Day: November 23, 2005

I Dream of Geena


When I feel a little unwell, I tend to have very vivid dreams. One dream last night was of me in a bus, about 3/4s of the way back. The bus has no driver and is careening out of control, but I manage to stop it from my seat (mentally?- shades of Professor X) by directing it up a rocky incline, where it comes to a stop.

Another dream I had was one in a series I call the Television Episode Continuation or TEC dream. This involves watching a TV show just before I go to bed and the story from the show continues, this time with me in it. This used to happen a lot when I used to watch “Cagney and Lacey,” for some reason, usually the domestic stuff between Harvey and Mary Beth Lacey. Last night, I watched a taped episode of “Commander-in-Chief” from about a month ago, and I found myself inside Mac’s White House, discussing strategy about the Russians. It’s only the third time I’ve seen the show, and while I like it well enough, it’s not my favorite show or anything.

If I were casting my life story, Geena Davis would definitely play my wife. Carol’s hair is darker, but they are both very tall. That doesn’t explain, though the TEC phenomenon.

Anyway, I’m a little better now, not racquetball-playing better, but “go-to-work-and get-rid-of-192-emails-and-7-phone-messages” better.

ROG

Telecommunications: Internet

You know when people tell you to do something, and you recognize that it is a good and reasonable thing to do, yet you fail to do it? Well, that’s what I did when I got my Road Runner Internet connection. Not only the techie from work, Mark, but also my mother-in-law suggested that I needed to get a firewall. I knew I needed a firewall. It was something I knew to get before they told me. And yet it didn’t happen.

When it was first connected, on September 6, it was SO fast, much faster than the dial-up we’ve been suffering with for the past two or three years. I was a happy camper.

Then one day about a month ago, there was an invasion so virulent that not only did it slow down my Internet connection, I couldn’t even open Word documents or games. So I disconnected the RR connection, and got some McAfee software. But trying to rehook the Internet connection failed for reasons that are beyond my Luddite capacities.

Ultimately, I had to get my old friend Mark (not to be confused with co-worker Mark) to come up to Albany from down near New Paltz to try to fix the problem. His quick fixes showed that I had at least nine spyware attachments and one virus, but it didn’t solve the problem, and he ended up having to wipe my hard drive and reloading Windows and other software, plus anti-spyware protection, virus protection, and a firewall.

The cool thing is that I got to see him and his wife and daughter, and we all went out to a Middle Eastern restaurant for a fabulous meal.

So, the obvious lesson, get protection. Why does that sound slightly sordid?

ROG
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial