Today, I encountered the worst computer virus ever…in my life. After nearly a full two years of playing tech support, I sometimes want to quit. I don\’t know why I applied for a summer internship at Mann Consulting, a tech support firm…for the \”stars\”. The job is fun when I can figure out how to resolve problems. However, when it becomes frusturating and almost unsolvable, it causes me too much undue stress. Maybe it\’s because I take these problems to heart. I sympathize too easily with the residents\’ pain of not having Internet or losing their files (You\’re reading the blog of someone who cried when her hard drive was erased of 2 years…of DRAMAH.)

And this virus (hopefully the Gaobot) caused me to sit at a resident\’s computer for 2 hours…confused. I opened the registry editor to delete inserted values that caused virus programs to start up. But after approximately 30 seconds of the registry being open, it would suddenly close. If I opened it up again, it would keep closing. Safe mode, anyone? Worse yet, when I deleted a file…it would disappear (or did it?). It wouldn\’t appear in the recycle bin. Actually, the recycle bin wasn\’t really a recycle bin. I couldn\’t drag files into the bin. When I tried installing an antivirus program, it would halt the installation.

I am so definitely going to get a Mac for my next computer. It\’s not that there aren\’t enough Macs around that there aren\’t any Mac viruses around. Rather, the MacOsX is secure enough on its own. Surely, a virus writer would take the opportunity to write something that takes advantage of a system that hasn\’t been broken in before! It\’s funny how all the PC users complain about the lack of two buttons on a mouse. Bad interface!, they say. But a novice user wouldn\’t understand why a mouse has two buttons. A one button mouse is much more intuitive! Indeed, when I first used a Windows machine (my first computer was a Mac), I was shocked at a mouse having two buttons.