off to Best Buy to purchase one and fiddle around getting it configured.  Which I’ve now done – hurray!  I had to completely power cycle my cable modem – unscrewing the cable connection and reconnecting it after a few minutes, not just powering it on and off by unplugging the power supply.

First World Problems, I know.  I have much to be grateful for…I wasn’t in the middle of crucial job hunting, what data I’ve lost is just “stuff” and I’m not in financial hardship making this new purchase.

Now…how about a switch to food, anyone?  At my new job my whole team has to work overnight one weekend a month. See last month’s post on how my debut weekend went!  We were mentally preparing to work overnight last Saturday into Sunday, but we got an emergency notification Saturday evening that our work was postponed; things were too unstable already to justify any additional changes being introduced into the environment.  WOW!  Given what I heard, I think it was a completely appropriate decision.  But now, what to do?  I’d basically written off my Saturday evening and Sunday socially and now I was free!

J to the rescue! How wonderful he was around and wanting to meet up spontaneously!  I was painfully low on groceries (food is provided when I go to work late at night so I had not stocked up on anything), but he showed up ready for a wonderful, late dinner and breakfast too!  How fabulous is this?

Honestly, I’ve not made meatballs in what seems like forever, but we dove in, got our hands dirty and winged it something fabulous with this recipe!  I’ll loosely call it a recipe…the ratios of what we threw into the mix were not measured, but I was able to recall what we used – take a look!

Meatballs (gluten-free).  All spices are dried (from a jar).  Preheat an oven to around 325 or 350 degrees F.  Line the bottom of a broiler pan with tin foil.

And…go for it with random amounts of the following!

  • Equal parts of ground beef, ground pork and ground sausage
  • Red wine
  • 1 egg
  • Jack Daniels (whiskey)
  • Olive oil
  • Worcestershire sauce (I use a wheat-free, vegan version)
  • Tomato Paste
  • Minced fresh onion – yellow or white
  • Minced garlic (from a jar is great, or mince fresh garlic)
  • Turmeric
  • Oregano
  • Marjoram
  • Paprika
  • Basil
  • Onion Powder
  • Garlic Salt
  • Chili Powder
  • Chipotle Chili Powder
  • Salt and freshly-ground black pepper
  • Allspice

Plop everything into a large bowl…wash your hands…and DIG IN!  Mix with your hands like crazy.  Form small meatballs (around golf ball size) with your hands and place onto the foil-lined broiler pan.  Bake until done (could be 20-30 minutes…honestly I didn’t keep track).  ENJOY!

I hear that gluten-free meatballs can be challenging without stuff like breadcrumbs, but these held together wonderfully.  I’d probably skip the Allspice next time, as it’s more suited toward recipes for coffee cake or other sweets.

Breakfast was Cowboy Style…broiled steaks with spices, scrambled eggs and hash browns.

Buon Appetito!

Check Your Gut and the Email Addy, Yo

22 Saturday Dec 2012

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Now, Dear Readers.  I consider myself pretty savvy around here in the online world.  Save for a geriatric laptop that will be, hopefully, replaced with something spiffy and new next year (maybe a Surface Pro).  Meanwhile, it might be like walking around in painfully outdated clothes or driving an old beater car.  Sure, they both still ‘work,’ but aren’t so fashionable anymore.  Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve still got Windows XP and Office 2003 running in here, so it’s a big ol’ blast of retro when I shut off my work laptop and get back online at home.  Hilarious.  This home laptop (a vintage 2006 Dell Inspiron E1705 for those curious) has rarely ventured out of the home office and has only been taken out of my house a small handful of times.  That was back in my unemployed era of early/mid 2010 when I was doing part-time pro bono work to help out a colleague and friend and keep my mind from going to mush while I looked for work. 

Anyway,  I keep my virus protection on it up to date. I scan regularly for spyware/malware and use a registry cleaner and backer-upper.  I change my passwords regularly and don’t use the same one for each of my online accounts.  Good, smart stuff like that.

Well, I recently stumbled upon something that blew my mind.  And who would have guessed it would have surfaced in the world of…wait for it…Online Dating.

Are you grinning or groaning right now?  Yep, I decided to jump back in the pool and give this another shot.  I really, truly am looking for the real deal, and yet I’ve been so heads down focused on work and getting back in shape – just trying to BE the best ME – that perhaps I haven’t really, truly opened up and breathed enough to really provide the space that’s needed for something like a possible new relationship.  Whether he’ll find me on the interwebs or not I don’t know.  At the very least, the process can be beyond entertaining.

