Random Thoughts

I do not understand why Malwarebytes is set to check for updates once every hour on my computer yet certain times it decides to check for updates multiple times in a one hour span. It always happens in the 9PM hour when I am in the midst of listening to music and checking up on certain webpages. And it always, without fail, manages to check for updates when I am in the midst of listening to a really good song and then it gets all distorted because my computer is fucking prehistoric and can't handle that much memory usage.

So it's my birthday. Can't say I feel any different than when I woke up. Got no birthday cake or anything in work. At least all of my coworkers wished me a happy birthday. Everyone that is except my boss. Even when one of my coworkers was standing right next to her and said happy birthday to me, she didn't say anything. Bitch.

I was planning on being as good as possible today. That didn't happen. I had pizza for dinner, then a cookie, and I just ate 2 cupcakes. Two! And then bad eating for the next 2 days! ARGH!

And because I was going to be bad, I decided to get on my bike earlier. And while I was on there, I thought watch, later on when I go to pee, I'll probably start bleeding. I'll give you one guess what I faced a little over an hour later. I don't understand why when I come home from work and exercise, I bleed. Why can I exercise in the morning with no problem? It's so frustrating!

One day last week, my crown decided to remind my brain of its existence, so now I have been obsessing over it breaking or loosening again. Or that one of my real teeth is cracked and worrying that it's going to get infected and I'll need root canal. I am not chewing right and it's giving me pain that only makes my worrying worse. The left side of my jaw is hurting right now and I am all tense that there is an infection brewing inside, although it's more than likely my jaw muscles hurting from grinding and not chewing right.

I hate my teeth so much right now. I can look in my mouth right now and pick out at least 2 teeth that probably need or will need crowns. I'll lose my freaking mind if I have to get more crowns. Why do I even bother taking such good care of my teeth?

Goddamn, I am listening to "The Other Side" by Paul Van Dyk and Wayne Jackson (the Deep Dish remix version) and the bass of it is about to blow my eardrums out. Every time I listen to that song, I think of the Futurama episode "The Sting". I always find that episode incredibly depressing. The song itself is pretty depressing and haunting when you listen to the lyrics. If I recall, Paul wrote the song in response to the South East Asia tsunami, but I am not sure.

The Fuck Avira?!

I have been using Avira Antivirus since probably about 2007 with no problems whatsoever. Until a few months ago when it decided to become nothing but a big bloated system hog. I have been trying to get it to update since I came home from work and all I keep getting is an error message and thanks to them doing away with their original easy-to-read forum (now it's some unorganized Answers mess), I can't seem to get an answer as to whether it is an error on their part or on my part. And I am starting to get really fucking pissed off.

11:03PM: Oh praise Jebus it finally updated on its own!

FML Part 2

I signed into one of my accounts today and received a message that a suspicious sign in had been prevented. A different IP address had attempted to access my account. I am freaking out here. I don't know how this happened. I went on a mad malware scan (all clean). I am a million percent positive I have not received any phishing emails, and even if I had, I would have immediately deleted it. I know better than to ever give any information after clicking on a link from an email. I always close out of the email and go straight to the webpage I know.

I hate life.

The WTF Of The Day

I am about to lose my patience with this.

Ever since Avira detected that trojan, I have been running all of my different programs nonstop. And every single scan has been coming up clean.

Until Friday. I ran a scan with Superantispyware and along with some cookies, it found this:

Trojan.Agent/Gen-Sirefef
C:\WINDOWS\$HF_MIG$\KB2592799\SP3QFE\AFD.SYS

I could not find out much information on the trojan, but when I brought up the file, it seemed like it was a legitimate Microsoft Windows file from a previous update.

But this is where it gets weird. I always run under a limited Windows account unless it is absolutely necessary to be an administrator. When I ran Superantispyware under my administrator account, the scan came up clean. Went back over to my limited account and was once again giving the same detection. Tried again with the administrator account. Clean.

Ran another scan on Saturday and the results were:

Trojan.Agent/Gen-Sirefef
C:\WINDOWS\$HF_MIG$\KB2592799\SP3QFE\AFD.SYS
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DLLCACHE\AFD.SYS

Trojan.Agent/Gen-Orsam
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DLLCACHE\NETBT.SYS

Once again, all seem to be legitimate files. Once again, a clean scan under the adminstrator.

