As Bob Dylan once sang

It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard drive's gonna crash.

Well, I just got the call from Best Buy's Geek Squad and they tell me that, yes, there are viruses on my computer and yes they can clean them, but that my hard drive also has damaged sectors which is making a bad situation worse. I asked them to clean the current drive as much as possible, copy my data to a new hard drive, and then install the PC-cillian and "Geek Squad" anti-virus programs.

Now a 100GB hard drive is on sale for $50 and the anti-virus programs are also in the Sunday flyer for $29. Throw in some labor. I asked the guy how much the damage would be and he said: $260. Phhhhh...... For heaven's sake, I can almost get a new computer for that. But what can I do? I can't lose all the data on that hard drive: pictures, ITunes, personal and professional documents. I guess I'm just going to have to chalk this up as an expensive lesson: pay more attention to security.

This thing better move like Flash when I get it back on Wednesday...otherwise it's Apple time.

The national Ponzi scheme - I totally meant to link to this Willisms post: The high cost of Social Security's status quo. Scroll down to the graph showing the huge expansion of the retiree pool, and tremble.

The "reality based community" strikes again! - Moonbat Blog Taxonomy from Rightwing Nuthouse. Good stuff.

Catching up - What did Bob Novak do? Yikes.

Update the Krugman Cat Index - Employers expand payrolls by 207,000 jobs in July, umemployment rate steady at 5%. But then stocks slipped because traders were worried about inflation due to job and wage growth. Meh. I'm just happy that tax revenues will increase to narrow the deficit.

Computer agonistes

Well, here I am blogging on another borrowed computer, this time down in Pennsylvania. What follows may be boring, but I feel I should detail what's happened in case somebody else has a similar problem.

My Norton anti-virus detected a backdoor virus and tried to remove but judging from the history, it was only quarantined. No matter: the damage appears to have affected (surprise!) my Internet Explorer program. After I scanned for viruses with McAfee's Stinger and a Trojan cleaning program, I re-ran both AdAware and Search and Destroy to remove spyware. Finally, I was able to get onto my AOL account and Microsoft security asked if I wanted to update my virus definitions. Yes, yes I would, but instead of using the browser embedded in AOL, the security program opened a separate Internet Explorer page through the DSL service.

All hell broke loose. Pop-ups galore. Virtual Bouncer and AdDestroyer started to load automatically and take over the computer. CPU usage shot up to 99% and I was battling to turn things off but the computer couldn't respond. Eventually I killed the DSL, opened task manager and shut down the applications and processes.

Rebooted into safe mode and ran everything (virus & spyware scan) again. When I rebooted and merely turned my DSL modem on (did not connect to a service) all the spyware programs started loading again. Clearly something on my computer was calling for these downloads and no matter how much I scrubbed I couldn't get rid of the problem. Now my Norton Systemworks wouldn't even run and the AOL & MSN startups would crash immediately. [Do I want to send a report to Microsoft? No.]

So....since I was going away for the weekend anyway, I threw in the towel and brought my computer to the "Geek Squad" at Best Buy to get everything back to normal. I didn't want to micromanage the problem since I'm sure these guys have a standard procedure, but in hindsight I wish I had asked him to load FireFox or some other kind of browser.

Explainer answers my question

Yes, I actually sent an E-mail to Slate’s Explainer and Daniel Engber responded with “The Waking of the President – Who decides when to rouse the commander-in-chief?” Thanks, Slate!

Massive, painful virus attack

Despite all my safeguards, it looks like I've picked up some kind of virus last night as I was posting about the Ohio special election (which, thankfully, the Republican won). A "backdoor" message and virus alert from Norton flashed briefly and then it was the abyss. Multiple adware programs loading, pop-ups galore, and the CPU usage shot up to 100% meaning that I couldn't stop anything with the normal utilities.

In Task Manager, I shut down the processes using up 98% of the CPU but it was still dog-slow. A full virus scan revealed nothing and AdAware only picked up the malware such as Virtual Bouncer. Restarted in safe mode, which seemed OK, so at least I can get documents and pictures. But there's no way I'm turning my DSL back on until this is straightened out - (I'm on a borrowed computer right now.)

I'm going to try to get advice/patches/download fixes on this loaner but it's more likely that I'll interpret this attack as a sign that I should get professional help and, while I'm at it, update my processor speed to something in the GHz range.

So posting is going to be spotty over the next week or so. I'm visiting relatives over the weekend and I don't know how much access I'll have, unless I can find an Internet cafe in rural Pennsylvania. (Didn't there used to be a site called "Amish Tech Support"?).

These things happen.

Much too close for comfort in Ohio’s 2nd

Bizzyblog is live-blogging
Here’s the Cincinnati local news station
Minute-by-minute breakdown on Redstate
NRO’s Buzz is keeping track
And here’s the Free Republic thread

Republicans should breathe a sigh of relief if they pull this off. This was a district that went solidly for Bush in 2000 and 2004. Scary. Right now at a quarter-after-10, it's Schmidt by only 800 votes out of nearly 100,000 cast (shades of Washington state anyone?)

A good sign? They’re talking about recounts and election irregularities over at Kos.

