It’s a brand-new unused Saturday morning!
And I’m sitting naked in my bed doing absolutely nothing. I think that may be my goal for the rest of the day. It is rather dreary outside and I am rather dreary inside, so it’s either stay in bed or figure out someplace to go take some pictures.
Or convince myself to crawl on the roof and finally fix that leak before my house implodes.
On Thursday, a friend at work managed to get a trojan horse on his computer which, while not destructive, was quite a little bugger to figure out. It was one of these things that installs itself and then lets you know that it’s there by constantly popping up a “You’ve got spyware! Click here to have it removed!” message. Normally, those are pretty easy to remove, but this one also had a couple of nasty little tricks. It kept disabling the task manager, which proved to be quite annoying, and it also spoofed McAfee (an anti-virus package that I’ve never trusted, but which ATT insists we run on work machines) into telling me that it was the NetSky virus. So after writing a little script to re-enable the task manager every 20 seconds in order to figure out what was running, I went on a wild goose chase looking for ways to remove NetSky – which wasn’t present on the system.
I finally noticed that one of the services running was smss32.exe – and remembered that the actual service that should be running is smss.exe (no 32). When I was informed that I couldn’t stop that particular service, I googled it, found out that it was the trojan, and took steps to remove it along with a number of other files. Took me about 2 hours to figure it out and 2 minutes to clean the machine. My friend was quite happy.
Came home for lunch yesterday afternoon and got a bit of practice in on the horn. Did the same after work last night, but was really tired and crashed early. Chris called at around 9 or so I chatted while falling asleep. Speaking of Chris and the phone, I paid bills yesterday and was somewhat stunned to find that my wireless bill had quadrupled. Definitely not what I needed this month, as January is normally the month that I scrimp to make up for all of the December expenses that I get nailed with.
As it turned out, my bill quadrupled because I signed up for the ATT Employee discount.
You got that, right? I signed up for a discount and my bill quadrupled. God, I love my company. See, here’s what happened: When I signed up for the discount, ATT took it as a change to my plan and wiped out all of my rollover minutes. Chris and I normally talk for about 700 minutes a month. My plan included 450 minutes per month, but the additional 200-300 were always covered by my leftover rollover minutes, so it was no big deal.
When my ever-so-benevolent company gave me a discount and wiped out my rollovers, I got nailed for 267 minutes at .45/minute. After cursing for about an hour, I began researching ATT’s equivalent of the “Friends and Family” plan to see how I could talk to Chris for free. It turns out that they do have such a plan, called “The A-List,” but you can only get it if your plan costs more than $50/month. My existing plan (before the discount) was $40/month.
So I changed it to the lowest plan that allowed me to get the A-List thing (something like 700 minutes/month) and Chris is now on my “A-List.” This should be interesting, as she’s basically the only person I call – so my rollover fund is going to go through the roof.
I just wonder if, by changing my plan, I got kicked out of the employee discount pool. I guess I’ll find out next month. I think I’ll also add a bunch of other people to my little A-List, on the off chance that I actually talk to them.
Mom and Dad switched doctors last week and got a second opinion which said, basically, that the first opinion was correct. They’ve opted to forego any additional treatment for Mom and have contacted Hospice to get some help for Dad when he needs it. He tells me that he’s doing okay and folks from their church are willing to sit with Mom whenever Dad has errands to do or just needs a break. Mom has her good days and bad ones, I’m told; and morphine apparently helps with pain.
It’s still a bit surreal for me.
Abruptly switching topics, I learned this week that I’ve been using haute couture incorrectly for my entire life when I was describing my first solo and ensemble performance to Chris. I said, sarcastically, that Vermonters are known for their love of haute couture – which I though meant “high culture.” She quickly informed me that it means “high fashion.” Naturally, I had to look it up and try to find a loophole for myself (she and I disagree over the proper use of possessive apostrophes for words ending in “s,” and I’ve discovered that there are two acceptable rules, so we’re both right); and I found, to my great shame, that I’m an idiot.
Of course, Chris, I was trying to convey that I was quite nattily attired for my first solo and ensemble performance (furiously switching tabs here to make sure that I know what the hell nattily means…), and that Vermonters are always impressed with the haute couture of the nattiness of the natty clothes worn by elementary-school-aged trombonists.
So there.
TWD