Ran another scan later on and was only given one detection:

Trojan.Agent/Gen-Sirefef
C:\WINDOWS\$HF_MIG$\KB2592799\SP3QFE\AFD.SYS

The rest of the weekend, I decided to run a ton of different scans. These were the results:

Avira: clean
Malwarebytes: clean
Spybot: clean
A-2: clean
Blacklight Rootkit Eliminator: clean
TDSSKiller: clean
Eset Online Scanner: clean
Panda Online Scanner: clean
F-Secure Online Scanner: one cookie
Trend Micro Online Scanner: clean

I have no idea what to do. SAS is the only one detecting this trojan and the files seem legitimate, so I don't want to delete them. But I am very uneasy with the detections because I don't know if they are really infected or if they are just false positives. I sent SAS a message about it, but have yet to receive a response. It would be nice if someone could help me the hell out!

Also, I looked more into that trojan Avira had initially found:

[0] Archive type: GZ
--> object
[1] Archive type: MIME
--> Post_Label_1443US.zip
[2] Archive type: ZIP
--> Post_Label.exe
[DETECTION] Is the TR/Dldr.Dofoil.29 Trojan

I think I have a pretty good idea where it came from. Christmas night, I had received an email from DHL telling me I had not been available to pick up a package or something. I knew right off the bat from the subject line that it was a scam, so I didn't open it and immediately deleted it. So how on earth did I get infected if I did not even open it, let alone download anything from it?

ETA: Ran another SAS scan under my limited account after updating the software. Clean.

The WTF Of The Day

What the hell? I was about to ask why my antivirus did not pick this up in the first place since it is on constant guard, but then I remembered someone told me Avira is funny with picking up alerts with Firefox. But still. This trojan sounds like it is picked up from email attachments and I am 150% sure that I have not downloaded anything from an email. I learned my lesson several years ago from downloading an attachment from Monster.com, getting a virus, and crashing my entire computer. I never EVER download email attachments unless I am absolutely positive the person I received it from is not giving me malicious attachments.

The virus went right into quarantine when the scan was finished. I was thinking maybe it was a false positive, since I have the settings on Avira very high, but before I moved it to quarantine, I scanned the file with Virus Total and 27/43 found it infected. I tried to submit it to Avira to be tested again, but it wouldn't submit. Ran 4 of my on demand programs after the scan (Malwarebytes, Superantispyware, A-2, and Spybot) and all came up clean.

It disturbs me picking up viruses, because I try to keep a strong lock down on my computer.

Quote Of The Day

From this Cracked.com article:

You're browsing the Internet one day and your antivirus software alerts you to a threat. You easily avoid it, but seconds later that AV program pings you as you trawl the Web for torrents and Ukrainian warez. Who does this "Avg" guy think he is, judging you? With the righteous fury of the scorned, you disable active alerts and forget about it. A month later, your PC explodes and someone in Mexico steals your identity.

Random Thoughts

Goddamn companies. I bought a really cheap mp3 player back in January and it was $19.99 up front and then I would get a $10 rebate. The rebate came back in a Visa pre-paid card. Because the card has been sitting in my drawer for a week or so and annoying the hell out of me, I decided that when I went to dinner tonight I would use it for part of my balance. When I asked the waitress how it works, she tells me that only $8 will go towards my bill and a $2 fee. I was not about to lose $2 over that, so I decided to just pay with cash. And now I am wondering if I am going to have this problem everywhere I go. If so, that really blows. That means I really only get $8 back.

I just want to know if they charge a fee in all stores.

Ugh, despite how safe it is supposed to keep your computer, Noscript really gets on my nerves. You click on something, doesn't come up. Then you have to figure out which damn script it is to temporarily allow it. And sometimes that doesn't even work. If there are 1 or 2 scripts being blocked, no problem. But sometimes I go on pages where about 20 scripts are being blocked and I don't like to take the chance of temporarily allowing all scripts.

Apparently I am not the only one who finds it irritating because when I entered "noscript is" into Google, "noscript is annoying" was a suggested search.

