I’ve got to defragment my PC tonight. It’s running wonky and sometimes refuses to shut down properly when I want to shutdown which leads to a scan disk on restart which probably fixes anything that needs fixing but my files are probably fragmented as hell. Like I k hidden now what the hell I’m talking about. I just know that I should defragment this thing every once in awhile and that it’s a good idea to do it if your PC is acting wonky.Mine is acting wonky. What is wonky? Well, it hangs up on shut down a lot. Like nearly every time I try to shut down. It won’t let me into the Internet Explorer tools via the tool bar in IE (gives me a “not accessible because of restrictions on this computer. see your network administrator” message) and if I try to go in via the control panel it just hangs up and the PC freezes. My AVG anti-virus automatic update is denied access to the internet by my firewall and I can’t figure out why that happens but I can get it to update manually so I guess it’s not that big a deal, just a PITA so far.
So what else is new with me and PCs? I’ve been having a running battle with trojans for almost three yeas now, speaking of the Gremlins. It will probably get worse if I mess around with trying to get rid of them. For the moment I think I’m just going to try to coexist peacefully and see what happens. It sort of peeves me that they are there but I’m really not in the mood to fight with them either.
I just wish they would go away and leave me alone. It’s like having evil unwanted relatives as guests who just won’t go home or maybe they don’t have a home and you’re stuck with them because after all, how do you throw family out? Except these demons aren’t family. They’re just omnipresent.
Who are the Gremlins? I’m not really sure. I’ve got my suspicions, of course. I’m almost absolutely sure who one of them is but I won’t/can’t name names. I’ve got strong suspicions about other people.
What do they do? Well, I know they break into apartments and steal things. Many, many people have complained about that over the years. I know they have a strange fascination with my PC(s). I believe they might break into the apartments of the everyone this complex who have PCs plant special trojans that then suck up their extra PC resources. Since DSL is practically as cheap as dial-up in this city and the building across the way is primarily rich college kids, there is no reason not to have it really. I think they have everyone on some kind of local area network. Like I said, I’m not sure but I’ve heard of way too many problems with computers in this building. I think DSL might be provided in the other building.
There is a PC fix-it guy who will come here and fix your PC for a mere $28.00 an hour. His flyer appears on the bulletin board every once in awhile. He says he’s so cheap because he thinks the poor should not be disenfranchised from this form of communication. Noble cause and all of that. blah blah blah.
Sounds too good to be true, huh? It was too good to be true for me. I have a 2 year old Dell I would like to get de-trojanized so I called him and talked to him about it. He said he’d check his schedule and never called back. Guess he was too busy with his regular $75 an hour jobs.
I try not to be paranoid about that. I try not to wonder if he is part of my suspected tribe of gremlins. and that’s why he won’t come to my house for $28 an hour. I should call him again.
There are a group of us who are trying to get a PC club going here in the building. Maybe I should call the cheap PC guy and ask him to be a pseaker/advisor. Why not, he was all about helping people get on the web. He could give a security talk. I’d like to meet him, see what kind of vibes I get. It would be good for business for him, he would probably do it if I get Richard to call.
Charlotte reccommends him highly–maybe she would call. He does all her work on her PC. I don’t have a clue why her PC needs all that work but she met him at the Senior Center where he volunteers occasionally and they recommend him highly there as well. There is a whole room full of PCs there . At least 15 if not more.
I helped an older lady named Eloise who has severe arthritis put an onscreen keyboard on her PC and showed her how to make they type bigger and use the magnifier plus how to do a search on IE. That gave her enough confidence to take a course in using her PC at the Senior Center.
I also helped Kathleen learn how to search more effectively although I am hardly an expert. I wish someone would teach me how to refine searches so I get exactly what I want.
But here I am dithering about nothing so I can avoid talking about the gremlins. Because talking/writing about the gremlins makes me edgy and sad and angry all at once. I know everything I say about them sounds crazy. I wish I could defragment my life and expel the gremlins. I try not to worry about this shit and just shrug my shoulders and say, hey, this is part of living at the Three Threes. Deal with it. <meh>
B
