Writing this one from work, where I just finished a lengthy two-day battle with adware and viruses on the office computer. I'm still not even sure it was a victory, but at least ads aren't popping up every fifteen seconds! And I got over my reluctance to install software on this computer, so things should be a lot more secure on here with me running Firefox instead of f'n IE. Because I knew IE was shit, but holy hell I'd never actually experienced anything like what happened yesterday!

Okay, I was about to go off and tell the story, but then the virus alert thing popped up out of nowhere and said the system is still bloody infected, so I dunno what's going on. I'm not even sure if the virus came from this website or not. I know for sure that it spawned a bunch of adware that not even Ad-aware could totally defeat, and this virus protection program doesn't appear to be worth shit, but seeing as how the virus is apparently coming from files that, according to McAfee, I don't have access to delete or modify, I don't see why the virus should be able to mess with them! And why would the virus protection suddenly pop up when Mozilla is the only thing I'm running -- and after it's been up for a while, mind you? I dunno, but I think it's got something to do with one of the network processes. As insecure as the network here is, I wouldn't doubt it! I'd call the help desk, but I probably know more about this stuff than them -- one of the techs was in here and was like, "WTF are you restarting the system in safe mode for?" as if it's totally unnecessary and has never been done before! And I've noticed that their solution is generally to format the computer if they can't solve the problem in five minutes. Not that it matters to me, but still.

So with the adware -- it had to do with some Aurora program that somehow installed itself and assaulted me with wave after wave of popup windows. Now, the program actually showed up in the Control Panel, but upon trying to delete it a message popped up saying that one should go to X website and download a special uninstaller file in order to do so! Obviously this sounds suspect, so I was hesitant to do it. I went to all kinds of forums, reading info on how to deal with this program, downloaded the programs recommended by the techs there -- among them, Ad-aware, which I use at home and think is pretty keen -- and did all of that, but nothing worked. Finally, I went ahead and used the bloody uninstaller from the site -- and voila, no more stupid popups. I wonder what other stuff it installed, though...

And why the hell are they running XP here, anyway? Workplaces should use NT all the way!

I lurve my home computer.