Reality Me

A web designer makes the shape of the car, decides what kind of tires it will have, 4 doors or 2, and most importantly the color.

A web application programmer builds the engine, connects all the wiring, puts the doors on the hinges, mounts the tires, and fills it up with gas.

A web application developer can work his tail off making the engine of the car move the car and to please the client the developer can add some piping that also lets the engine brew his coffee while he drives. The client might get excited about the feature but may never appreciate the effort that went into running the pipes for the coffee maker without adversely affecting the performance of the car or the appearance. While the developer de-prioritizes such minor things as the final washing and waxing of the car, the client fixates on "why hasn’t this car been washed yet?" and of course right after applying the wax the client will say "hmmm. Don’t you think this would look better in blue?" or "I think we should only have 2 doors."

Student: I will disappoint someone today.
Master: Better than disappointing everyone.

We had a visitor on our porch this morning. Tommy discovered the frog while walking the dog. He said he would not have noticed had the cat not been sitting staring at it. We decided it best to help it hop along before the cat beat it to death. It was very calm in my hand and as the shock wore off it jumped about two feet. I forgot how fun frogs can be! I’m happy to see we have them in the yard and that an extra leg isn’t growing out of its forehead. 

Someone is pondering a snack. 

On man, I fell asleep last night! I woke at 2am and 3am and couldn’t pull myself from bed until 4:45.

Oh it’s so great to be in the race
Running and feeling the sweat drip down my face
Feel the adrenaline rush
How long can I keep up this pace?
The ache in my muscles tells me I’m alive
But why do I keep falling behind?
Look how they go
I left the path and broke the rules
The judges penalized me with a timeout
The other racers sped on but I’ll win
I run and jump and tumble and get up
My appreciation will be higher than theirs
If I finish.

I found it! Somehow I got that nasty Medialoads program on my machine. This is the one that creates itself in so many different names and versions and is the browser hijacker king. I also seem to have Kazaa on my machine which befuddles me because I’ve hated that program since its inception! I have:

DownloadWare
Type: Adware
Threat Level: High
Author: Great Net inc.

Description: DownloadWare downloads and installs software from advertisers. It runs at Windows startup, and, if a network connection is available, it connects to its servers. It can be installed through an ActiveX control.

Advice: High-risk items have a large potential for adverse effect, such as loss of computer control, and should be removed unless knowingly installed.

and:

ClipGenie
Type: Adware
Threat Level: High
Author: New Harmony Enterprises Limited

Description: ClipGenie displays banner advertisements in its user interface and is usually installed with file-sharing programs. ClipGenie.com is a subscription-based entertainment portal that allows you to purchase and view movies on your computer.

Advice: High-risk items have a large potential for adverse effect, such as loss of computer control, and should be removed unless knowingly installed.

Both reference Medialoads. Evil people!

Considering I work all the time (and more importantly, from home) it is difficult to stick to set hours. I abuse them occasionally taking long breaks with the kids during the day to make up the time at night and my clients occasionally abuse them with phone calls in the evenings. Becky Pretz shares her thoughts. The Austin Business Journal talks about a successful home office.

Creative ways to get away with child labor and be excited about it!

While I typed my previous post, one of the nasty things tried popping up a window. Adwatch blocked it 2100 times and its still going!

I’ve been defiled! My home page is now “about:blank”! I have become one of my customers. Yes, my browser is hijacked! I think this is the BrillantDigital one that is so stinking nasty. Certainly explains the sudden performance issues that had me rebooting. I thought the streaming was killing my machine (could have been the open port on 8081 that let this happen but I can’t be sure). I also had a couple of worms. Looks like I may spend the morning cleaning my machine instead of getting work done.

1. Remove old adaware
2. Run Spybot Search N Destory
3. Update Avast
4. Run CWShredder (wow! CWShredder moves around a lot. Used to be by intermute but Trendmicro is maintaining it) and HijackThis
5. Reboot after Spybot’s removals and Avast’s prompting for a reboot.
6. Install new adaware
7. Launch Trendmicro’s Housecall
8. Run Avast
9. Run Spybot
10. Run Adaware
11. After my computer beeped 5000 times (the number of popups blocked by Adwatch) I rebooted.
12. Restarted Avast scan
13. 2nd Ad-aware scan
14. Checked Add/Remove programs for offending software
15. Removed View Point
16. Used Regedit to manually inspect registry..looks good
17. Totally afraid to open Internet Explorer or Outlook..thank goodness for Firefox!
18. Recovered Homepage (no longer about:blank) but IE won’t remember cookies implying that something still has me. Performance on machine down.
19. Downloaded and installed MS Antispy(been needing to evaluate it anyway)
20. Oh, the new version of adwatch blocks tracking cookies ergo my website info wasn’t saving. Think I’m in the clear now.

Accidentally slept last night.

Woot got a make-over!

Let’s talk about nipples!

After laughing at Michael Crook’s beating on Fox news I thought I’d canter over to Forsake The Troops and see what the fuss was all about. Only to find this message:

This hateful site has been removed courtesy of:

USAF Forums at www.3C0X1.net
&
www.3GuysHosting.com

Click HERE to see the former owner (Michael Crook) owned by Sean Hannity.

I found this response offensive enough to draft the following email to their customer service. Hopefully someone reads it. I fear the kind of people that run www.3GuysHosting.com are the same people that will commit hate crimes in the name of freedom and allow the current administration to drag us decades further backwards. The attitudes represented by 3GuysHosting.com are not so much different than the businessmen that donned white hoods and burned crosses in the name of creating a lawful society.

"This hateful site has been removed courtesy of:"

I disagree with Michael Crook. But I find your censorship with such judgmental arrogance to be equally offensive and un-American.

I believe it would do you well to think long and hard about what type of society you are building for future Americans because right now with acts such as yours we are not practicing democracy and freedom.

Before you preach to me about your "freedom to run your business the way you like" let me remind you that you chose the words "This hateful site has been removed courtesy of:" not "Due to a violation of our decency policy…" or "Due to bandwidth restrictions…"

People in positions of power, such as yourselves, have the obligation to yield that power with responsibility.