I went to the movies tonight and usually when I go, I always demand to sit on the end. I like to be able to get up if I need to and not have to walk through a ton of people, plus I like to have only one person on the side of me because sitting that close to strangers is like strangulation. But tonight, there were a few people in the movies so my sister and I go to the top row and sit one seat over from the end, with me at the seat next to the empty last seat. A few minutes before previews, this ghetto kid comes and goes and sits a couple seats down from my sister. Then suddenly he gets up and out of all the empty seats in the theater, plops down in the empty seat next to me. And sure, one can say, well, what is the big deal, just get up and move. But you know how people can be- "oh you get up and move because I am [insert race]?". Trust me, it would not have mattered if he was black, white, or green with pink polka dots. Sitting next to me like that scared the hell out of me. I was almost to the point of full-blown panic attack before my sister got up and forced me to move.

One thing that did make me laugh at the movies was when I walked by one of the checkout registers, I saw that infamous gray Windows error box on the screen- you know, Blank has encountered a problem and needs to close; we are sorry for the inconvienence.

Are you, Windows? Are you ever really sorry?

I went to that interview on Monday, which actually was not an interview. It was an information session. I honest to God felt like I was in Disturbing Behavior. The conductor of the infosession seriously sounded like she had been absolutely brainwashed. She wouldn't stop smiling and was overly perky and just kept raving about how great and wonderful the company is. I wanted to bang my head on the table (since I couldn't obviously blow my brains out).

Infections, Prayers, And A Dive Into OCD

iWork '09 Trojan Virus Infects at Least 20,000 Machines?

OMG, a Mac infection? It's actually possible? But....but I thought Macs were invincible!

Kidding aside, I know Macs can be affected. They're just lucky enough to have a relatively small amount of infections (exact number unknown- some sites list a few, others list around 40, and I have seen sites list Mac infections as high as a thousand) as compared to the- hold on, let me consult my last virus scan done Friday night oh, I don't know, 1,257,460 virus strains and unwanted programs. And since no virus scan is a hundred percent detectable, there could be a ton more. Also, add in the factor that Avira free does not detect spyware and the number soars even higher. A-Squared free has 2,600,785 malware signatures.

Ugh, one of these days I will be able to actually purchase Avira.

I watched that Lifetime movie Prayers For Bobby earlier and....god, that poor kid. And knowing it was based on a true story made it even more depressing. When the part came on when he jumps off the bridge, I was sobbing. Now I don't often cry at movies, but movies where suicide occurs I usually do. Because, real or not, I know and understand how that person feels and it is a horrible feeling to want to die. Jumping off a bridge is personally not a method I would ever consider using if it ever came down to it, but there have been plenty of times I have considered driving to a bridge and jumping off. That documentary, The Bridge, was also very sad. I just couldn't imagine jumping off of a bridge. Do you feel the impact of hitting the water or ground? Or does the falling alone at such a high velocity kill you? I would think that coming down at such a high speed would move your organs around, but I don't know. Physics is not one of my strong points.

I often say that if I were to ever get what I wanted that by the time I would get it, there would be some kind of treatment/cure for it and after this week, somehow I have a feeling that that could very well be possible. Good for others, certainly, but not for me, although I may think differently if it were to actually happen. I hate my brain. I really do. It's one thing if a random body part like the pancreas or immune system goes awry, but when the one thing that you have some kind of control over goes awry, it's horrible. And with my problem, it seems like the processes to control the mind have been destroyed. Like the brakes in the car were cut. I got into a fight with some douchebag with a psych degree over this before. He insists that thoughts, no matter how obsessive, can be controlled. I disagree. Maybe with some kind of outside help, but I definitely do not think one's own thoughts can be controlled entirely on their own.

Obsessive thoughts are like this- have you ever been in a pool and tried to push a beachball under the water? When you let go, it comes flying back up. And the further down you push it, the more force it will come back up with. That is exactly what it is like to try to supress obsessive thoughts. Or as most standard psych books use as an example- the Pink Elephant Experiment. Picture pink elephants. Now do not think of pink elephants. Bet you're thinking of them still, aren't you?

