Downtime: That Sought After and That Forced Upon
Work pressures continue to ratchet up, as I find myself not only working against a ridiculously strong current with no assist and a wholly inadequate appreciation of the miracles I've been accomplishing, but I'm also finding myself forced to make a huge decision I can't go into here. At the moment, there's simply too little breathing room, and I need to have some time to myself.
Add to this, that sometime on Friday a particularly insidious, virtual disease worked its way onto my computer at home, and as of my first attempt to get back online on Saturday (and many subsequent attempts) I've been unable to. We've dealt with similar things before, but this is obstinate. That this is the first time I've run into this with our current system reminds me that as bad as Microsoft's Millennium was in many respects, its data nazi successor, XP, is in some ways worse. I seem to recall diagnosing these problems was much easier under earlier operating systems.
At first it just seemed that something had reached in and either plugged up a com port, or redirected my modem -- and that may still prove to be the case at least as regards net access. However, it causes my system to run at a ludicrously slow speed at times - leading me to believe that something is monopolizing the processor - and running my anti-virus scan only leads to it reaching a point where it simply... stalls out and goes no farther. I'm only reaching this by finding a different system to access from. If I have the patience for it tonight I'll make a renewed attack, and at least write down the odd "...out of query..." and other, numbered errors I've been running into.
I want a tool, not a new and frustrating hobby. In a better universe, those who create and distribute malicious viruses, not to mention data miners, spyware and hijackware, would be strung up by their genitalia using piano wire and hooks, as the situation requires. Maybe we can just turn them over to some of the special interrogators who've been having such a fun time in Iraq recently.
So, if I'm quiet for several days at a time again you'll have a few possibilities as to what's keeping me occupied and/or away.
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