The View From Wisconsin

I officially reached the surrender point yesterday with my computer. When your Anti-virus program crashes in the middle of a scan, you know you're screwed.

When it come back up and tells you "Please re-install Norton Antivirus", you know you're really screwed.

When you can't even log back in to your own account to even try to re-install your AV – well, it's time to take it in to someone with more experience and more tools. Okay, at least more tools.

The old Gateway is now sitting at the Brookfield Best Buy's Geek Squad center, under the "experiencing virus-like symptoms" category. Hopefully, they'll be able to get it back up and running in short order; if they don't, I'll at least have a means of restoring a recent backup to my external drive.

The old adages are still true here: even if you think an e-mail is "safe", if you can't determine the sender, or the subject line doesn't make sense, trash it and don't open it. That's probably what happened to me; an e-mail claiming to be from H&R Block (which is the company that makes the software I use) was sitting in my Junk e-mail folder on MSN, and I thought it was a legit (or semi-legit) e-mail. Unfortunately, when I opened it, it had two big red-X picture holders. Guess what it really was.

And the other one – backup everything – is even more important. Ever since my buddy Eriks lost his hard drive due to a physical crash – mostly due to cramming TMS onto his computer – I've done backups regularly onto my ACER External drive. It's going to be a key feature for me to get back to 100%.

Right now, though, I'm stuck between two laptops – one Mac, one Windoze machine; one that's mine, one that's my wife's. I could do worse with my Mac, of course; I've got enough toys that I could very easily just run things using my iBook. Only thing, of course, is my dislike for how the Mac handles Excel. I'm so used to the shortcuts in Office 2003 in Excel, doing things on the Mac would be like pulling out hair. And I actually prefer my image editing on my Windoze machine – heresy, I know – but that's only because SuperPaint never made the jump over to OS X. A sad thing, that.

Anyways, lots of other fun things have been happening in the sports world since I last made comment:

• Ah, things are getting interesting in the Gretzky household. I agree completely with the talking heads on sports radio: if there's one week you really don't want to mess up in the sports world, it's the week after the Super Bowl. Why? It's the one week of the year that everyone and their brother will be focused on it, since there's really nothing going on from the final gun of the Super Bowl to the first pitch of Spring Training baseball. Especially this year, when the NBA is the only thing going, due to the NHL's hiatus due to the Olympics. As to that part of it – Yeah, it's going to be a major distraction, especially with all the reporters hounding Janet over the betting issue. I mean, come on, she bet on the coin flip! I'm not even going to speculate on how far ranging this whole thing is, but my only concern would be that if it is shown that anyone involved bet on NHL games, they should be tossed from the game permanently. Of course, as many people point out, no one bets on NHL games – unless you've got a serious gambling problem. I'm actually inclined to believe that GA uses NHL wagering as one of their warning signs in their literature.
• As to that thing they're doing in Turin (or is it Torino? Or just "that place where they make the FIATS"?): Bode Miller is discovering how Terrell Owens feels – without the annoying agent. He's quickly moving from "overrated" to "irrelevant". And the women's hockey tournament… ugh. I swear that I could have gotten on the ice for the Italian team and done better against the Russians. They looked like a really bad high school team, with bad passing and constant penalties due to their bigger opponents. The Russian women didn't look much better, though. I'm starting to wish that they would have had women's hockey as an Olympic sport during the 1970's; the USA and Canada might have won a few more golds that way. It's down to the big Four (okay, the Big Two and the somewhat-lesser-two) with the US, Canada, Russia and Germany. Considering that Sweden was the only one of the women's teams other than the US/Canada connection that finished a plus for the tournament, it's a bonus.
• The men's tourney gets underway as I write this (the seven-hour difference means a lot of early-morning events). If the Italian men's team is anything like the women, Katie Bar The Door when Canada comes calling. And even if Hasek's goalie equipment ends up in Timbuktu (or somewhere else in the far East), I think Tomas Vokoun can handle the German team today. As for USA opponent Latvia: if their fans could play, they'd win the Gold. I think Karlis, Arturs and company might have a few problems with the players, though.
• On to the most important part of the Olympics: the women's curling events. And let me just say it right now: Marianne Haslom of the Finnish squad is a cutie. She can knock my blockers for points anytime. Some of the redheads on the Canadian team are cute, but the one skip (the name fails me here; Klinkhammer or something) just looks too… well, staged when she's shooting. Her hair fans back just right, to make it look so darling for the cameras. I know curling is a big thing in Canada, but that's just too much. Meanwhile, the Johnson girls for team USA can't shoot to save their lives. I'm not a curling expert, but I think that if you let your opponents get a five-point lead at any time during a contest that generally scores one or two points a turn, you're not going to win very often. That they are now 0-3 in the tournament probably doesn't help matters.
• The World Baseball Classic is going to be gearing up here soon. Let's all try not to be so thrilled. I think that practically everyone who's a baseball fan, when they first heard of this little tournament, thought the same thing: there's no way that the big stars of the game are going to actually play in this thing. Barry Bonds is proof positive of this… oops, sorry, Bar, bad choice of words.
• One more reason why I don't have my MS in counseling: I was wrong about the "diagnosis" of my wife and Asperger's Syndrome. The reason is simple: she doesn't have the pervasive nervous tic or the overt OCD-like behaviors that the syndrome would require. This leads me to an earlier prognosis, which is being borne out in discussions – but not ones I'm willing to share at the moment. The whole spectrum of autism is an interesting one, however; something that should be taken into account the next time you consider someone being a geek.
• Can someone out there explain to me why the Gorillaz are so popular? A band, created in the mind of a seminal neo-punk band member, that is completely "animated" – all of the members are actually cartoon characters, voiced/played by actors/actresses (I think). That just screams "gimmicky". And what's all the apparent dislike for Fall Out Boy's song, "Sugar We're Going Down"? Maybe I'm the only one who's willing to put that song under the category of "Beatle-inspired music", right along with Oasis and Jet.
• I'm headed off to a sleep study today, getting the chance to sleep at the local hospital (with all sorts of wires connected to me). Hopefully, they'll be able to find out why I can't put down eight hours of sleep – other than all the stress, the fact that I'm overweight, and other lovely little things in my life. Makes the little issue of a computer virus somewhat insignificant. Of course, when I've got two other computers to play with, it doesn't matter much…
• So you ask what I did for Valentine's Day… I've got plans for the upcoming weekend, since it happens to be the 15th anniversary of me meeting my wife. Actually, it was Valentine's Day of 1991 (mere weeks after Desert Storm began) that I decided to answer a personal ad in the paper. The rest, as they say, is history. Some of my friends would claim it's "insanity" instead, but I won't go there.