Aside from the lack of self-esteem and social phobia, I would say obsessive compulsive disorder is the next most mind crippling disorder I have. I believe having depression stems from the above three (as well as genetics). It's just so damn intrusive and it never lets up. With depression, I have good days and then I have days where I do not even want to get out of bed. With OCD, though, it just stays the same and worsens when that time of the month comes. I'm not kidding when I said I wish I could pull my brain out. There really are days where it is so bad, I just want to rip it out of my skull or jam an ice pick up my nose. And it's difficult to treat. Prozac was the only drug that helped it somewhat. The odd thing was the higher dosage I went, the worst it got. The only dosage that seemed to stabilize it a little bit was 20 mg and then that crapped out on me.

And what I think is remarkable proof of OCD has been produced. My sister's psychiatric nursing book states the following as evidence:

Functional neuroimaging techniques have shown abnormal metabolic rates in the basal ganglia and orbitalfrontal cortex of individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder (MacKenzie, 1994)

Some individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder exhibit nonspecific electroencephalogram (EEG) changes. Some researchers have hypothesized that obsessive-compulsive disorder may represent a nonconvulsive epileptiform disorder (e.g., abnormal discharges in selective brain regions) or an abnormality in left-frontal brain functions (Kaplan & Sadock, 1989)

And then there is also the whole serotonin theory as well.

Brain scans have shown signs of it, like this:

Scan 1
Scan 2
Article

Dammit, maybe I should have had that brain scan done in 2006.

Wikipedia has more information. And yeah, I know Wiki can't be trusted all the time, but the sources seem pretty legitimate to me, so I am half-tempted to believe them. The part that makes me really curious is the streptococcal link. The link is a bit confusing, but when I was a kid, I had strep throat constantly. My tonsils were chronically swollen. If I went to the doctor just for a check-up, no pain or anything, but they would be swollen.

Now if I can just find a worthwhile, not half-assed treatment. Therapy didn't work, drugs didn't work, exercise only keeps me from losing my mind completely....psycho-surgery? HA! Am I fucking joking? That will be like pulling a completely impacted wisdom tooth! Why offer me a chance to be normal when they can keep on pumping me cock full of drugs?

Supposed proof of evolution, according to my dentist- my mom had 4 wisdom teeth, my sister had 2, and I have 1. The bastard hasn't bothered me yet and it better stay that way. And for some reason, I can never remember where it is. I'm pretty sure it's on the left side; I just can't remember if it is on the top or bottom, though.

Alright, I need to go to bed.

Change

A couple weeks ago, I was going through the HBO channels to see what was going to be on and I saw a movie entitled Groove was going to be on after midnight. Curious as to what it could be about, I hit the information button and it described it as a movie that takes place in a rave in San Fran.

Now long before I knew who Deee-Lite was there was always a sort of club culture that I always said I would rather be a part of than the clubs I see. I don't know how much the club culture has changed since the days of Deee-Lite or if it just depends on where you live, but I have been to one club in my life and aside from the fact that it was a lousy experience, I just can't picture a club like that or clubs that you see people like Paris Hilton going to playing music like Deee-Lite or house or techno or whatever. The whole atmosphere just seems completely different. As I got more informed on Deee-Lite, I realized, despite the fact that Dewdrops in the Garden is my least favorite album by them, that it is actually the rave culture I have been interested in.

Watching Groove further proved my point. I was too young when the rave scene started (which itself is a bit hard to judge; many people say it was 1998 to 2000 and something, but Deee-Lite was part of the rave scene, so it had to have started before that), so whether the movie was acurate or not is not my call; however, I thought it was a pretty cool movie. And that song at the end of the rave, "Heaven Scent" by John Digweed, was unbelievable. It gave me the chills from head to toe.

In other news, I wish people would start leaving things the way they were. Change can be good, when it is actually beneficial. I have been using McAfee Site Advisor for some time now and last night, it update to version 2.9.242 and needless to say, it is awful. Completely horrible. I thought it installed last night and when I came on under my XP account today, it gave me the message that it upgraded and the EULA and if I agreed to it or not. I hit yes and another Firefox window opened thanking me for upgrading....and then the EULA message came up again. So I hit I accept once again and a Firefox window opens up again, thanking me for upgrading. And then the EULA agreement comes up again. Figuring it had something to do with being under a limited account, I switched over to the Adminstrative account. Same problem. I ended up having to uninstall it. I am going to try installing it again, but I don't know what I am going to do if I have the same problem. I am extremely disappointed because I really liked using it. I don't know how reliable it was, but I felt safer surfing with it. Why can no one ever keep things the way they were?

