What to do when the virus strikes; beats me…
I’m at a loss about what to answer someone who calls me, at home, at night, to announce that their computer has “caught a virus”. There are so many smart, witty responses that spring to mind. Enough for me to go on tour in the Catskills, if ever I get faith and the need to travel. It’s something that I haven’t heard around the office for ages; we try to keep our software up to date and the problem is one that has been around for decades. I’m actually out of practice.
The reality is that “the cure” is no longer something given by me over the phone. It’s a little like trying to describe a snowbank, or a sunset, or the state of the union. I don’t think I’d be of any real assistance, commiserative or otherwise. If you know you have one, you know what to do; read, read and prepare to lose your data. End of story.
Our department went out for lunch today. This happens exactly once a year, so there’s plenty of time to mentally prepare. It turned out that the food was excellent, including the potato soup with cheese, and we were back at the office within two hours (only ninety minutes more than a regular lunchtime meal for me, only minutes longer than the usual). The noise level was completely outside my regular experience; I can’t imagine how the waitress will keep her sense of humour for much longer, as juvenile dementia sets in.
In passing, she wouldn’t furnish the recipe for the soup, which means that I’ll have to start experimenting. If I only peel a few spuds at a time, I can keep the batch size down to something where the dog won’t go on strike. Maybe I’ll “hit the right numbers” early on, and we’ll have great soup forevermore. Still, she could have made it easy on me… it might have been the noise level that tipped the scales against me.
And in a period of the year where “Season’s Greetings” are the order of the day, we received two, individually addressed envelopes from the provincial tier of governance. The envelopes contained our tax forms for the year. Nothing says “We’re thinking of you” like a T1 General 2007.
