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Case Closed

A Geek Squad double agent was dispatched to our farm today. And I love him. Although, now that I think about it, a double agent works at cross purposes to the agency he appears to support--so as a true double agent, he should have been trying to put MORE viruses on my PC.

He arrived ON TIME in his cute little Geek-mobile. According to the Mission Details that he left behind in his Field Agent Communique, he removed 12 infections and had to run a few extra programs to get rid of a pesky trojan. Those trojans CAN be difficult, and unreliable.

While he couldn't pinpoint the exact source of all the bugs on my computer, he did have some tips on system performance and online safety. Chiefly, he told me to ditch McAfee as soon as possible and get Norton 360 or Webroot Spysweeper with Anti-virus. It ticks me off to learn that McAfee can only cure the computer equivalent of an ice cream headache, especially since Dell suckered me into a multi-year deal with them.

His other great piece of advice was don't have a million icons on your desktop. It slows down performance since it has to repaint each one every time you minimize a program. This makes sense and I have already done it. Why did I have the photo of the guy from the testicle festival on my desktop as an icon anyway?

So the saga of Holly's virus-infested computer is over--Case Closed. I'm sure you're all tired of hearing about it. Here's a final question: How did a woman with a broken computer get online to complain about it so much? Maybe I am the double agent.

Danger, Danger Will Robinson!

UPDATE 4/16:
I made a last-ditch effort to resolve this myself and contacted Ree at Pioneer Woman directly. To her credit, she was very kind and apologetic. I didn't really see this from visiting her site (hence my frustrated comments there), but she really has done her homework to help people get through this with free tools and instructions.

Now I have a dilemma. Should I slog through two pages of technical instructions to save myself paying $300 to Geek Squad? Or should I save myself the endless frustration of probably not being able to get it anyway, and just let a professional do this? I have created the first-ever Bringing Home the Bacon poll at right. Vote early, vote often.

UPDATE 4/13: According to the very nice lady from Geek Squad I have a cocktail of horrible viruses floating around on my PC--no doubt obtained at the PW blog and elsewhere. They are dispatching a "double agent" to my house on Saturday. I probably should have Husband take our first-born farming with him because I may offer him to the Geek Squad agent if he fixes my computer.

UPDATE 4/8: I have a Rootkit that I picked up hanging around at the popular Pioneer Woman blog (link not included by design). I know it wasn't intentional, but I can't help but be angry. PW has been posting links to malware and spyware sites but they're not much help if the system is locked up.

It's such a PAIN not to be able to blog about how I was in charge of the farm last weekend or for Husband to check hog market prices.

Original post:
Something is horribly, terribly wrong with my home computer. It may be a virus. All I know is that it keeps freezing, then warnings come up and then it shuts down. When it lets me, I am running virus scans. We'll see what happens. Stay tuned.

Guy Reads

Special to MP: Don't read this one during lunch.

Guy (that's my nickname for my husband) has been VERY busy following his many NCAA brackets, but this week's paper had several interesting items I wanted him to see. So it's time for another installment of Guy Reads, the exciting segment where I share with you the news items I clip out of the paper for my husband.

Two timely items hit the papers this week. First, an article about the Oakdale Testicle Festival. Say that five times. According to the article, this California Rotary group made $28,000 at their annual meal and event--which they promised that all who attend will have a ball. I didn't know it when I was sharing this news with Guy, but tomorrow just happens to be the day when we begin harvesting our annual testicle crop.

Note: If you have to ask where and how a pig farmer can get a bucket full of testicles--then you really don't want to know. The important thing is I could be sitting on a gold mine here! Maybe we should begin our own event and I could fry up a few hundred pounds of mountain oysters. I'm sure there are many who would pay good money just to see me behind a griddle surrounded by flour and buckets of fresh pig balls.

OK, now that you have that horrendous visual in your head... let's move on to much more serious agricultural news.

The intrepid agriculture reporter for the Dayton Daily News, Ben Sutherly, has another good piece on the business of farming. The economic downturn has affected global demand for U.S. milk products, leaving dairy farmers with high operating costs and low income--the worst business conditions for dairying since the Great Depression, said Scott Higgins of the Ohio Dairy Producers Association. Looks like even cows are going to get laid off.

Our farm may be needing a new source of income... oh, wait! I have an idea. Who wants to come over for dinner and help me test a new pork recipe?