Just like Adidas. I used to love their shoes that resembled Sambas, but they were white and had colored stripes. I think they are called Superstar. I lived in them in high school. I had a pink pair and blue pair. Lady Miss Kier has a pair on in the second picture. I had an almost, if not completely, identical pair. I tried to look for a new pair and all I can find is pure white ones. I don't want pure white. White and I do not mesh well together; whenever I wear all white, stains are magnetized to me. I have no idea how I can ever get married in a white wedding dress. I am going to have to wear a black dress, even though I have more of a right to wear a white dress than probably 95% of the American public. I also found a pair of Superstars in Lady Foot Locker that are quite frankly one of the ugliest pair of shoes I have ever seen. They had multi-colored stripes and were splattered from front to back with little multi-colored Adidas logos. When you turned them over to look at the sole, it was clear and there were more little multi-colored Adidas logos. They were so hideous, they were beautiful. I immediately fell in love with them and want to buy them.

Speaking of white, I was surprised one day reading the newspaper to find out how many fellow white people find the term "cracker" extremely offensive. I think it's funny as hell.

Quote Of The Day

From last night's Becker. Not sure what the exact quote was:

Linda: Okay, okay. You don't have to bite my head off.
Margaret: Like I need anymore empty calories.

On a side note, are you overly obsessed with computer security when you start constantly dreaming of your computer being infected?

I'm A PC....And I Have A Problem

Windows....what are we going to do with you?

I have been using Windows for a long time. Sure, the first time I ever used a computer was back in elementary school, which were those big huge Macs that were the size of a full grown toddler and had screens the size of my hand palm. We used to play Number Maze, or whatever the name of the game was where you went through a maze as a horse to get to the carrot. But the first computer we ever owned in my house was a Compaq. It had Tabworks and it came with AOL 1.0. Or that was on our second one. I can't remember. Boy, it's funny to think of computers back in the day. You see ads and they're like "OMG ITS AMAZING Get 6 bytes of memory for only $25,000!"

I do like Windows. I like it's ease, it's desktop, and it's flying Windows screen saver. However, Windows needs to stop releasing so many goddamn versions and work on it's security problem (and bring back the flying Windows screensaver). I am going to post my latest virus scan and highlight the number of viruses/unwanted programs it was scanning for:

Avira AntiVir Personal
Report file date: Saturday, November 08, 2008 22:08

Scanning for 1019829 virus strains and unwanted programs.

Licensed to: Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic
Platform: Windows XP
Windows version: (Service Pack 3)
Boot mode: Normally booted
Username: SYSTEM

Is that not ridiculous? Do you know how many programs I have on my computer to keep it as clean as possible? Here is what I have: Avira Antivirus, Spybot Search & Destroy, Superantispyware Free, Blacklight Rootkit Eliminator, Spywareblaster, Spyware Guard, Hijackthis, A Square, Spyware Terminator, Malwarebytes, and Winpatrol. Online scans I use: Ewido/AVG Spyware, Kaspersky, Windows Live One Care, and occasionally F-Secure, Panda, McAfee, and Trend Micro. I switched to Firefox with Noscript, McAfee Site Advisor, and Ad-Block Plus. I also have Opera, but I barely use it because it's a system hog since I upgraded to 9.5. Every time I open it, the little message comes up on the taskbar that says "Windows - Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low : Your system is low on virtual memory". But what can you expect from a computer that is still in the Stone Age with 256MB of RAM?

The whole reason I have become so obsessive over computer security is due to back in the fall of 2006. I received an email from Monster.com and it told me I needed to download something and I stupidly went ahead and did so. Crashed my entire computer. I had to reformat the entire thing. What amazes me is no matter how careful you are, you can still end up with a virus.

My sister's computer has recently fallen victim to the Facebook trojan so now I have to get a hold of her laptop and try to clean it up. This should be fun.