lows and highs

This weekend was a weird mix. I found out that my Aunt Pearl [Mom's sister] died Friday afternoon. She'd been in bad shape, so it was one of those "it's a release and a relief" situations, but it still hits you in the heart. I wasn't as close to Pearl as I might be to some other relatives, and for a while I felt a bit guilty about not feeling more devastated...but as I talked with my mom a bit more, I accepted that it was very normal to have varying degrees of grief.

After that phone call, I met up with Susy, Susan, and Lucinda to see "Tainted Love" [80s cover band]...poor Susan was pretty sick and couldn't go, so we tried to have extra fun for her. It was a blast, but very warm and sweaty in the club...turned out to be a very good thing Susan didn't go since she wasn't feeling well. Took me a while to get into the spirit of it, but the timing was good, and I was able to lose myself in the goofy 80s music for a while.

Saturday was a really good day...Katie invited me to the Campbell Highland Games where her boyfriend's rugby team was playing. Hung with her and her friends, met some really cool people, wandered the festival, and ended up at a pub with both rugby teams and the groupies [of which I was one]. Had an excellent time with Alicia, Ben, Lunchbox, and the gang. One of the best parts was singing Monty Python's "Penis Song" with Lunchbox, alternating lines and harmonizing on the final verse. A good time was had by all... :^)

Sunday was Father's Day, and I had a very good phone call with Dad...it ended up being nearly *four* hours long, which surprised us both when we looked at the time. Wouldn't have traded it for the world...

So the weekend ended up being about friends, old and new, and family, here and gone...and appreciating them all.

baroo??

The Wachowski brothers are doing a live-action Speed Racer movie.

I...I just don't know what to say...

a t-shirt i want to make...

Katie and I came up with this one on a particularly hectic day:

"It sucks to be you.
It sucks to be me dealing with you."

happy birthday, dad!

Love you muchly, dad...happy today.

big brass ones

Rails, that is. Yup, another Passion Party with the gals [as part of Susan's "Going Away Tour 2007"], then chilling on the deck before heading on to the Brass Rail.

The party was fun. Tanicia, the consultant, was just as cool, patient, and fun as last time, and she tailored this party to the crowd now that she knew what we liked and what our tolerance level was. A few cryptic highlights: the "dental mirror" [the 'magic Q-tip' of this party...most of us bought one], Pablo [Pedro's gay younger brother], the deck of cards, naming the fifth type of orgasm, meeting Gigi's glow-in-the-dark friend. After the party, I got to spend some time talking with Susan's daughter Kimberly. We had a really good conversation, and I really enjoyed it...I asked Susan to give her my email address so we can keep in touch if she wants.

After everyone put in their orders and a few folks left, the rest of us relaxed on the deck and shared a really good can of Diet Pepsi; once that was gone, we climbed in the car and drove the whopping mile or so down the road to The Brass Rail [you've gotta love that Susy lives within walking distance of a strip club...and frequents it].

The evening started out slowly...the women weren't really paying attention to us, and our favorite dancer wasn't working. But the DJ was a lot of fun, and he kept us entertained...then a little while in, things picked up when he played 'Baby Got Back' [we picked it, he played it]. Our waitress started dancing to it at our table, and then another dancer [Manhattan] came over and starting dancing with her...and we had a front row seat for the show, and the attention of most of the place was on our little corner [many dollar bills were handed over for that one]. It was a good mix of dancers towards closing: good personalities, lots of smiles, lots of fun. We were laughing and joking with the waitress and the DJ, drinking Midori daquiris [dangerously tasty], and slowly going through our piles of dollar bills. Then closing time neared, and we headed out before everyone hit the parking lot...another fun evening at the "bikini bar" with a cool group of friends.

On the way home, I made an indulgent drive through McDonald's for french fries and light lemonade. There's something inherently cool and hedonistic about getting drive-through junk food at 2:30am...

Now to crawl into bed and hopefully sleep into the afternoon...that would make this a pretty darned perfect start to the weekend.

happy dance

Yay! As I was tearing my hair out with the infected machine yesterday, I posted the issue and what I'd done so far to the spywareinfo forums [http://www.spywareinfo.com] to see if anyone had any ideas. Then when I made progress and actually tamed the evil beastie, I posted the steps I'd taken, in case the info might help someone caught in a similar trap.

Well, this morning I woke up to find a reply telling me that someone else had the same issue, and used my post to help them get their machine back. Happy!

Folks, this is what I love about IT: the community, the sharing of knowledge, the gazillions of different ways people approach things, always learning something new. The net [teh intraweb] is great for that communication and sharing...a communal mind, people posting, asking for help, receiving it, beating on problems, and commiserating if they can't be solved. And it feels really good to know that I was able to help someone else out, after all the times I've been the one needing help. And *man* it feels good to be doing some IT support work for a change...

<whistles a happy tune>

oh cool

I always forget that the office lights for the whole floor turn off at 8pm...cool.

'mal' = 'bad'

There's a reason they call it 'malware'. I'm still at work, and likely to be here for a while yet. A user machine got infected with a nasty bit of malware [a few 'easy' ones to clean, and an evil variant of the CoolWebSearch beast, if that means anything to you]. None of the usual suspects worked...this thing is *evil*, and survives reboots and safe mode, and kills off any processes that might harm it [like most of the normally useful antimalware apps]. And not just the apps themselves...it killed Windows Explorer windows that I was simply using to browse to the program directory, along with web browser windows that were trying to load some common online scanning tools.

I think I've got it, though [she says, taunting the silicon gods]. Some sleuthing tracked down a couple DLLs that weren't right; more detective work in the registry led me to some keys that shouldn't be there. Delete those, then boot with an NTFS boot CD to access the drive from a command prompt, delete the DLLs and a few suspicious directories. Reboot into safe mode, and now I was able to run some of the anti-malware tools [finally!]. Used them to clean up a few more traces, then fully patch the OS, quickly install an anti-malware app to complement the antivirus software.

Now I'm doing the final cleanup [resetting System Restore, hiding system files again, deleting temp files, defragging]. Once that's all done, I lock the machine up for safety and head on home.

Here's hoping the beastie stays dead...

oooo, sparkly

Uh oh...I've got the sparkly null spot in my field of vision that tells me I have a "Vegas Migraine" coming on. The sparkly spot expands slowly over 20-30 minutes, eventually blocking about a third of my field of vision...then once it has hit its max size, the migraine pain hits.

At least I get advance warning and a cool light show...now to shut down, get everything packed up, and book it home before the blind spot makes it too risky to drive. Whoooshhh!!!!!

i hate saying goodbye

The last issue [ever] of "Strangers in Paradise" just came...

...darn it.