Friday, September 9, 2011

Can't Get There From Here

The phrase, 'can't get there from here,' is a running joke in our family.  But over the course of the last few days it has become reality.  I live in central PA where we had a flash flood on Wednesday bringing nearly six inches of rain to our locale in a few hours time followed by another four inches over night into Thursday.

Wednesday got ugly really quick and our school tried to send the students home early.  Teachers were asked to stay in case the buses had to return before delivering their students.  Lots of buses did return and by the time I helped check all those frightened kids in, the roads had flooded enough that I couldn't get home either.  After about three hours, the flash flood eased off enough for some roads to clear and I made it home to a flooded basement.  Then the real flood started and overflowed the creeks and again inundated the roads again.  For more than a day, we couldn't go anywhere.  We really couldn't get 'there' from here.

Now two days after the flood, many roads are still closed, schools are closed  and some areas are going to get worse as the flood moves unto the Susquehanna River.  But my basement is nearly dry.  I've washed the floor with bleach again and cleaned the baseboards with mildew cleaner.  It even smells nice.  Some roads are open again so we can go to the store if need be.  We can get 'there' again.

So after cleaning the basement floor, I propped my feet up and opened my laptop to visit some more Insecure Writer Blogs, and low and behold, MY LAPTOP HAS BEEN ATTACKED BY A VIRUS! AGAIN!!!  This one is my work computer so I can't download any programs such as a security feature.  It relies on what they've installed on it.  So for the second time in as many months, I can't get to the internet on my laptop.  Can't get there from here. 

So I'm back on my trusty old desktop, a little slow, but protected by Norton.  It's too slow to visit all the blogs I wanted to today so I'm sorry I won't get to meet all those Insecure Writers just yet. 

What do you think is the best security program to protect your computer with? I have to get something different on my personal laptop this time. Did you ever pickup a virus and know exactly where it came from? Are there particular sites you avoid because you think they might infect you?

11 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Susan, sorry about your basement and computer!
Norton is one of the best. I don't do a lot of random browsing online, because you never know when you'll hit a site with a virus. Even some of the big sites can do it - one of the major movie sites I visit was recently attacked.
Most people get viruses through their email, though.

Jamie Gibbs said...

I'm a cheap ass and I use AVG Free for virus butt kicking. It seems to work for me pretty well so far. There's also a thing called Ad-Aware for any spyware programs that might worm their way in.

Hope the floods have eased off completely for you - on the plus side you now have a nice smelling basement :)

LD Masterson said...

Susan, first my sympathies that life is raining (literally) on your parade this week. Second - are you sure you are dealing with visuses and not malware. I think malware if more of a problem these days than viruses. If it's malware, there are a number of good products I can recommend (some free). I keep two running on my PC at all times.

Anonymous said...

An iMac. You don't need Norton, which really slows down older PCs like mine, epsecially during those background checks.

Golden Eagle said...

There's flooding here, too. We got some water in our basement, but it's finally gone down. A large number of people still have their homes underwater, though.

I'm sorry to hear about your computer! We used to have McAfee (it worked very well) but that expired and now the computer has CA Security Suite. Not really the best program.

Ava Quinn said...

Glad the water is gone from your basement, Sue. We pumped most of the water out of our dirt floor cellar. We have a big fan set up to try and move some of the dampness out that way.

Hope your IT guys at school fix your work laptop quickly.

My urchins were home from school a bunch last week too. Here's hoping we don't get a lot of snow this winter, now that one of our snow days is used. ;)

L. Diane Wolfe said...

Computer viruses are so evil.
And 'can't gt there from here' was a running joke for my hometown of Salem, OR, because downtown the streets were all one way and always the wrong direction. They even made The Salem Street Game - You Can't Get There From Here.

Cate Masters said...

Ugh, so sorry to hear you were hit by the floodwaters. We were lucky this time around.
I wish I knew the best virus program - there are so many different types of hackers and viruses, one doesn't do the trick anymore. When my PC was hit, the virus disabled my firewall and turned off some other McAfee features, rendering it useless. I had to hire Dell's techs to fix it remotely with SuperAntiSpyware (yes, that's its name) and Malware Bytes, which I should invest in but haven't yet.

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

I really wonder about the people who spend their intellect inventing viruses and malware. I guess they're like those looters who took advantage of the recent flood to rob people.

Jemi Fraser said...

Yikes! What a rotten couple of days for you. I hope things are looking up.

My blog got attacked by malware despite my antivirus program, but someone told me that's a separate issue. I'm not techie enough to help - sorry!

Theresa Milstein said...

How scary that must've been for the students. Glad its over!