I'm back at FB. For now. I have spent way more time dealing with computer problems than I ever wanted to do. I've gone back to IE for my browser as that's the only one out of three (IE/Moz.Firefox/Ggl.Chrome) that seems to work smoothly for me now. I have no idea why, either.

For a while, Chrome was fine. I liked it. Then I got a phone call from some goon yelling "You are hacked" into the phone and that set me off into an uncomfortable situation. The very next day when I was online, I got alerted by my antivirus program that I was under attack. So I figured that phone call was serious and true! I was getting popups all of a sudden warning me about bank accounts, credit cards, everything could be stolen, and worse, and it was all very unnerving. I could not do anything without all that stuff happening.

I tried changing over to my previous browser, Moz.Firefox, but that wasn't working much better. I'd visit things like Nina C's blog which never has any ad popups on it for me, and all of a sudden they were all over the place on her page. I also was getting ads at the top and bottom of my own blog here at JS as well as others at JS!

I got ahold of what I consider a legitimate malware/adware/spyware "hunter" and spent an entire day dealing with that installation and running of the scan. It took forever and came up with over 2300 "threats" - some not real serious but some were. It gave good explanations of what each was, too, so I learned a lot from that scan just watching it while it was happening.

I think what I've come away with is that we really are not that safe out here in internet-land. If huge governments can get hacked and things stolen, why not all of us? And we do. It's just a matter of time for it to be me, or you, or anyone. I hate this.

So I finally changed back to my old IE browser. I never thought THAT would be the one to work the best, but after tweaking the settings to get it just right for me, it seems to be doing well. I keep running both programs, in fact, the antivirus one is running as I write this... and the deep malware scan I have run each day and will continue to do that each day or so. It is scheduled to run once a week if I don't manually do it, but for now, I'm running it manually when I have some down time. The last scan it only came up with 8 potential threats so that's an improvement anyway.

So, that's what's happening here. It's been raining and going up to 50 today. A lot of the snow has gone, even though we got another 2 inches the other day... that all melted right away really.

Winter, winter, go away, and don't come back at all this way!

Then I've got my friend Nina C. traveling in England again and am loving her blog right now. It's here if you want to pop along with her in Cornwall, England, for a few days. This is a spot we've never visited but I'd always wanted to see it. Read so much about it but never went there... thanks Nina for taking me/us along!

Cheers and fingers crossed,

Bex

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals...
They are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied... not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

~ [Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass, No. 32"] ~

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