Gone and back

[greatbear]

A couple of wonderful people on my f-list noticed that I had deleted my LJ for about a day on Thursday. While I was mostly keeping myself from posting due to various issues, the reason for deleting my LJ was because one of my PCs got nailed with a nasty rootkit/trojan/virus trifecta through my own stupidity. Rather than risk compromise of various accounts, I took stuff offline as I dealt with the PC and did some changing of login credentials once I had the chance. I cleansed the PC this morning and all is back to normal. So, I am still here. And I definitely appreciate the fact that some noticed my absence and were genuinely concerned. I have not been very forthcoming about things of a more personal nature here, keeping instead to lighter fare like comics, music, memes and such. The reasons are many, but part of me had it in mind that no one would care, electing to pass over on the emo stuff. Granted, LJ has been a tough venue for me lately, it's real benefit being interacting with others on their turf rather than opening up mine. I still am loathe to post here, perhaps that will change.

As for what happened to the PC, my own damn fault. Typical shady pop-up ad that served up a confirmation dialog. Rather than killing it by closing, I answered "no" (or "cancel"), which, as we all know, lets the scum run wild. For my lack of vigilance, I ended up with something ironically titled "Antimalware Doctor", a rogue mess that wrecks the system and holds it for ransom by finding all manner of fake positives and demanding money for the cleanup. Thing is, the money won't get you anything but a compromised credit card account and the program itself installs a rootkit and various trojan droppers during installation. I cleaned it all up this morning and all is back to normal. Well, except for the power brick for a backup drive that died in the middle of the night and smelled bad this morning.

Those who attempt to tell me that having a Mac would have prevented all this will be openly ridiculed the next time they take a trip to the Genius Bar. ;o)

Well, there you have it. The reason for my short disappearance, explained less with personal notes and relying instead on geekery details. Maybe I will spell things out more as they should be. maybe not. Same as it ever was. ;)

Comments

[champdaddy.livejournal.com]

welcome back!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Yay! It was hell being gone, lemme tell ya. ;)

[maxauburn.livejournal.com]

Wow.. I hadn't noticed your brief absence, and I wish I had.

Sorry about that mess you had to clean up!

What I do with pop ups ( One appeared when I opened your LJ) is ignore them.

Sometimes if they get nasty, I restart my computer.

Glad you are back!

Don't worry about posting "Emo stuff."

I post every week or two about how much I miss George, my cats, or something!

Sometimes, I'm afraid of saying something VERY stupid in a post on LJ.

Such are the days of our lives.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

My LJ is not supposed to host any ads or pop-ups, being that it's a perm account. Either you have something exacerbating the ads hosted onm your PC, or LJ has gone back on their word regarding ads. Arrgh.

Don't worry about saying anything stupid on LJ. I've done it many times. Some people practically make a career of it. And they are still fun to read.

[maxauburn.livejournal.com]

Thank you, again.

The Pop - up was one of thingies at the top of
the page when I opened your journal -
it said something like, " Windows wants you to
add a flash update to view this page. properly."

I don't think it was at all malicious, but I
ignored it just to be safe.

[fogbear.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're back. And I'm sorry about the computer mess, and the unmentionable personal stuff. *hug*

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Eh, shit happens, but life goes on. And any number of cliched phrases. ;) :D

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're still here ...

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Me too. ;)

[kdotdammit.livejournal.com]

I am glad you're still here! And I love your emo stuff. It makes me feel more comfortable about posting mine! I still owe you gratitude for your comment on my post about Kevin. Please stick around, and please share your feelings. And your car and tool stories!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I should take a page from your book and spill some of my guts on occasions. I just need to push through my own mental blocks I guess. I've done it before, and found it quite cathartic.

*hugs*

PC woes

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

You and me both! Although mine wasn't so bad as much as I had issues with my card reader which Dell and I got running again but in re-seating the connector and trying it out, the damned pins in the SD slot broke apparently as now the PC sees the card reader, the reader can't see that there is a card in the slot.

Ah well, easy enough to replace.

I have a weird thing were AVG will scan but comes up with nothing and that happened suddenly 2 months or more ago and I've been expecting it to come up with all kinds of stuff as it had for the first 6 months or so...

Soon I hope to be in a position to do Win7.

