The Viral Aftermath

There is a wonderful line spoken by the character, Roy Hobbes (Robert Redford), in the film The Natural: "Some mistakes, I guess, we never stop paying for." Although my recent encounter with a computer virus was not anything as painful as what Roy Hobbes describes, it nevertheless resulted in me spending the day reformatting my computer.

It turns out, computer viruses are like some of the human variety, and have the ability to rename themselves and masquerade as a normal computer function. As a result, virus software can't identify it as a virus. In humans, the idea is for the virus to elude our immune system. Same difference.

The problem is, once the virus has succeeded in fooling the antivirus software, it's free to do all kinds of nasty hings to an operating system. In the case of mine, the screen froze every five minutes. And I discovered this, naturally, just as I was sitting down this morning to write. Timing, you know?

Anyhow, all's well that end's well, and this little note is to let you know I'll be back at work tomorrow morning with something I hope is worth reading. In the meantime, take a hint from me, if you get an .exe file from an unknown source or one you aren't expecting, take the time to verify that you were supposed to get it in the first place, and don't click on it until you do. It sure can save a lot of time in the long run. Have a good night!

(The Natural, written by Roger Towne, TriStar Pictures)