Ooooh, let's rant!

I am a very patient person. I can easily put up with my computer's 'ways'. I can sit quitely clicking through multiple error messages when trying to simply close programs, or crtl+alt+dlt all day trying to fire up another. I don't mind. It would simply be nice to have a nice computer. A well-behaved one. Nice.


My computer runs half open. Like... the case has to be half open. The fan. There are issues...


I am a worrier. Bad things can happen. Bad things will happen. To me. And they do. And they did.

I am the person you know whose bank account has been emptied. I am the person you know whose car has been broken into multiple times. Multiple times! I am the person you know who has opened commercial cans of pumpkin to find ick, moldy fungus ick. I am the person you know whose very nice computer, very new, very not cheap, very nice computer lost a hard drive very early on in its life. About then it stopped being nice. Indeed, I am the person whose technologies run fairly half-assed, who carried a debit card that would not access the account that had the money in it, who drove a car with no header pipe/ brakes/ oil/ fully locking doors.

But that's ok.


I am a flip-flopper. I'll admit it. I make one decision only to change my mind. Again and again. But this time, I am wiping my computer for sure.

I changed my mind last time because A) I got lazy (I'll admit that too, I am a lazy lazy person) and B) I worried about the security of my computer.

The security of my computer is no longer an issue. Actually, that's only because it is now the issue. My computer has been compromised. How do I know? Because my World of Warcraft account was compromised. That's right, an MMORPG did something good for once, it raised a red flag for me.

I haven't been playing WoW much, but the BF has, and he turned to me the other night and said "look, you just logged on." Err, but I hadn't... but someone had; someone was using my account. Someone who also locked me out of Account Management and Password Recovery. I was able to change my Registered Email, though, and thus get the process rolling to get my characters back. No harm there, all my items will be returned, and in fact the 'hacker' maxed out my mining skill for me, explored almost all of Borean Tundra, and got me two Wintergraps achievements. So, that's dandy.

But the 'how' is not so dandy. After two days I managed to isolate a keylogger. Did I manage to fully delete it? I don't know. Are there more? I don't know.

Way to suck, Norton.

In my adventures I downloaded AVG, and it opened my eyes to what I find lacking in Norton. Information. While Norton always managed to find 'tracking cookies', AVG found multiple ones, and gave me all their names, and that's nice info to have, and while online, AVG notifies me immediately when it encounters such tracking cookies, rather then waiting for a weekly scan to find it. But it didn't find the keylogger. And while Norton did, it never notified me that it had. "Norton> Options> Internet Security> Transaction Protection> Oh hey, we blocked this keylogger for you, no sweat, don't worry about." Um, don't just block it dummy, delete it! Or at least let me know it's there so I can. And it obviously didn't do a very good job blocking it. Something didn't work as it should have, somewhere.

So the computer is going to be wiped clean. I don't care now, obviously, if I lose Norton. I am willing to invest in something better. Suggestions? And don't suggest an Apple! A new computer won't happen until I go back to school, right now is travel time ;)


I also played a bit these last few days with processlibrary.com, very interesting. And I'll definetly be looking into a registry cleanup program after this little bit of 'spring cleaning'. This computer needs more loving. Obviously.