Thursday, December 23, 2010

Not A Good Day

Idiot docs sent my Mom home --"for Christmas" -- while they arrange for her surgery. Despite the fact that she's had blood pressure issues both nights in the hospital. Mom wanted to do it and my sibs do not seem to have put up much of a fight

I had to work, of course. The wheels fell off both of today's major projects; one wasn't a big deal, client had to get stuff set up at their end and made some ugly booboos, but that's out of my hands.

The other one...test equipment had revealed a problem, a bad RF cable (big, fat stuff, 1-5/8" OD and a few hundred feet of it). We bought the latest-greatest replacement at no trifling expense. The riggers go up, disconnect the bad end...and the antenna feed assembly falls apart. Bad spot in the cable was thirty feet back from that and that's the two ends of a great big almost-flapping-in-the-breeze loop. So, no fix, more spending of money that we really do not want to be spending before we get near to resolving the problem; my department already makes accountants hallucinate.

Came tearing home, made a dinner I had been wanting all day (beef stir-fry, from scratch), got whacked with a migraine eating it and with that comes the unhappy tummy; sat down at the computer and as soon as I brought up the browser, my anti-virus warned me it had three weeks to go. Tried to pay that while Tam attempted to show me a video she had shot on her new iThing and so, of course, I got shirty with her 'cos I am just that kind of a good, good friend. And then the paying thing turned into a huge goat-rope ("Make up a password!" "Are you left-handed?" "Sign up for Eternal Autopay!") and I dumped out of it. What do I need to do to just lay out some cash and avoid the third degree for anti-virus software? Can that even be done?

Hap-py Holidays. Wake me up when they're over, please.

15 comments:

Carteach said...

"Wake me up when they're over, please. "


Agreed

Shermlock Shomes said...

Bobbi:

You might consider dropping the 'pay and pray' anti-virus packages. A good free product (if you're using Windows) is Microsoft Security Essentials. If you're not a friend of Bill Gates, then AVG might do.

Home on the Range said...

Would croissants help? I have some frozen and I have no plans.

Shermlock Shomes said...

Bobbi:

Drop the pay for it crap. A good product (if you're using Windows) is Microsoft Security Essentials. If you're not a friend of Bill Gates, then AVG will do.

George said...

Take care of yourself and your mom.
To show MY day, tried to call the ex for our annual 'get together and make nice' @ Christmas - accidentally deleted her number! Had to call one of her old friends to get the number. I called and she wasn't home. THEN, read your post and thought you had written
'eternal autopsy' *need glasses*

Alan said...

If you're using Windows, (shame on you) Take a look at ClamWin. It's free, open source anti virus.

ClamWin site

Tango Juliet said...

Tomorrow will be a better day.

Joe said...

AVG Anti-virus Free Edition
Hven't had a virus problem in the several years I've used it.

JohnMXL said...

FYI - the latest versions of AVG Free have given me problems - some sort of watchdog routine runs in the background and ties up the system with hard drive activity.

Roberta, I'm with you and Carteach - wake me up when the holidays are over. Christmas decorations started popping up before Halloween around here...I've had enough!

charles said...

Haven't had any problems with Avast!, and they have both totally free and pay with a 30-day free trial versions.

Hope all goes well with your mom from now on.

Anonymous said...

Pragmatically, I'll vote for AVG also.

In the meantime, I really do hope you find some peace.

Jim

rickn8or said...

Hope today and the remainder of the year are better for you and Mom X.

Happy and Prosperous New Year to you and Roomie.

Hugs as needed.

Stranger said...

You have my complete sympathy.

I know the frustration, both from the tech end, and the personal end, all too well. Especially the license renewal end.

I find it easier and usually cheaper to buy an anti-virus program at the local big box, stick the disc in, enter the key and forget about it for another year.

It's none of that guy's business what color my underwear is. You would think her name is Napolitano.

Stranger

Crucis said...

Yes, AVG is free. I've used it for a couple of years on my Windows boxes. But...I've been switching to Avast! It's also free and does everything that AVG does and with less overhead.

It does have some quirks---you have to add lines in the configuration for your e-mail/nntp connections or Avast! will block them. The biggest difference I can see between AVG and Avast! is that AVG examines e-mails after they've been downloaded and Avast! examines them while they're being downloaded.

A small difference but I like detecting virii before they arrive than afterwards.

Just my $0.02.

BTW, hope the headache is over by now.

Robin said...

For free anti-virus, I suggest Avast.

http://www.avast.com/index

Its worked great for me for years.