The Devil And Mr. Bill

I didn't have time to write yesterday...when I sat down at the computer I became embroiled in a battle with the spawn of Satan...and the battle still rages on.

Some pernicious spyware keeps sending giant pop up ads before me from something called "Aurora - a better Internet."

I'm a fairly tech-savvy guy - although Amy will occasionally mock my efforts - at least when it comes to software irregularities. I also run most of the conventional and some less conventional anti-virus, pop-up blocker, firewall type stuff - I'd refer to that stuff in more geeky terms to prove my technical prowess but I don't want to go over the heads of any readers (ahem).

Anyway, I don't know when this particular obnoxious entity got on my computer but it must have activated when I turned my computer on after shutting down due to a thunderstorm yesterday - yes, we actually got rain in South Texas! It's raining now too for the first time in many months...which is perfect considering Amy is the Matron of Honor in an outdoor wedding later today.

Today's rain...tomorrow's blog fodder.

I tried removing Aurora with the usual tools - Spybot and Ad-Aware. I even ran a full virus scan. No luck...it kept coming back. I mean every 10 seconds another giant ad appears.

I went digging on the Internet and found some highly complex "fixes" which spooked me a bit, but I even ran a couple of those. At first, I'd think I'd won the battle - I'd reboot and get an error message indicating Windows couldn't find "nail.exe" which I've determined is a component at least partially responsible for this "better Internet" crap. Moments later though another ad would pop up.

Then I pulled out the big guns...I did a system restore, rolling my computer back a month or so, only to find that "Aurora - a better Internet" apparently transcends hard drive space and time. Have I mentioned I started this battle at around eight Friday night and it was now around midnight?

The Romans referred to the goddess of dawn as "Aurora”, which suddenly became ironic since I became aware I would be battling this demon until the daylight hours and beyond.

I was desperate...when in a battle with Satan sometimes there is only one entity you can call on...one person so entrenched in the forces of darkness that invoking his name alone provokes a response...yes, I bowed my head and decided to go into allegiance with...Bill Gates.

I downloaded Microsoft's Beta spyware removal tool. I decided to let it run overnight and come to deal with the issue this morning...this also allowed me to spend the rest of the evening in devout prayer seeking forgiveness for becoming Microsoft dependent.

So far Microsoft has found and eradicated "Aurora" at least eight times...each requiring a reboot of the system...and each time I think I've won...up it pops again.

I've set the anti spyware program to run repeatedly today and am simply going to abandon the computer for now.

Instead I'm going to enjoy the rain...besides I've got a wedding to prepare for...where's my umbrella?