Coeur de Feu

*sigh*

Well, I guess 2009 is going ot be the year that finally forced me to install anti-virus software. Yes, my dirty (and risky) little secret was that I didn’t run AV software on my system. I’m careful, I know what I’m doing and I don’t goto random or risky sites. In the several years now that I’ve not had any AV installed, I’ve been fine. The usual greyware from adbots and such, but nothing serious, until today.

I can only guess that I got infected off DeviantArt of all things, although I’m pretty certain it was something related to an old image uploaded there or one of the adverts on the site. Why do I think it was dA? Mostly because I was on the site looking at favorites when my FF started acting up.

Still, after spending the afternoon cleaning off the Rapid Antivirus infestation on my computer (which keep putting internet shortcuts to fetish and BDSM sites on my desktop) I still had a problem with my browser - I couldn’t access any AV sites or computer sites at all. Good thing I have a home network though. I did my research on the second computer, downloaded the installs and I needed and fixed things that way. I think the reason the whole mess took so long were all the scans that the various programs needed to run to check my main and external hard drives. Not that I’m going to complain, mind you. At least now my system is clean and the AV apps are up-to-date.

I ended up going with AVG and used Malwarebytes’ to get things back up and working again. Oh yeah, guess I’ll turn system restore back on, too. Found out the hard way (hur hur hur) that I must have turned it off at some point in time.

Well, 2009 has finally arrived, even though it seems as if 2008 zoomed past pretty quickly.  Looking back at the past year, there really isn’t any one thing I can point to and say “this was good” or “this was terrible”.  It was a year, just like any other, I guess.

Gaming was mildly exciting, with Age of Conan coming out in May.  FFA PvP - the Holy Grail had arrived!  And lasted all of two months for me, IIRC.  The game just wasn’t ready and the PvP suffered from what EQ2 PvP suffers from - levels and gear.  Zone camping in Khesetta Plains was pretty much it at higher levels, mostly because that was the only zone for players level 70+.  After that was Warhammer Online and if it weren’t for a billing glitch, I might still be playing it.  While it was still faction PvP, the Open PvP areas and the scenarios were a blast.  Much more polished and ready out of the box that AoC was.  Still, I’m not playing at any more either; I’m back in EQ2 again and still enjoying myself.  I guess I’m getting old and stuck in my gaming ways.

But what about things not related to gaming? (more…)

Wheee!

Hope the new year is safe, happy, healthy and much better than last year was for everyone!

Made up of interesting colors.  Found over on LJ at drelfina’s journal.

Well, after several years, I finally have my drawing table back.  For assorted reasons, most of them stupid in retrospect, my lovely wooden drawing table has been playing host to a HUGE and non-functioning color laser printer.  It was heavy, it never worked and I never did anything with it once I realized it wasn’t working and I didn’t want to pay almost $100 to replace toner cartridges in order to fix it (really long story).

So the printer sat, taking up the space on my drawing table and leaving me to either draw on my lap or try drawing on my computer desk.  It annoyed me and more and more, I wanted my table back so I could get out the watercolors and start using them again.

This past weekend though, there was an e-recycling event at a (relatively) nearby Best Buy, so with the help of the husband, we loaded up the color laser printer, a b/w laser printer, an old 14″ monitor, an old computer of mine (from 2 upgrades ago and SCSI-based!) as well as an outdated SCSI scanner and a bookshelf “home stereo” system.  There’s more stuff I could have loaded up, but I didn’t get through the closet that much and this was a good start.  I can’t tell you how sweet it was to have the folks at this event unload this stuff and take it off my hands.

Now I’m going to keep a watch on the papers to see if they have other events in the area and progressively start getting rid of all the old computer junk I have from when I was a support tech.  It’s better than throwing it away and as a bonus this time, I got a $5 BB gift card.  Any little bit helps, right?

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Well, for the second time this month, I’m back home at my family’s house, staying with my parents. This time, it’s for my dad.

Saturday morning, my dad was burning brush in the backyard (hometown allows burning). He stepped in a hole and fell face forward into the fire. Right now, he’s in the burn unit ICU at St. John’s Mercy hospital in St. Louis with second and third degree burns on the upper half of his body. Basically from his navel up, both arms (one arm has a huge gash along it as well) and hands, shoulders and upper back and his face is burned. It’s mostly second degree burns on his face, luckily.

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