After the two-week trial of McAffee security software wore off (some months back) I installed the CA Security Suite that Radio Shack had included as a promotion. I preferred (and indeed somewhat missed) the McAffee program. Still, I am glad that I have not only refrained from referring to CA as "the currently installed dictator" but that also, when CA sends up a popup telling me what it's protected me from thusfar (mostly 'inbound connections' and adware) I say "Thank you," quite politely as I click the message.Well, CA has come to the netbook's rescue on two recent occasions. Once I got a message of some threat that appeared to come from Windows, and foolishly clicked; immediately it was obvious that I had entered some other website that was merely masquerading as a Windows window. CA sent up a message about a virus-infected file; apparently it dealt with the file quite adequately (zapped it? cleaned it?) on contact. It was then that I threw in the "dear". "Thank you, dear," I say when it sends up one of those boxes to numerate the various things it's blocked or otherwise dealt with, and remind me that it's protecting my computer.
Then came the second incident. Apparently there was a third-party module on Squidoo that was briefly compromised/set to download contaminants. CA dealt with that smoothly as well. Well, hmmm, there are only so many ways one can express gratitude to a security program. I'm already calling it "dear"; I'm not about to upgrade it to "Snookums". (I reserve that term for the netbook itself.)
That picture is not Snookums, by the way. Snookums is "wittel-wer" and cuter. A few people might recognize that laptop photo from my "Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry" piece, linked to in a previous post.
Now about that piece: I came home to a message from a "Giant Squid" who had written something in my "guestbook" that she had intended to be anonymous but that her name appeared alongside. She wanted her words deleted as she was concerned that they might reveal information that was told to her in confidence. I deleted of course -- but I was glad for the opportunity to have read her words. I had titled that guestbook "Similar situation?" but I hadn't necessarily expected another Squidoo-er would pour out so much in that particular spot. There are a lot of writers on the site, and sometimes one of them has indeed been searching for something similar... In our hearts and minds, we are sometimes closer than we realize, but we don't know 'til we open our mouths.
