Edge of illness, Spyware shit, Dead End, Condolences

Ever since Monday I have felt like I was on the cusp of getting sick.  I have been taking Airborne twice a day since Monday to try to combat the onset of illness.  Airborne is this stuff you drop in water that dissolves sort of like Alka-Seltzer, that you drink.  It doesn’t look good and it doesn’t taste good but so far I have been able to keep myself feeling the same instead of worse.  I may be playing vball this weekend with Randall and being sick would put the kabosh on that.

For a good chunk of the past two days I have been battling some incredibly dug in spyware/adware shit that has infected an office computer that a co-worker was using at home.  It is incredibly frustrating.  I have run the system through so many virus and spyware sweeps I have lost count.  Time and again it appears that I have removed the shit only to have it reinstall itself after restarting normally.  The system has multiple things on it, the two worst being something that acts like the Sasser virus as well as the Virtumonde adware.  Late yesterday I said enough was enough, I reimaged it.  It will take me less time to get back to square one that way than it would have dicking around with removal any further.  To hell with it.  The people that write this stuff should go to jail, seriously.

I got a call from the Sheriff’s office today regarding my case.  I was hopeful that it was to tell me that they are progressing on the case and are closing in on nailing the bastard that tried to steal my identity.  The guy that called just wanted to make sure I had my charges reversed and that the card was cancelled, all stuff I had already told the original deputy I had done.  He said that he doubted there was much that was going to happen since it was out of their jurisdiction.  I told him some of the legwork I did that would help track down the person that did this.  He said that even if they obtained the customer information that corresponded to using that IP address at that time, they have to PROVE that person was sitting behind the computer at that time.  Yea, that would be tough to prove. So the bottom line is this guy is going to go unpunished for what he did. It’s bullshit.

I just got a call from the pool cage company that came out to fix the shoddy screening the week of Thanksgiving.  It was the owner’s wife.  She told me she had an invoice for the screen repair.  Of course I immediately got angry.  I told her the screen install was defective and there should be no charge.  She said her husband said that the screen spline was in place and the cut was on the inside of the cage.  I attacked immediately saying that first of all the section of screening was on the far side of the cage where there is no activity and that I was sure the screening was defective from the start, I just never noticed it because unless you push on that section of screening you wouldn’t notice.  I mean WTF, it is a clean cut down the entire length of panel, do they think I took a utility knife and slashed it?

She could tell she stepped into a hornet’s nest and said she would have her husband call me.  Good, you do that.  I will rip into this guy if he tries to pursue charging me for their defective workmanship.  My line will go something like this.  “So you are telling me you want to charge me to “repair” an installation problem with my pool cage that cost me $17,000 dollars to build and 9 months to wait for?  The repair that you came to do a week later than you said you would that required me to call you three times to follow up on?  Yea, you send that invoice and we’ll see how that goes.” What a f’in dickhead.

My good buddy and volleyball partner Charlie had his mom recently pass away.  I only met his mom a few times but everytime I saw her she was always nothing but smiles.  Charlie evidently inherited her happy personality.  I feel terrible for his loss and wish him and his family all the best.