I received a very nice email via the online dating email system from a handsome gent just wanting to get to know me better.  He said he’s currently based in the local area here, but currently overseas in the US Army, deployed in Libya.  He didn’t say much about himself in his profile, but that didn’t concern me too much.  Guys in the military probably can’t disclose too much about what they do.  And there are several military bases in a 50-mile radius from where I live.

Fast forward a few days and I found myself with a new Army pen pal, with outpourings of what he was looking for in a long-term relationship. And great pictures too!  He told me how he’s an only child and both his parents are deceased.  He told me about his wife’s passing at a young age (30) from breast cancer 13 years ago, leaving him a widower with a 2-year-old daughter to raise on his own (but thankfully has live-in help at his house back in the States to look after her).  And how he promised to wait at least 10 years since his wife’s passing in honor of her memory before settling down again.  Where he’s from originally (nowhere near where I am) and where he wants to buy a house with the right woman when he gets out of the military.  When I told him the area where I live and that it truly is home to me as much as I enjoy travel, he said he would be happy to buy a house closer to me if it would make ME happy.

Then, we turned a corner.  He said how refreshing it was that I always got straight to the point when I wrote to him.  So,  why don’t we try talking on the phone, he asks?  He explained given his Special Forces status that the process to get in touch with him was not the typical Army process, and he provided me an email address.  He told me what to indicate about him when requesting phone contact, and instructed me to provide my name, address and cell phone number in the email as well.  And to copy/paste what I sent back to him so he could follow-up on his end.  Oh, and also with a note that I would be charged a one-time, temporary fee to my cell phone, but that the charge would drop once he and I were connected on the phone.  He explained this was just a deterrent so people didn’t try to contact Army Special Forces all the time.  

Are you still with me?

Well, I don’t know what swept over me, but when I saw the email address he provided (which ended in a ‘.us’), something in my gut prompted me to check into it further.  Every email address has a ‘@somedomain.something’ right?  A .net, .com, .us, etc.  Which should direct you to a website.  Well, I checked the ‘@’ domain info online and WHAMMO.

Something didn’t look right.  I’m no online content publishing expert, but the graphics looked slightly ‘off.’  And they were nowhere near the polished look of the US Army’s official website.  But it had all the ‘fine print’ hyperlinks you would expect to see at the bottom of a site page, including terms of use, privacy policy and whatnot, but something still didn’t seem right.

I did an online search on that domain name and immediately found a couple of blogs posting about scammers.  Scammers overseas who steal pictures of US soldiers (who are either alive or not, talk about morbid here). They use the stolen pictures to create fake online dating profiles…bascially, impersonating them!  I read on and on, fascinated.  And horrified.  The story I was told was TEXTBOOK content for what these scammers use.  They usually say they’re alone, widowed…and, bottom line, looking for money to be wired to them.  Money so they can fly home to take a leave, or money they need because the military won’t provide XYZ.

Now, I’m no expert in any of this, since what I’ve learned is less than 72 hours old in my own brain. BUT, here are two huge takeaways:

1. The US military will never EVER ask a civilian to pay for airfare to transport a soldier anywhere.  Anywhere in the world.  Absolutely not.

2. The US military does not use Western Union.  But that’s how most of these scammers want their $$ wired to them.

These guys are thieves, plain and simple!  I’m soooo glad I trusted my gut and checked the website info tied to the email address provided to me.  And I checked the fine print too – guess what?  All of the privacy policy and terms of use – all blank.  Or broken.

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert in any of this, and don’t want to post the email address I was provided.  But if you’d like more info, please message me!

The Ugly Crescendo

27 Monday Feb 2012

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I felt like something ugly and draining snuck up and tried swallowing me whole this week.   And by the time I realized it was happening it was too late.  Call me One Big Trainwreck.  Stuck in quicksand.

This past week was midwinter break for a lot of families.  And while the company I work for does not observe the President’s Day holiday, many people take that day off anyways because the kids are off from school.

Burdened, alone and sometimes overwhelmed.  Those were some of the things I felt last week trying to get through work and covering for others.  I am always honored when my manager or another co-worker asks if I (a consultant who is not a permanent part of the team) wouldn’t mind being their backup contact while they are away, should others in the office need something urgent.  It feels good to be needed.  But I don’t like feeling alone.  I like having people around me, which is part of the reason I don’t like working from home.  I enjoy the constant interaction.  So when hardly anyone is around in the office it’s eerie.  And while I can handle just about anything that comes my way and speak on others’ behalfs while they’re out (mostly), it is draining.  I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.  And it gets really heavy sometimes. 

