Leaving Paths of Destruction in My Wake

I completely obliterated my work computer this week.

Last week, I learned that there was a virus on said machine, manifested by the fact that every time I click on a link in my RSS feed, or on a web page, or on any search results in Google, I was immediately taken instead to a series of advertising web sites - most notably something called bit-find. My brilliant IT guys ran spy bot and ad spy ware, and spy god or whatever search and destroy bites and bytes they have in their considerable electronic arsenal right away. Yet for nearly a week following, I still got "virus purged" alerts every morning when I booted up the computer. Not a good sign.

Yesterday, the computer resisted even that task and froze on the boot up commands. On my second IT call SOS, the boy genius came over and worked some unsuccessful magic (bad magic? bad mojo?) before confiscating my entire hard drive.

When I checked up on the poor baby around 2:30, the Prince of IT told me the hard drive was toast. The virus had burrowed in so deeply that they had to give me an entirely new hard drive to replace it, uploaded with my files from the diseased memory.

Trust me not to do things half way.

A little research by the prince revealed that this particular virus could only be caught from IM messages. (On the rare occasion, I'll use IM through my gmail or on Facebook, so be warned.) Naturally I leapt to the most alarming conclusion:

WHAT ABOUT MY LAPTOP?

What about my baby, keeper of secrets, late night brainstorms, and potential novels galore? I transfer my flash drive back and forth between my work computer and my laptop all the time. Could this rancid corruption have been allowed to run rampant through my own precious hard drive?

I may have succumbed to too much hyperbole on that one.

Thankfully, the goat I sacrificed to the great computer god Bytius and his goddess Ioioi was successful and the prince of IT worked his divinely inspired magic successfully this morning and have declared my laptop virus free. Huzzah!

Still, it's comforting to know that my penchant for leaving paths of destruction in my wake is still strong and well.

We all have our own special talents, after all.