Dropping like a stone - From Election Projection, here are some stats on the “submerging Democratic majority”: “For every two Americans who say they're liberals, three are conservatives. Democrats lost 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in the country last year. Small cities and most suburbs buried the Democratic ticket. Ditto married couples with children. The Democratic vote among the Hispanic population fell 40 percent from 2000. And it collapsed among voters earning more than $40,000 a year.” Hey, we haven't heard from Howard Dean in a while.

Extra – Powerline reflects on the loons.

Song parody time - Originally performed by the Strangeloves (not Bow Wow Wow): “I Want Condi” She’s so awesome.

Like snapping a Polaroid of Al Franken kicking a puppy

How much fun is the Air Enron scandal? I mean of all the things: stealing from widows and orphans! Every day brings a new set of embarrassing details, another backtrack from Air America, and more silence from the MSM. Michelle Malkin has the latest and Brian Maloney has been all over the story; also check out this pic from the Cracker Barrel Philosopher.

High-def TV, DVDs and microwavable popcorn – “Hollywood’s Death Spiral, part 2: Are movie theaters facing extinction?”

Cats and dogs living together – I agree with Joe Biden: we need to have better safeguards for chemical containers carried on rail cars. There are thousands of miles of track across the country, susceptible to sabotage or attack.

A mighty victory it was - Here’s Charlie Brown celebrating John Bolton’s appointment to the United Nations at, um, Stop Bolton: “For now, however, let us celebrate what we have accomplished. Congratulations and thanks for everything you’ve done to make today possible.” Hooray, we lost!

Special election in Ohio

Ohio’s second congressional district is having a special election tomorrow to fill the seat of Rep. Rob Portman who became a U.S. trade representative. The Air America crowd is beating the drum for Paul Hackett, an anti-war Iraq war veteran. He’s running against GOP candidate and former state legislator Jean Schmidt.

I don’t know how this will shake out (can’t find any polls) but if history is any guide, the Republican with some political experience will defeat the anti-war Democrat. Stay tuned.

Update – From Fox News: “Ohio special election could be bellwether for 06”

For political junkies – The Ohio Secretary of State (HT: Dave W.)

Extra – Polipundit urges Ohioans to get out and vote for Schmidt. Lorie Byrd calls Hackett’s campaign ad “one of the most misleading I have ever seen.”

Bonus - John Hawkins sez: “Jabber all you want, Paul Hackett is going to lose”

Our friends the Saudis - Here’s some background from Frontline: “The House of Saud” But hey, what’s this? “Saudi Al-Qaeda link to London bombers probed” Some things never change.

Ambassador John Bolton

John Kerry made a comment about John Bolton’s recess nomination and, essentially, lied:

“The president has the right to make this recess appointment, but it's the wrong decision. It only diminishes John Bolton's validity and leverage to secure America's goals at the U.N. John Bolton has been rejected twice by the Senate to serve as our Ambassador to the United Nations. This is not the way to fill our most important diplomatic jobs.”

As Captain Ed ably notes, President Bush was (temporarily) thwarted from choosing whom he wanted to represent the United States in the U.N. as Bolton was twice denied an up-or-down vote in the Senate.

But White House press secretary Scott McClellan wasn’t entirely honest either:

"Ambassador Bolton is planning on taking the oath of office today and he is also planning on going to New York today to get about doing the important work at the United Nations. The President began thinking about the -- a nomination, a recess appointment of Ambassador Bolton after it became clear that a handful of Democrats were going to continue engaging in partisan delaying tactics and prevent him from having a fair up or down vote on the floor of the Senate. This was despite the fact that he had a clear majority of support from the United States Senate. On two occasions, as Chairman Lugar noted in his statement, the Senate showed a clear majority was in support of his nomination to the United Nations."

Yes, it was very likely that John Bolton would have been approved by the Senate had he received a straight vote. But it’s also remotely possible that he would have been rejected. That is, it’s possible that the Republican Senators voted for cloture purely on the principal that the President's nominee deserved an up-or-down vote. But we’ll never know because the Democrats insisted on dragging out the nomination with paper chases and unfair characterizations. Say hello to the ambassador, boys.

Extra – From Decision08: “The top 10 reactions to the Bolton appointment”

The stealth issue - Opinion Journal: “Filibustering judges has only hurt the Democrats”

No-slumber in chief

The other day I saw a story about how President Bush was rousted from bed to place late-night phone calls to waving Republicans during the CAFTA vote. Then today, there’s this in the news story about King Fahd of Saudi Arabia: “Fahd died at approximately 2:30 a.m. EDT, a senior Saudi official in Washington told The Associated Press. President Bush was alerted within minutes of Fahd's death, the official said on condition of anonymity.”

So somebody has to wake up the President. A Google search on “woke up the President” suggests that it’s mainly White House chief of staff Andy Card’s job. But I’m pretty sure that Card doesn’t live in the White House. Does he have to rush over (as in “within minutes”) when he gets the news? Does he have to put on a suit? Is it entirely his discretion as to what topics are important enough to wake the President? (Hmmm…this might be a good question for the Explainer.)