Letters to Lyla and Lottie: Pink iphone anyone?

welcome to my internet home. this blog used to be cool, with insights about mental health, social policy, pop culture and the like. now, it's a chaotic collection of my mis-spelled, scribbled-down notes on motherhood (who has time to proof read?). it's over-ran with goldfish cracker crumbles, slobery wet kisses, and un-edited pictures. and i would have it no other way. feel free to laugh and cry along side me while I balance a practice (mental heath) and motherhood, and their interconectedness

Monday, January 28, 2008

Pink iphone anyone?

Posted by Todd & Chelsea at 9:16 PM

Ah the allure of a pink iphone; it was the demise of our new HP widescreen laptop. Last night Todd was checking his e-mail and I guess the gayness in him took over and he opened an e-mail promising a pink iphone. Since that time my life has been a living hell. Not five minutes later our computer started flashing pop-ups and various prompts saying a remote attacker was scanning our files. It said "corruption, corruption" and various other things. Then, it took over our homepage. Then, it masqueraded as the vista "cancel or allow" prompts and asked me to allow things. Then, slowly, our programs and the start up menu disappeared.

At ten p.m. I called GEEKSQUAD's 24-hour services. They offered me remote help for the cheap price of $135.00!!! All I could think of was, I could buy a damn pink iphone for that much. Then the night unfolded like a scene from The Net. I was asked to go to a Internet page, enter a code and next thing I knew my geek was controlling my computer. I could see the mouse move, see files being scanned, but I wasn't touching a thing! I was informed that I had a zrob, the most infectious Trojan virus. A remote attacker was going through our cookies etc to get our personal information. I was informed he would get anything I used to pay bills online. Fantastic! I was up with this geek until two a.m. Then he asked me to call back tom. I called today when I got home at 4p.m. At one point he said, "I found it!". I thought. Great, delete the bastard and lets move on. BUT NO!!! My lovely virus has the ability to learn and to recreate. He can't just delete the files bc they will recreate themselves. Awesome. This dude then informed me he had to send me to another dept bc my virus was too sophisticated for their tools. Again, awesome.

8pm this evening (after nearly 10 hours of them working on it) my lovely Agent Martinez informed that the virus was beat. Wow. The panic finally subsided. For weeks I've been thinking that I need to back up my files and pictures. ALL OF MY PICTURES ARE STORED ON THIS COMPUTER. Needless to say, I'll be doing that.