Perhaps I am even a teensy bit envious of those who get paid vacation time.  As a consultant I am only paid for hours I work, and typically my work engagements are a year or less in length.  So it is not always a good idea to schedule a leisurely vacation.  It might be during a crucial point in a project – a major milestone.  And I may still be processing the last residue of pain from my unemployed stretch a couple of years ago.  Meaning, don’t bitch about work.  Just DON’T.  And WORK, fivenineteen, WORK.  It is a privilege to work, not a right.

Jealousy be damned.  I am not a jealous type, so when it does leak into my being like it admittedly did thinking of everyone enjoying their vacations, it catches me off guard.  Sneaky bitch.

So while I am the queen of to-do lists, the big stuff didn’t get done this past week like I had hoped.   I mistakenly assumed that I would have a lot of catch up time on my hands in the office to tackle some more high-level, strategic work that’s needed attention.  But that was not the case at all.  Lots of Littles popped up.  Unexpected situations that needed attention.  Nothing too difficult to fix, but still time consuming.  And sometimes exhausting.

I think by Wednesday I was feeling a little ‘off.’  Hard to describe but I felt weighed down physically and mentally.  A little jittery, even without coffee.

L texted me sometime Tuesday or Wednesday asking if he could crash at my house Thursday night.  He has client meetings near my house sometimes and lives a ways from here and has done this on a couple of other occasions, on nights we’re not doing any of that popcorn ceiling scraping.  One time it was because there was a gas leak in the house he rents and he needed to stay elsewhere while the leak was being contained.

L is a wonderful friend for sure.  But it’s a very different dynamic having a guy over at my house just hanging out who truly is a great friend and nothing more.  I’m learning this very quickly. He just crashes on my couch and either leaves early in the morning to beat traffic or stays to get some work done at my house and leaves a little later and locks up.  On Thursday, the night he wanted to come crash at my place, I had dinner plans with a girlfriend and told him I won’t be home until late but would leave a house key hidden for him. 

Little did I know how the world would all come crashing down around me that Thursday.  Held off briefly by some incredible sushi and a couple glasses of wine with my dear friend T at Izumi.  Hands down the best sushi in the Seattle suburbs.  Mouth watering and spectacular, with a very charming sushi chef at the sushi bar who is a great conversationalist.  I could subsist on sushi there every day, even though it would be a little hard on my wallet. 

My mind started to wander during dinner and I felt preoccupied and restless.  Here I was having a fun night out with a wonderful friend and I was having some sort of anxiety thingy wash over me.  I knew when I got home that L and his friend’s dog would be there.  And I felt like that was going to be an invasion of my space that night, even though I’d told him a day or two prior it would be OK.  It was starting to feel like it wasn’t going to be.  And why was I feeling this way?  What’s the big deal?  IS it a big deal or is it kind of weird when a male friend wants to just randomly crash at your place occasionally?  I don’t know about you but I’ve never had a platonic friendship with a (straight) guy that went to that level.  And come to think of it neither with a gay guy friend either.  Why was I letting this upset me so much?  And oh yeah, once I got home I needed to start filling out some paperwork that an escrow agent sent for a neighbor who is selling his townhouse.  Stuff like that you cannot delay, and we’re a small, self-run HOA…and….and…And ahhhh, there I went.  Questioning my feelings and getting overwhelmed all at once.  Let the downward spiral begin.

Have you ever been so tired that you couldn’t relax and fall asleep?  I got home and L was chilling out watching TV with the dog.  My head hurt.  So much for great sushi, two glasses of wine and great friendship.  It all went *poof* once I got home.  For I knew I needed to get upstairs, fire up this somewhat creaky of a laptop (6 years old and showing its age; that’s another post for another time) and crack open the documentation the escrow agent needed filled out.

Of all times for my laptop here to act up.  I had a devil of a time getting applications to stay open without hanging, and trying to edit the .pdf that they sent us.  Why realtors and escrow agents use Acrobat Reader for their documentation – that needs editing – instead of something like Microsoft Word is beyond me.  Pain in the ASS.

I felt bad for neglecting L and went downstairs periodically to see how he was doing.  My eyebrows were feeling tightly knitted together and my whole body felt clenched up and tense.  He seemed fine, but that didn’t help me relax any further.  Just seemed like a lost cause.

