I Oughta Work on the Help Desk

It's after midnight last night when I finally got home last night... I wanted to play with my grandbuns...

The house is dark, except for the porch lights, which the General thoughtfully put on...

I walk up to the door and I hear the computer... Yes, it's 12:15, the General has to be up by 4 and he's on the computer.

Ok, not my problem. I get inside, and flip on the switch for the hallway.

A lightbulb blows and we are plunged back into total darkness.

Ok, no problem. The General comes downstairs, absolutely sobbing.

"Honey, what's wrong?!"

"This has been the worst night!"

"Why? What happened?"

SNUFFLE SOB SOB SNUFFLE

"OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED!? DID SOMEONE DIE!? TALK TO ME!"

"Art cancelled for tomorrow and I had to get Little Anne to come get me and I have a training class and the computer diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiied" SOB SOB SOB

"Ok, ok, what's wrong with the computer?"

"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave a viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuusssssssssssssss"

"Ok, is it still useable?"

"Yes, but I don't know anyone here to help me and pop ups keep going off and I can't get them to stop and I don't know anyone here and AdAware shut down and IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan't fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiix iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit and it's been going on aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllll niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight." SOB SOB SOB

(Mind you this is all taking place in the dark)

"Ok, hold on a second, I'm just going to put on a light and I'll come take a look"

I flick the kitchen switch... Nothing. Hmmmm... That's strange.

Flick on the dining room light. Nothing, no light. Hmmmm... That's strange.

Microwave, oven, stove, fridge all operational... Flick on the outside lights. Nothing. Ok, must have tripped a breaker.

Go downstairs, fumble around while the fluorescents light up... Find "Overhead kitchen lights" breaker, and flip it. Go back upstairs.

Nothing, no light. The lights are dead.

"Ok, honey, we have a minor electrical issue here. There's no light inside or on the main floor."

"Well that's a real kick in the ass, when it rains it pours."

Sometimes there's nothing to do but sit down and laugh or cry when you get to that point... So I forced the General to go to bed, and said I would look into everything in the morning.

I went to work (gotta love those rural county days--I LOVE Orange County!!!) and when I got home, I called our neighbor Jack, my one true hero, to ask if he could recommend an electrician. He said he would be right over.

Well, the breaker marked "Furnace" turned out to be the breaker for the overhead lights, which came on like a charm. Apparently what happened was that when the bulb blew out in the light in the hallway, a wire broke and crossed another wire inside the bulb and caused a short.

Ok, so on to the great machine. I finally, after battling with it for quite some time, discovered that we'd been infected by W32.myzor.fk.fy and did a search on that. I followed the directions for the first suggested fix I came to, and with one call to my husband to find out how to launch "safe mode", I had the machine fixed myself... Granted, it took quite a while, but that was only because the scanning took a good chunk of time.

I highly, highly recommend http://remove-spy.blogspot.com if you run into a spyware, malware/trojan/virus/adware/backdoor situation you can't figure out. If I can make it work from their directions, ANY ONE can. Their directions allowed me to clear out what Symantec, Microsoft, and AdAware all missed.

I called the General with the good news, and he immediately decided I should be a help desk engineer! That might be pretty cool :)