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AtmaWeapon
08-20-2003, 12:53 PM
Well, as many people often say, I'm back. I had quite the interesting time away from AGN. Allow me to tell you the tale of my adventures for those of you who are interested.

Part one: Hello, Bugbear!
My mother is one of those forward-happy people that bases her idea of how liked she is on how many emails she gets per day. I'm sure that Fw: FWD: Fw: FWD: Fw: Fw: PLEEEEEEEZ Send this back! It really works!!!!!11 was a really nice email. I just hate to see crap like this in our inbox. However, she enjoys it. In fact, she enjoys it so much, that she opened "Your document" with the attachment "Labreport.txt.scr" from someone she didn't even know. I would not have known of it had Bugbear not chosen an email from the archive of the emails my girlfriend had sent me. She received a creepy email to herself from herself as a result of the virus. All header tracing pointed to a computer on Bellsouth FastAccess within the IP range I usually connect in. Yay! I had the Bugbear virus. This was what basically made me take my hiatus, as the computer had thoroughly pissed me off.

If you don't have a working antivirus, then for the love of God, get a piece of this action (http://www.avast.com). There is no reason to not use an antivirus. (if you are curious as to why I rolled without an antivirus, mosey on over to my blog (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=atmaweapon) later. Around 11:00 PM Central I am making my post.

Part two: The battles
Me and my girlfriend almost broke up. I'm talking I was getting my things back in 12 hours. Disaster averted, healing processes invoked, things are back to their bumpy and normal selves. She's adjusting better to me being at college than last year, but there's still some issues.

Part three: MSBLAST
May God take proper judgement on those who write viruses (virii?). Granted, MS had a month to patch the stupid RCP DCOM hole (whatever the devil that was). They didn't, although they paid CNN.com to say that they had released the patch a month earlier. Believe me. I got the worm when there were two total articles on the internet about it, both of them just over two hours old. There was NO MS patch. There was a security bulletin that said "the patch will be included in the next WinXP Service Pack". Anyway, MSblast put up quite a valiant fight, but in the end, I was able to secure both my computer and my girlfriend's with the ZoneAlarm firewall (http://www.zonelabs.com). You should consider getting a firewall as well... although if you don't have an antivirus GET MOVING ALREADY!!! (http://www.avast.com)

Part four: the plagues

And when the AtmaWeapon should ever turn his back on Armageddon, there shall be a time of trials and plagues.
-Book of Atma 2:13
Seriously. I had a running list going to see if there would be 7 plagues after I left AGN. After MSblast and the big power outages, I started keeping track of them. However, as time passed, I noticed that not enough plagues were happening. I was hoping for a Biblical 3 at best, but I have to settle for two. Be afraid if I leave again.

Part five: The college and the laptop
So here I freeze in my room at Mississippi State University. I'm running Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition (thanks for the site license, Mississippi State!), ZoneAlarm firewall (805 blocked intrusions since Monday), and I'm browsing in style with Avant Browser (http://www.avantbrowser.com/). It's got all the neat features of browsers like Mozilla/Phoenix/whatever and Nutscrape without the annoying side effects like not being able to view web pages that I used to get with Mozilla. A 900kb add-on to IE that rocks. I recommend it fully. It's great to be back.

Now carry on, as you were.

Mitsukara
08-20-2003, 01:25 PM
Hello... come to think of it, I haven't seen you post in a while...

It sucks that you've had problems... I've never really had anything like that happen, though this computer did have the CIH95 virus once... we got rid of it about a week before it activated, though...

We haven't updated Norton Antivirus since April of last year... since the subscription expired... I should probably look into other antivirus software soon...

Um, anyway, welcome back!

Foxy
08-20-2003, 03:40 PM
Yay! Welcome back, it's great to see you! :) Can't wait to talk again and catch up. *grin*


Glad to see you're still alive and well, and that disaster was averted! YAY!

Starkist
08-20-2003, 04:00 PM
Originally posted by AtmaWeapon
Granted, MS had a month to patch the stupid RCP DCOM hole (whatever the devil that was). They didn't, although they paid CNN.com to say that they had released the patch a month earlier. Believe me.

The patch was up last month. Believe me. The released a security bulletin about the flaw, put up a patch, and then nothing happened until last week. People just didn't get the patch. :shrug:

Welcome back, anyhow.

carrot red
08-21-2003, 03:53 AM
Not what I'd call adventures...

Welcome back, Atma.:)

Nemo
08-21-2003, 04:03 AM
Adventures? hmm why is it i have surfed the internet and dl'd lots of items but nver once gotten a virus?? odd... everyone gets em but me!!! WHAH!!!

Daarkseid
08-21-2003, 04:06 AM
Please eat a pile of fecal matter. Then promptly perish.

AtmaWeapon
08-21-2003, 10:11 AM
I lub you, Daark!

Yoshiman
08-21-2003, 10:27 AM
Everybody lubs Daark.Some people just don't wanna admit it. Anyway, welcome back Atma!

Jemsee
08-21-2003, 10:58 AM
Adventures in computing heh?
Always fun to battle the bugs.


A little research provided me with the Avast! antivirus program. It works, and it is free. All is well again.

It looks like it cost 40.00$ to me. There was a trial thing.
But I have Norton "03 and have always used Norton.
I do know what you mean with it messing with games in older/slower PC, when that happened to me I just shut it off when I played the game then turned it back on.
And Zone Alarm is $49.95 for one Year of Updates & Support.

Anyway have fun at MSU and learn all kinds of neet stuff and all.
Glad to see you back on the boards.

AtmaWeapon
08-21-2003, 01:50 PM
It is free for home users. Download the trial. If you register as a home user, you get a free key.