By 11pm I was a wreck.  I’d done all I could on the documentation, sent it to our HOA treasurer for him to finish and decided to crawl into bed.  Hugged L goodnight and went upstairs to sleep. 

What happened next was surreal.  Keep in mind I am typically a very sound sleeper, so when I get clonked with a dose of insomnia, I freak out.  Which only makes it worse I’m sure.  I thought I had been sleeping but turns out it was just some tossing and turning and dozing.  Around 1:30 am I realized what it was.  L had gone to sleep with his iPad on with ESPN news feeds or something.  And the sound actually carried very well upstairs to my bedroom.  I thought I was losing my mind as I crawled out of bed and drifted downstairs.  L was blissfully asleep, snoring steadily.  After a few attempts to wake him he woke up, apologized and turned off the iPad.  Ahhh, finally.  I think I tried going back to sleep again but then realized I was too wound up despite being so tired.  I went downstairs yet again to grab a glass of water. 

And I sat on my living room floor and just sobbed.  And sobbed.  “I’m such a fucking MESS,” I blurted out.  What is WRONG with me?  Poor L was half asleep and groggy.  He mumbled “I’m sorry, ” and went back to sleep.

I went upstairs.  NOW what do I do?  Do I read a book?  Take a bubble bath?  I don’t have sleeping pills in my house because I don’t need them.  And I am a pharmaceutical whimp.  Even “non drowsy” allergy medicine gives me a super bad buzz.

I probably went to sleep – sort of – around 5am.  I probably cried a bit too because when I had to get up for work my eyes were all puffy.  Yeah, going to work with 2-3 hours sleep at the most.  Ugh. That was when I actually felt glad most of my co-workers were out of the office.

Somehow I made it through the day – hats off to coffee and adrenaline.  But by mid afternoon my vision was blurred and I knew I needed to finish up a few reports and head home.  To crash. Hard.

I felt ANGRY most of the weekend.  Angry for letting myself get all wound up and freaked out over things that really aren’t a big deal.  Questioning my emotions.  A (thankfully) rare night of insomnia that took 2 days to recover from.  And thinking ahead of how much more work there is to do with the townhouse improvements.  Tons more popcorn ceiling scraping upstairs and down, then sanding/priming, and repainting a few other bedroom walls.  How long is my townhouse going to be in a state of semi-wreck meanwhile?  And why the hell am I having a mini breakdown over things that aren’t really a big deal?  What is WRONG?  Why can’t I be one of those easy-breezy, laid back types who don’t let anything bother them? 

Well, it turns out the Universe always brings us what we need.  What I needed to bust out of this funk was a heavy dose of HOCKEY.  And that came served up hot and fresh on Sunday. 

I have not played two games in one day in years but this was exactly what I needed apparently.  I skated mid afternoon in a charity game benefitting the Seattle Ronald McDonald House.  The annual Hockey Challenge, in its 14th year has raised over $4 million dollars for the local house here and for this we could not be prouder.  It is a privilege and honor to skate in support of the House and I relished every moment today.

Later that night it was my regular league game.  Yeah, both games were losses tonight but only by what the scoreboards said.  It felt amazing to get out there and skate.  For when I’m on the ice, nothing else matters.  I have no mental room to multi-task and worry about anything else than what I am doing on the ice at that particular moment.  And you know what?

THAT is relaxing.  I should sleep very well.

Bad Pool Caller and a Makeup Play Date

26 Monday Sep 2011

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I’m really feeling the passion and energy from this new job now even more!  The team is one of the most collaborative I have worked with in years, and I’ve just turned that mental corner where you “click” and REALLY jump into another layer of understanding of just what exactly we’re going to do and when we want to get everything finished.  This is a natural part of my ramp-up with new a consulting gig…I KNOW there’s a ton of stuff to do but don’t know the subject matter indepth…yet.

So I came home on Friday after a mentally fulfilling and yet exhausting week too.  I was ready to relax, heat up some leftover pasta and just veg.  But first, as I always do when I get home, I went upstairs to check email here in the home office.  Rather than seeing my usual, soothing aquarium-themed screen saver, I saw IT.  The loathed, despised…BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!

Duhn duhn duhnnnnnnnnnnn….or maybe wahn wahn wahnnnnn sad trombone sound.  Pick your dramatic music of choice.

