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You really didn’t need to come to this page to find out who won, did you? The VIRUS won, of course! It kicked our fannies! We’re no match for a 14-year-old Filipino schoolboy! Or a college student in
Australia! Or any of the other rumored culprits! But we took it standing up, stoically, no whining. Did I mention cussing?
It started Thursday, May 4, Black Thursday.
John Mix and I were the first two people in the entire United States to get this virus. That might be a slight exaggeration, but it seemed like less than one hour after we had already taken it in the
shorts, there were thousands of e-list posts and warnings from everybody and their mothers about not opening the ILOVEYOU attachment. It just doesn’t pay to read your email before the masses.
The results of the virus weren’t immediately apparent to me, and I went on ignorantly about my business. Imagine my surprise (and horror) when I opened the BBRC website file only to find no JPG images,
not one, not a stinking one. Opened another site, no images. Rebooted my computer. Nothing. It finally dawned on me that I might have a virus, especially since by then I was being bombarded with warning
emails. No sir-ee, a roof doesn’t have to fall on MY head!
Man, was I disgusted! I looked on my computer and saw that all the JPG files were still there, but they had been renamed with a .vbs tag at the end. Well, it sure made me mad to think that I would now
have to go in and change the names back to just the .jpg tag. Whoooooeeeee! What an ignoramus! If that was ONLY all I had to do! This being my first experience with a virus, I went in and started
changing tags. I’d probably spent about 20 minutes doing it when my attention was drawn elsewhere. When I came back to the files, Miss ILOVEYOU had changed them back again. That’s when I knew I was toast.
I did have McAfee Virus Scan, but naturally, it wasn’t prepared for ILOVEYOU. It is now, of course. John had Norton Antivirus Protection, but it also wasn’t prepared for ILOVEYOU. It is now.
John and I shared some phone conversations, discussing our dilemma. John, of course, had more time to talk than I did because his Norton went through and scanned everything, putting the infected files
into a quarantine folder. Then he just went back in later and deleted the folder and emptied his recycle bin. I, on the other hand, with McAfee, had to SIT there and BABYSIT the scan of over 50,000
files, deleting 5,000+ files MANUALLY! It took a lo-o-o-ong time. I could either click with the mouse three times for each file, or I could do an ALT-D-D with my left hand and an ENTER with my right
hand, or an ALT-D with my left and an ENTER-ENTER with my right. When I got good at it, I could cross my arms over and do the left hand commands with my right and vice versa. Actually got a little rhythm
going there ... ALT-D-ENTER-ENTER … ALT-D-ENTER-ENTER … ALT-D-ENTER-ENTER … oh, sorry, I was almost lulled back into that state of mind-numbing boredom. I had been complaining to my husband that I have
had too much on my mind lately, so sitting in front of the computer for hours upon hours doing mindless keystrokes was just what I needed. I think I’ll buy Norton.
By Sunday, I had all my webfiles downloaded from the servers and was on my way to getting things back to normal. But my computer kept busying itself even when I wasn’t doing anything. I could hear it
working away, like the worm was still in there doing whatever dastardly things it could come up with next. Despite scanning completely clean with the ILOVEYOU patch, I just couldn’t be sure that
something wasn’t still wrong. So Monday morning, I bit the bullet and reformatted the hard drive. Do I think the worm is dead? Yes, and that’s my final answer. The worm is dead … dead, dead, DEAD!
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