Two steps forward and one back

It's been quite a few weeks since I fetched my wife home from Hospital. We did manage a few days away when the weather was kind, the food was good and we managed to relax and unwind. The fun began when we got home and found that some of the drugs being given to Jackie were not suitable to be given together so we had a week or two of chopping and changing when we were not sure from one week to the next exactly what she should have been taking. Thankfully with the aid of her CPN and our GP we think we have got the drugs about right as most of the major side effects have disappeared and Jackie is making slow but steady progress to being well again.


I also had a setback. I had a fall that dislocated two finger on my right hand. One of them went back into place perfectly but the other has lost a chip of bone where the tendon has pulled away from the joint and a third tendon is ruptured. Thankfully it doesn't need surgery but I have been warned it could take some months to heal properly. In the mean time it is slowing and restricting the amount of time I can spend at my keyboard.


Speaking of keyboards, there have been a rash recently of alerts coming from the security firms who monitor the number of viruses and malware currently making the rounds of the system. They run from the mischievous ones that just send stupid messages to your screen through ones that can delete files on your HDD and cost a lot of time and effort to get rid of. However the worst of all are those that enroll your computer to a bot net and start to send your private details to the criminal gangs that run the bot nets.


The way to keep your computers free of infections like these are as follows :-

1. Make sure you have the latest version of a good anti virus program (I use Avast Free) and ensure that it updates at least daily.


2. Likewise download and install at least two malware programs and run a full scan weekly, the favourites for this are Adaware and Spybot both of which are free for home use.


3. A favourite way of getting malware (Worms) onto your computer is via a round robin purporting to be a warning about a new virus. One came to my notice this week. It was titled 'There is a Muslim in the white house'. It tried to tell you that if you received an email like this it would contain a virus that would put a flaming torch on your screen while it destroyed your HDD. I can find no trace of this virus in the database of any of the major Antivirus companies but there is plenty of evidence of round robins like this being used to sneak worms onto your computer. If you receive an email that is addressed to a lot of people and it asks you to pass it on to all your friends. Break the chain. Delete it from your computer preferably unread and don't send it on. You should also do a full scan of your computer to make sure you haven't been infected.


4. I use an email program that catches about 99% of the spam and infected email that arrives in my mailbox. It is called MailWasher and you can download it for free from here http://www.mailwasher.net/ It is free for personal use but if, like me, you have multiple mail boxes and accounts, then the pro version is worth every penny.

Just as a last aside, I was asked to look at a computer that was behaving 'oddly'. I had been asked to configure this computer when it was new and had loaded all the necessary antivirus and malware software. All the new owner has to do was register the software to activate it for a year. They didn't and the machine had been running on the web unprotected for about three months. The computer was slow because it was too bus running malware to be bothered to do what the owner wanted and it had enough viruses to keep a bacteriologist happy for months. It several days of hard work to get rid of them all and clean up the system and the owner's plea that it didn't seem important fell on deaf ears.

I have bought myself a Sony e-book reader. They are not all they are cracked up to be but they can contain a lot of books both e-books and audio books or music. For people like me who find it difficult to sleep they are a boon because with the addition of a small LED light, you can read in the dark or by plugging in a set of head phones (ear buds will do) you can listen to soothing music and read at the same time. I can also imagine that for long haul flights they could be an essential accessory as they have a long battery life (7,000+ page turnings) but I haven't yet had chance to find out how many songs/audio books they can play before the battery runs out. As they are recharged by the 5 volt USB system and only need a 4 hr charge from fully exhausted then there are many ways a traveller can find to refresh the charge in his reader's battery.

I have been offered some holly logs and that has spurred me on to clear all the rubbish out of my workshop. I am hoping I can disinter the two lathes that are in there and try to re-learn how to turn wood. There is nothing that cheers me more than something I have made giving pleasure to someone else so watch this space to see how I get on.