Thankfully I haven’t seen a BSOD in years.  I looked closer at this new screen booger, skimmed over a bunch of gobbledeegook and then this jumped out at me:  Bad Pool Caller.

Now, I appreciate technology and all even though I’m no coding expert.  A bad pool caller?  Sounds like a crappy judge in a swim or dive meet.   Flashbacks to our neighborhood pool when I was a kid – all those swimming and diving competitions.  

So, after restarting the laptop and praying it boots up alright (whew, it does), I go online and search on this strange error.  Turns out there’s a ton of stuff out there about it.  What’s true and what’s not?  Well, the windowstalk blog seems to sum it up pretty well in plain English:  “The ‘bad pool caller’ error is shown when Windows is not able to access the data-pool that it requires to run. The data pool is the technical term used to describe all the settings and options that your computer may require whenever it’s running, and as you may have guessed, it’s constantly being ‘called’ to help your computer run as smoothly as possible. Unfortunately, there are many occasions where Windows will try and call a setting from the data pool, only to have it show an error.”

What’s one of the recommended fixes? Try using a registry cleaner.  Hmmm…for years I did use one.  I don’t remember how I stumbled upon it, but I ran it every few days or so, it would call out errors and fix them and I’d pay my $30 subscription fee every year.  And never had any problems or issues with it nor with this laptop in general come to think of it.

But a couple of months ago I got hit with a bad computer virus, which took over 4 hours of phone time with Dell to troubleshoot and clean.  Viruses suck.  And there’s no way to tell when or how your computer got infected.  I learned that viruses can lie dormant for long periods of time and then suddenly spring to life.  Hell, when you’re on the phone with a tech all those hours you might as well ask and learn.  

Part of that troubleshooting was to remove any sort of accessory type thingy.  The tech was convinced my registry cleaner, among other things, was no good so I agreed to have him removed it (over the phone remote connectivity stuff is pretty cool).  We removed pretty much everything…he even was convinced my Google Desktop search agent had been downloaded from an unauthorized source.  So I felt like I was getting a mega computer antibiotic that cleared out the good stuff as well as the bad.  Bottom line, no more virus.

And (but?) now, this blue screen.  Anyway I poked around and found a different registry cleaner to try.  And it seems to have good reviews.  Do I dare dive into this again?

I signed up with it for a year.  A tad reluctant, but also a little relieved that this might just be one way to bandaid any problems with this ancient laptop before I pull the trigger on a new one.  Why reluctant?  Yeah, well, earlier this year I had to cancel my debit card because I thought it might have been compromised online.  Better safe than sorry, so I got a new one issued.  I used a credit card I hardly ever use for this new registry cleaning program, so if for some reason it’s a problem they don’t have my bank account number.

So, after a few ‘cleans,’ no more blue screens and we *seem* to be alright.  Dodged a boulder…maybe.

I also got some great girl-time in this weekend too…nothing is both more energizing and relaxing to me all at the same time.  Love it.  L and I went on a long-overdue walk around our neighborhood to reconnect yesterday.  I’m feeling a little sore today too which is a good sign!  And I drove down to S’s place this afternoon for a mini spa and facial party.

Most of you who tune in here regularly probably know I’m a makeup junkie.  I have zero brand loyalty…I do have my favorites but will try just about anything meanwhile.

At S’s party we had fun playing around with a product line she represents – Artistry.  It’s part of Amway Global.  Yes, Amway Global!  Surprised they have a makeup line?  Don’t be…and it’s top notch stuff.  We had fun pampering ourselves with some cleansing and exfoliating products, hot towels and all.  Sipping on wine and enjoying fabulous munchies meanwhile. 

After we did our mini facials we played with makeup and got matched for our colors in foundations and tinted moisturizers.  WOW, I’m very impressed with the foundation S recommended for me and can’t wait to get it!  I’ve tried just about every brand out there over 30+ years and this one really did a great job evening out my ruddiness and giving good overall coverage without being too cakey or grippy.  Even now it still looks fresh after a few hours…with no primer underneath (I swear by primer, always).  Nice.  I also love how it comes in a pump-style dispenser…much more sanitary than a jar and lid.

I also fell in love with the light-up lip gloss.  This is stuff of genius…a lipgloss that has a small mirror on one side of the tube, and tiny lights that light up at the base of the wand when you pull it out.  So, you can easily touch up your lips and do the good ol’ teeth check in the tiny mirror…love it!

