Small update on recent activities

       Just got the power cord to my laptop... BTW I had to order a power cord to my laptop because the old one died.....yeah probably should have stated that prior to today(night)'s post. I find it interesting that though I was without my laptop for only about 5 days (wow how did I survive that) I have gone right back to using my laptop for the useless things that I typically use it for; email, work, image finding, research, etc. Yeah OK so it's not as much as some people but it's fun having it back. Don't really know where I’m going with this because I’m kinda curious if this is going anywhere.

             Actually to tell you the truth I just started typing just to see what nonsense would come out of my brain from today's adventures. Alright so fun thing went on a trip to the mountains got on a very nice trail and ended up tripping because it's half a mile to the top where we could see over everything for a thousand or so miles in every direction. I enjoyed the view but ended up having to rest to many times. I realized how out of shape I am during the long walk up. I enjoyed it though lots of nature and people the force of blood pumping faster then normal through my body. I carried my niece a large portion of the way up. 25Lbs seemed to be like 100lbs going up but then it would have been the same going down because of the fact that your going against gravity in both directions. We were on the walk down, and we decided to take a short section of trail off to the right of the path that we were taking and the area was well worn from other people walking there plus signs and paint telling us where to go to stay on the trail. While traversing the trail my 5lb boots decided to get extra heavy because of my fatigue and I tripped over a rock. Ok so that is totally just an excuse as to why I tripped but really I wasn't paying attention to where I was going and the boots were heavy on my feet. On the way down I moved to protect myself from injuring my hands because that hurts more then anything plus I need them more now then before because of all the computer work i'm doing. I landed both hands and one knee on the ground with the other knee pressed to my chest keeping my torso balanced while the pain of hitting my patella, knee bone, on a rock.

       Right now I’m relaxing at a place of little internet bandwidth which hugely sucks because I can't do as much research as I would like plus I can't go through Tumblr and find interesting things that I would never have seen anywhere else. Plus I found a very cool site I want to check out but I may post up on it later if I find that posting on it will help the site.

The point when you know you've almost lost your mind.

Dear WiFi card,

I know this comes at a great disappointment to both of us but I'm going to have to let you go. You have lost to many connections in the past month and I'm tired of having to hit the refresh button 30 times just to view a site. If you straighten up your act and start working right I won't be required to find a replacement for you.

Sincerely;
Your Owner

I posted this to FaceBook but realized it was more suited for Blogger.

Caffeine plus 3am work schedule makes for a very good time to post random and seemingly stupid things for the world to see. I find this extremely stress relieving and it's funny how it puts stuff into perspective.

The FBI moneypak ransom Trojan/Virus scare

     So about a month ago I got the greatest scare I could have ever imagined. My trusted laptop that I use for research, tech work, and various other task came under the attack of a very annoying lockout virus/Trojan. I read through the text carefully then plugged in my trusty boot-able thumb drive, running the newest version of Ubuntu. After rebooting my laptop, I started researching what could have locked me out of my laptop. Using keywords like FBI, MoneyPak, ransom, and so on. I came across a few pictures that looked like the screen that had locked me out of my system so I began researching the title that was given on the webpage "FBI MoneyPak Ransom Virus". I went through a few websites that said to just run a virus scanner on a boot-able drive or other childish nonsense like paying the fee because it was from the FBI. 

     After a few days of running scans from all manners of different thumb drive sources none of which had any effect, which I still find odd, the system wasn't fixed. I decided to make a few attempts to log on to the computer and start a virus scan before the computer finished running through the boot-up process. On the last attempt I noticed that the wireless switch was in the off position on the laptop and since I hadn't tried this approach to fixing my issue I allowed it to fully boot. Ten minutes later the lockout virus/Trojan still hadn't popped up. This allowed me to understand the basic running of the virus/Trojan.

Basically:

1. As soon as the computer attempts to connect to the internet it prompts the virus/Trojan to activate.
2. Once a connection is established it runs the next portion which is to lock you out, but if the connection is not made it halts the virus.(This lets me know that the virus doesn't store IP information on infected system or if it does it needs an open connection to fully activate)
3. Once active it blocks out all other programs to do anything but look pretty on the hard drive.
4. This is very annoying and it has to be destroyed.

This whole story brings me to the easiest fix so far:

1. Disconnect the computer from the internet so that when it attempts to connect it can't. Best thing to do is remove the wireless card, ethernet cable, flip the switch or any other means of a physically disconnecting from the internet. (This is so far the only quick means of getting through the boot process without being locked out.
2. Next, open up network settings and proceed to remove the current connection settings from your system. For example if your at John Doe's house and his network connection information is saved under that name delete that information and then reconnect. This will reset your IP address. (fast and efficient for the moment). 
3. Search for a virus scanner online since you probably don't have one installed (I do now, I'm running malwarebytes free edition all I really need)
4.  Before the virus can catch up run a virus scan using your favorite scanner. The virus should pop up in the scanners result section. After that just go ahead and remove the virus from the system, allow the system to reboot and you're done.

As I said this happened to me about a month ago and my system is still running nicely which is why I am writing up this blog about it. If you know of anything better that would help out in the future please leave a comment. Please share this with your friends, techs, and just help to spread the knowledge.