Okay, so not really. I was going to share a wonderful teaser today from Jane Austen's Emma, but I'm afraid my posts are going to be pushed back a day or two. I seem to have received an unwanted holiday gift a couple of weeks early. Not too long ago I was having computer issues--I had picked up a nasty virus (or as the Dell folks call them--"intrusions") somewhere on the web. I thought I had solved the problem, though I was still having trouble getting redirected to bogus websites. Well, guess what? I managed to get yet another virus on my computer--one so bad that I had to wipe the hard-drive and am now trying to load everything back onto my computer. It's not been pretty. This was not the sort of present I was hoping for this Christmas. I wouldn't feel at all bad if the person who "authored" this particular virus received a nice lump of coal in their stocking!
I thought I could at least share a reading woman painting, but not without a scanner. I have upgraded from Windows XP (which I have been told is no longer being supported by Microsoft? Maybe part of the problem that I'm having now?) to Vista and can't make my scanner work yet. Perhaps I can find the right drivers somewhere? So, I thought I might be able to just share another photo that I had saved in my photo albums, but I lost all the files and photos I had on my computer. Oops. Can't do that. (Actually I do have lots of files saved on flash drives but I am too afraid to open them up for fear the virus is attached to one of those files).
I must say Vista looks very different, so this is going to take some getting used to. And while I've spent the greater part of the evening trying to load programs back onto my computer I still have lots to do. So forgive me for not replying yet to comments and emails. I'll catch up in the next day or so. Wish me luck in trying to reconstruct my computer!
Edited: I have gotten most of my programs loaded once again, though it seems my camera and scanner are no longer compatible. My camera was already dying a slow and painful death so I was hoping to buy a new one soon--now it will be sooner than I thought. I will be saving files differently in the future and have already downloaded Dropbox. I am going to keep my computer as clean as possible from now on--and try and keep up with what the hackers are doing, so I can avoid their bad deeds.
I'll be back to more bookish thoughts very soon and am happy to be able to navigate the web once again without constantly being redirected to other unwanted places. If anyone has any tips on avoiding viruses and spyware I'd love to hear how you manage your web browsing and computer maintenance.