Rounding out my mini-haul today…a green tea-scented lotion and body wash (two huge containers for just $15 total?  Unreal.) and a liquid facial cleanser I tried out today.  While I’m picky about skincare, I am open to trying just about anything that is not too drying and not overly-scented.  This cleanser has a very light outdoorsy and citrusy scent…so subtle it’s hard to pin down…perfect in my book.

Four great products for $95 including shipping and tax?  Oh yeahhhh…

And we’re going on almost 72 hours here with no BSOD.  Yep it’s a great weekend alright.    

Plastic Access

17 Sunday Jul 2011

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What a week of transitions, waiting…and a dose of New injected into my Prior Familiar.

Just what am I talking about?  Well, I started my new job on Wednesday as best I could – I’ll get to that in a second – and also had a test in patience waiting for a new debit card from my bank.

And reflecting back on these two things, well, they both tie into a simple yet oh-so-critical object – a plastic card!  Hilarious?  Frustrating?  Yes and yes.

At work I need a cardkey to get where my new team is located.  Once inside the building our offices are in another small cluster which is secured off.  Makes total sense but is a little inconvenient.  Especially when you have to step out to use the restroom.   Ah, but this is all temporary stuff and not unusual.  It’s nice to know this so it doesn’t burn a bunch of mental cycles that I need for getting to know everyone on the team and actually learning what my new job is going to be.  Just a few more days now and I’ll be all set. Until I’m able to get my new laptop all set up, it’s old school time with a tablet of paper and a pen.  I’m actually just a 2 minute walk from the building where my last engagement just wrapped up and have already run into a few people from my former team! 

The home laptop here…well, that’s an ugly story with thankfully a happy ending.  Last week I got a virus.  No idea how exactly.  I’ve learned many things about viruses and virus removal since this episode.  One is that viruses can lie dormant in your machine for some time and then suddenly spring to life.  There’s no traceable way to determine just when you got infected.

I also learned that when you’re prompted to run the chkdsk utility (on a PC), DON’T.  Running chkdsk is perfectly fine; prompts to run it are not.  They’re ways to lure you into running the utility which then installs malicious code that you may have been exposed to.  This is me, a non-technical person, trying to explain this as plainly as I can.  I am sure there’s much more behind the scenes so techies out there bear with me.

And when you get pop up error messages that your hard disk is failing, it’s not.  I saw these messages and it’s scary how freakin’ legit they looked.  I admit I panicked a bit.  This laptop is 5 years old, which is ancient relatively speaking.  I figured, oh man, this is it…it’s crapping out!  Am I going to lose any data?  EEEEK!  In reality, when your computer hard disk is failing, you won’t get pop up warnings.  Your computer will freeze up or not boot up at all.

THEN this console dashboard-y thing pops up on my screen and proceeds to scan for errors and fix them.  I’d never seen anything like this before.  What the hell?  It then spit out a report that some errors were fixed but some were not able to be fixed.  For $85, why not upgrade to the premium version of this scanning tool?  It was called something like XP Fix.  Looking back it was eerie how authentic everything appeared.  But of course it wasn’t.  This thing even had the secure icons that you see on shopping websites all the time.

In my heat of panic, I agreed to purchase the upgrade!  How could I be such a dumbass?  You know, the minute I clicked to purchase, my stomach went into a knot.  I knew I’d make a terrible mistake.

What else happened from the virus?  Well, I lost all of my icons, like things you see in your start menu and all.  Turns out they weren’t deleted, just hidden.  Weird.  After the 2nd troubleshooting session my icons were visible again, but I still wasn’t completely free from the virus(es).  My online search results would get hijacked and redirected toward strange spammy looking websites advertising cheap flights to Beijing or whatever.  Ummmm, yeah right.  This thing was so intense it even attacked my anti-virus software, but made it appear to be running normally.  Only after some deep troubleshooting were the techs and I able to see the real story and fix it.  Yikes.

So after 3 very long troubleshooting sessions with Dell over 3 days, I’m all cleaned up.  None of the error fixing stuff from the console pop up was legit.  And believe me, after the 1st session was done (I thought it would be the last but it wasn’t), I called my bank and had them cancel my debit card.  Thankfully there were no unauthorized charges on it; still it was good peace of mind to cancel it.  I had to wait a week for the new one to arrive, so it was a little inconvenient doing errands old school with my checkbook, but it was worth the wait. 

Just yet another tiny rectangle of plastic.  How much we come to depend upon it.