February 21st

Today was nonstop stress, what joy. Ever heard of a trojan virus audience? Yeah well poor Rikki (my computer) caught one and a nasty one at that. Not only did it attach itself to protected system files it also corrupted my main antivirus software. The latter of the two was worse primarily because it wouldn't shut up in telling me that it had quarantined a threat. Somehow I didn't believe the constant stream of messages from Symantec seeing at it had quarantined the same four files over 8,354 times.

Fortunately Rikki was functioning fine, nothing was slow and I could access the internet. Not that Google did me any good. Apparently, more so inconveniently, when system.exe files are corrupted with trojan.zeroaccessinf4! virus there isn't any one universal way to destroy it. Rather it varies from system to system. Also if you delete any system.exe files accidently your entire system falls like a jenga tower. Personally I'd like to avoid that from happening. Throughout the entire day my thoughts were only for Rikki and how I had allowed her to become infected with a rouge cache file. Needless to say I did not pay close attention to my Religions lecture about Hinduism.

Rikki is extremely precious to me since it's my first laptop and my college computer. We've been through so much together. Why I remember first seeing it at the Microcenter store just sitting on the top shelf. It was a sleek Gateway machine with a broad LCD screen and a full number pad (the number pad was a necessity). I knew that it was going to be my computer before the sales associate even tried to pitch it to me. To be honest that kid (the sales associate) was an idiot. He kept trying to push me towards Macs even though I gave him three basic needs for my computer:

1. Must be a PC

2. Screen needs to be large

3. Number pad has to be included

Yeah he really didn't seem to pick up on those obvious "hints". Whatever, I found Rikki and everything was squared away. Thus audience you can imagine my concern for poor little Rikki, we're so tight knit and all. The thought of losing it to some virus was more than I could handle. I ended up doing the classic MareBear break down.

First I cried.

Then I bent a few spoons since I couldn't punch anything.

Then I wrapped myself under my blanket and brooded.

Then cried.

Then unbent the spoons.

Then took in some deep breaths.

Finally sent an E-mail to my computer programmer father (or went to Mom and Dad for help). Classic MareBear!

I'm alright now, sort of. I'm not fully alright because the virus is still there but Rikki is doing much better. I had to uninstall Symantec (no tears there) since it had become corrupted. No way really? You mean having over 8,000 quarantines of the same four files isn't normal? Heh personally I'm glad to be rid of it for now. Especially since it kept telling me that Rikki was doing just fine even though Adware and Malwarebytes had flashing red lights. Remember kids always seek a second opinion.