What I Did on My Wednesday Vacation

Today I took a day off work. I was the kind of vacation day only a working mother could take.

The day started with kindergarten registration. I knew it was only paperwork but I thought it would somehow be wonderful bonding paperwork if I brought my two pre-schoolers along with me. I should have my degree in advanced motherhood revoked for that blunder.

Justin and Morgan colored cutely for two seconds and then spent the rest of the time either scribbling on the table (a great impression for their future teachers) or fighting about the crayons. In their defense, I didn't have to complete this much paperwork to have my gall bladder removed. They took an organ out of my body and I had to write my name fewer times than to sign my five-year-old up for public school. In the stack of papers I had to complete there were SEVEN places to write our address and TEN places to write our phone number--I counted.

Then it was back across the parking lot and into the car--did I mention it was raining today--to head over to the post office. We needed to mail a gift to my island-dwelling niece. I had the guts of her gift, a damp piece of tissue paper and her address scribbled on a note pad, plus two antsy toddlers who were running around the little room attached to the hardware store that doubles as a post office in our town. Dear island-dwelling niece, if you get only one Hannah Montana flip flop in your box, Aunt Holly is very sorry but I was a bit distracted by your cousin who, when I grabbed her arm, pulled the oldest child trick in the book: the rag doll.

After dragging the rag doll and her brother hither and yon for more errands, we returned home for lunch and then were off again to pick up big brother at school.

No mid-week working mother vacation day is complete without a doctors appointment--and today did not disappoint. First-off was Justin's annual check-up, which everyone except poor little Justin knew was going to include some shots. The doctor very cleverly slipped the work vaccination into his spiel but the little patient didn't get it. The poor thing didn't know what was coming until after the nurse entered with the tray and remarked about his bravery (he was sitting on the table looking around innocently). I said he doesn't know. Then she gestured that I should break the news. And then there was a lot of crying and limping around and replacement of injection site band-aids for the rest of the day.

BUT first, some idiot mother, the kind of naive thing who thinks taking pre-schoolers with her to fill out paperwork might be fun, that same poor, poor thing booked dentist appointments right after the crippling shots. All three kids shuffled next door through the rain to the pediatric dentist, a very perky lady who gets very few kids whose favorite animal is pig.

I was in the waiting room reading about Michelle Obama's toned arms but I heard later that Justin screamed half the time and Morgan hopped up in the chair and announced that she has cavities because she eats a lot of chocolate chips. Turns out, she has three teeth that are melting like bad Germans who just saw the Ark of the Covenant. I guess I'm going to have to remove the nipple from the bottle of Mountain Dew she keeps on her nightstand (just kidding!).

I had crazy ambitions of getting to the grocery before heading over to choir practice at church but at some point I finally realized that this vacation day was just too full. Besides, if I went to the grocery now, what would I have to do on Saturday morning?

Do You Have an Hour to Laugh Your Head Off?

Oh, Jen from Cake Wrecks, you give all of us hope. Without frill of Web design or fanciness of URL you have managed to keep us ROTFL while beating the big girls at the Bloggies.

Thank you for an evening of entertainment. Thank you for Naked Mohawk-Baby Carrot Jockeys.

Agri-Tourism

Sometimes farm life becomes all about the downside. The spouse who works 365 days a year (no, Santa doesn't feed the sows on his way through), the semi-tanker milk truck that rumbles under my bedroom window in the middle of the night, the non-air conditioned farm house, the dust--good God, the dust.

But when people learn we live on a farm, they are always fascinated and often ask if they can bring their kids to visit. And we are happy to oblige. Walking around with other Moms who just hope that their kids can retain some knowledge about where food actually comes from and/or the family's long-gone agricultural roots, I realize how great I have it.

Today we hosted some very cute kids whose parents (and grandparents, aunts and uncles) we knew when we were kids. They live in our largely rural community but still were not familiar with raising pigs or milking cows. Morgan helped her new friend look for a crawdad.

There's nothing like seeing a child realize that the farm mommies and babies they see in books and the animal noises they practice as a game are REAL.

Our farm is a lot more National Geographic (real, gritty) than Disney (clean, perfect) but our guests never fail to help me see the genuine, natural goodness of farm life and increasingly, the rareness.

How many times have we said to the locals you are so lucky to live here. And like anyone else who lives in a tourist destination, it always helps to see things through the eyes of our visitors who in our case never fail to say what a great place to raise kids. Amen.