Madness and Chaos

There's a reason why I didn't get the weekend update out in a timeley manner and a good reason why I didn't do a meme last week. Normally I update the blog while I'm at work because my time at home is precious. The problem with that is that if...heaven forbid... something happens at work or if...heaven double forbid...I actually have work to do at work then I don't have time to update the blog. Well, the past week or so has been a little of both things happening and work to be done.

At one point last week I, like an idiot, decided to install some free CD burning software on my work computer. My work computer has a CD/DVD burner in it but no software for the burning of CD's. Over the course of the past couple weeks I have been turning my laptop into a dual boot system that runs both Windows 98 and Windows XP. I wanted Windows 98 because I have a lot of old DOS-based games that I used to play (Like Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, Oregon Trail, Commander Keen, etc.) and I want to be able to play them without using an emulator. The point of all this is that to get 98 up and running and to get the games I want, I'm using a lot of out-of-print software which I download from a variety of sources in disk image formats that need to be burned to a CD to work. So I need to burn CD's. I have a CD burner on my work computer and I, like an idiot as I said before, decide to install some free CD burning software.

What happened the first time I installed the software was that it also installed a massive trojan that took over my browser and all of my administrative functions, and embedded itself in my registry in such a way that I couldn't uninstall it. This program pretended to be a spyware sweeper, but what it really was was a massive spyware installer. It takes over your system and before you know it, you're drowning in a sea of pop-up ads and fake windows security notices. I'm no slouch when it comes to computers and I've been battling trojans and spyware for a long time now, but this one was a doozy. What eventually happened after many attempts to get rid of the software was that I had to call IT, who were completely bewildered so they gave me a whole new machine and took the old one away to be formatted and start life anew. That happened on Friday.

On Monday when I came into work, I noticed my feet squishing on the carpet. We don't have any special sort of squishtec(tm)carpet or anything, so obviously we had a flood. It was weird because we had a decent rain storm over the weekend, but certainly not even the worst monsoon rain I've seen in my time here in the valley. So the architecture building where Arizona's best and brightest come to learn how to build buildings that can withstand all sorts of damage...can't withstand a simple rainstorm. The water damage in the library didn't seem too bad, and the only things that got wet were some drawings in the special collections room. So no big deal, right?

"Nope," He said in a whole new paragraph. It's a really big deal. It's such a big deal that we called in an emergency library flood response team who is freeze drying sealing up books and drawings right and left. Any book that was in the same room as carpet that may or may not have mold on it is now being freeze dried or incubated. There are more people working here doing more damage control than I care to count. They built a quarantine tent right in the middle of the library so they can do all sorts of specialized work away from any and all dust molecules. It's like that scene toward the end of E.T. that frightened me as a kid and destroyed my likelihood to ever watch that movie again as an adult. Here is a picture of what used to be a room full of books and study tables.



You can see the quarantine tent and the shelves they have taken apart. All this has made more work for me because all of a sudden I'm having to move large sections of books around that I'm just going to have to move back when all this is over. It's no fun. Plus we have eight different fans running at once and the air conditioning has been turned up to somewhere in the 80's so everything can dry out. I'm all for saving the books and whatnot, but this is annoying and it makes more work for me than I would like to do.

So for the last couple days it has been chaos in this place as 30 different non-English speaking workers move all our stuff around and wrap everything in plastic. The dean of the libraries comes in twice a day, the boss man hasn't worn his suit coat for three straight days (which is disturbing because with the suit he looks like the grim face of death, but without it he looks like the Olson twins creepy anorexic dad. I don't know what's worse. Basically, there's a lot of hubub and I wish I could relax and generally slack off like I normally do.

So yesterday I get a crazy (aka stupid) idea to try installing som CD burning software again because I still want to get more games and utilities on this laptop. So just try and guess what happens. If you said that a different yet eerily similar trojan completely takes over my machine, you are correct. I thought I had it headed off early when I hit it with an antivirus scan using the software that comes pre-installed on our work computers. Well, that didn't work. It has now taken over my computer to the point where I can't do anything except stare at things that it pops up at me. I have no administrative control, and even in safe mode I'm walled in and this trojan has no intention of leaving. So I had to call the IT guy yet again. Luckily they didn't sound agry, which I thought they would. So tomorrow I should be getting my second new machine in less than a week. Brilliant.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the reason I'm even bothering to burn CD's at work is because my home computer's CD burner has stopped burning CD's. I don't blame it. It's been through an awful lot in the time that I've had it and I bear it no ill will. It can go silently into that dark night and I will salute it all the way. It just stinks because I really wish it was working right now. The whole thing is like some sort of bizarre technological version of "There's a hole in my bucket."

So there you have it: perhaps the longest ever post explaining why I don't post as often as I should. It's not irony in its purest form, but at least we can all agree that it's mildly interesting.