In this entry, we'll whip of a batch of:

Spyware

Rocketships

Fundraising dinners

and

Another dream

I spent much of a whole day a few weeks ago removing the wonderful software known as Aurora, made by the fine company Direct Revenue. Reading from the site, you'd think that it's a spectacular program that only makes the quality time that you spend on the internet all that much more enjoyable - and if it doesn't, it's "compliant with the branding and removal standards of all major proposed Federal legislation relating to online contextual ads." Except, yeah, whoops, it isn't. It's a mostrosity that takes over your system, and it is a nightmare to clean up after - all the while clicking the "Close" button on the myriad of stupid annoying popups that it litters your desktop with. First off, the program adds itself to the registry in a weird way - it runs itself as the shell, alongside explorer.exe - which means that if you try to kill the randomly-named process it creates, it just creates another randomly-named process. In the end, time constraints won out and I was forced to use their provided uninstall program, which I was wary of doing. (Though it seemed to work.) I also ran across a similar infection, though this one was slightly different. It started itself through the registry also, but in an obscure, weird place that you'd never think to look. Getting rid of that infection required killing off explorer.exe and winlogon.exe, and running a DOS shell on top of whatever was left to set the registry permissions and remove the executable entry. This box also had another infection that was rather fun: it loaded a DLL (named to look like a system file) that monitored the PendingFileRenameOperations registry key. This key is used to change the filename of system files - the system makes an entry there, and the next time the computer is started, it changes the name. This is great for changing the name of system files that are in use, but also great for renaming bad DLLs to something else so they can't run at startup. This joyous program, however, upon seeing anything written to PendingFileRenameOperations, erased the entry to prevent itself from being renamed. Spiffy little method of self-preservation, but wholly maddening. (For anyone interested, getting rid of that one was as simple as remoting into the PC while it was turned on, but not logged in, and deleting the file via the Administrative Share.)

In all: twelve-plus hours wasted on these two tickets alone. And they wonder why users on the new PC's don't have administrative rights.

Mmm, smells good, doesn't it?

Have you seen these model rocket things? They're truly spiffy!

Old and Busted

My most recent launch was a 31-inch Estes E-engine rocket at church last Sunday. The launch was picture-perfect, though I was slightly worried about the wind, which had picked up almost to the point of me taking the rocket's chute off. I didn't, though, and launched away. It was truly a sight to see it soar to 1,400 feet, pop the parachute out, and drift slowly down. Unfortunately, parachutes provide wind resistance at downward angles as well as horizontally, so it was with great sadness that I watched me model missile float into a cornfield over a mile away. Where I will never ever find it. But that's where the...

New Hotness

comes in. This rocket uses streamers instead of a parachute, which are much less likely to drift too far away. It's also a three-stager - a bit of a challenge to build, but it goes to 2,600 feet, so it should be fun to watch. And when my camera that I ordered off eBay arrives, I shall regale you all with pictures, as soon as I find a place to host them.

Thursday night, forgoing my usual volunteer work at the hospital, I headed over to Billy Joe's Pitcher Show, an odd little duck of a place to eat and watch movies. See, when in the hospital a few months back, Emily the CF Kid had invited me to a fundraiser for her and others with CF. The main event was a golf game, which I did not attend, and after that a dinner was held at Billy Joe's, complete with door prizes. Both Emily and mom were surprised and delighted that I showed up - Emily had forgotten that she had asked me to come. She's doing well - heathiest sick kid I've ever seen. Her mother invited me to partake in the meal, which was about the best I've ever had: steak (medium-rare), veggies, a baked potato and biscuits. I spent the rest of the evening chatting with both of them, and playing electronic shuffleboard with Emily. (I won.) The fundraiser was a success as well - all the golfers who won prize money gave it back to the CF Foundation, and in all, several thousand dollars were raised. (Cynical side note: of course they gave it back, all their peers were watching and doing the same thing.) Good times all around.

And now for a pinch of salt!

For your snickering pleasure, a dream I had Sunday. As usual, I've done minimal spelling and clarity corrections, but otherwise, I left it as I typed it when I woke up.

I was pulled over by a female cop just before getting to the off-ramp to go to Grimes (Except that she pulled me over in a traffic jam and when she got to my car, we were at the off-ramp area, weird.) Her car was weird too, it looked like an old sick-tan color Chevy Celebrity, with the lightbar on the roof of the interior. She was young-ish, maybe in her 30s, and mom-like, for reasons that will become apparent later. I wasn't speeding very much, maybe 5 or six miles over, so I wondered why I was being pulled over. When she got to my car she ordered me to get out and proceded to pull all my junk out of the car and ask me what it was doing there, or if I even knew what it was. She found some kind of psychology quiz (I didn't actually know why it was there.) a painting, (she even went so far as to ask my what the various elements of the painting were, like grass, purple-pink tulips, and a bit of water, and bulrushes.) She pulled a bunch of old cans out and told me about the law that said I needed to keep my car clean. As she was doing all this (And pulling more stuff out and piling it up behind the car, which was really comical because there was more in that pile than would fit in my car. I'm not sure where all of it came from.) the pastor from Assembly of God church pulled by to the *right* of us (on the shoulder) and gave us all a weird, serene smile. He was driving a black Jeep, which seems really out of place if you know the guy. The cop didn't seem interested in ticketing me, she just wanted to go through the mounds of crap that I had in my car and give me a scolding for not keeping it in a cleaner state. She adjusted her gun several times, though, and I made a conscious effort to keep my hands on the hood of the car and in sight at all times. By the time she found my homemade lightsabre and as she was figuring out how to take it out of the clip, my alarm clock rang.

And that about does it. Anybody want to lick the spoon?