And I hadn't noticed your leaving and back as it happened while at work most likely but glad you are back and enjoy reading of your posts.

Re: PC woes

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words. I have a new PC that has yet to get a lot of lovin' for various reasons that would have been dropped right in place of this one, but it was personal this time. I wasnt going down without a fight. lol

The new rig is currently saddled with an old video card until I free up funds for something new, it's the last chunk needed for total computer bliss. Quad cores running nearly 4GHz is sweeeeeet. It's just lost with a 5+ year old graphics subsystem.

Re: PC woes

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Well, remember the big assed 44Lb behemoth I bought last spring? That's the PC I'm referring to.

The card reader is still wonky, another driver didn't do a thing to it, I think it's officially dead now as the SD card slot looks to now be missing 2 contacts and the reader won't even recognize that there is a card in the slot so I hope to get the CS guy to agree to send a replacement card reader - stat.

I have the ATI Radeon HD4850 graphics card with 512MB RAM that is certainly no slouch and runs 2 monitors and I've heard it's retail price is around $110

[wrascalism.livejournal.com]

I had noticed you gone and I was sad.

I had those same trojan/virus issues...took me days to correct. Now I want to nuke their house!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Oh, trust me. I harbor some of the deepest ill will towards those that perpetrate computer destruction and data breaches. Burning their houses down is mild in my book.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

Glad to have you 'home', babe!

I did notice your name was crossed out, and got a little worried. I am glad it was a relatively minor problem like computer malware, and not something more serious.

Much love.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Danke!

I had a short period of frustration, at one point I even entertained keeping my blog offline for a bit longer simply to focus attention on other stuff needing of it, but I also lose a must-have gateway into other people's worlds that I find interesting and relaxing.

[redmoonriver.livejournal.com]

and just because we don't notice doesn't mean we don't care. ;)

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I know you care, hon. :)

[notdefined.livejournal.com]

Goody, goody, goody (that you're back, not about the virus/trojan). By the way, Trojans are good for one thing only. ;) Well, maybe two if you are throwing a perverse birthday party and have a spare bottle of helium. (They make kinky baloons) I was afeered that if you disappeared from LJ I may never get the opportunity to meet you in the flesh. Maryland is a little large to knock on every door. :)

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

You gotta tell me the next time you are in the area. I hope to one day make it on over your way as well. It's the time constraints lately. Someday!

[2stroker.livejournal.com]

I wasn't on yesterday so I didn't notice but if I had I would have been sad to loose you as a friend.BTW, I have a Mac! Ha Ha I don't get those virus things!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

It's been years since I got hit with a virus. I have things pretty well locked down here, and it was my own stupid fault for what I got. Arrgh!

[restoman.livejournal.com]

I was disappointed to see you gone yesterday, but am glad to see that it was temporary, ...also glad that you once again have a healthy PC.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was a dense pile of frustration for a short time. I'm glad it was relatively easy to deal with overall.

[beastbriskett.livejournal.com]

Good to see that crossed-out user tag gone!
Getting infected is such a bitch, but I'm glad you have the skilz to wipe out the bugs.
I'm kinda in the same frame of mind about posting more personal, emo stuff. Been holding back not only because of the downer, but because things are actually pretty uninteresting 'round here.
One thing I really value about LJ is the rich feedback, but I try not to write to an audience. My posts also keep a record of events, moods and slices of life. Going over the archive once in a while gives me perspective, and the richer the posts, the more vibrant the memories. Even dull days can be important--they provide balance and fullness to this record, so it's not just a series of highlights.

Anyway, I'm glad you're still here!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I'm going to try to say a bit more. I guess my life is not all that interesting, I'm not sure what people gain from the minutiae of my life, though I have to say, I do enjoy reading such entries by others. I start typing it and then never finish, thinking it's just a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

We'll see.

Yaayyy

[altabear.livejournal.com]

Good to hear you got the issues worked out. Our firm sells a ton of network stuff, so I'm aware of all the nasties that are lurking out there.

Good idea to take it offline and then remedy it first. Worth it rather than all those compromised accounts : )

p.s. there are about 100 mac viruses/malware out there now, and a lot of hackers working on them too, so it's all the same now.

Re: Yaayyy

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Hey! Where ya been all this time?