I Give Good Tech Support

Actual technical question received today from "Vishal":

i see various virus spider shaped/heart shaped viruses in which pow
dvd,winapp ,and all installed programs changed in to heart or spider
shaped .how can i remove it.

Hmmm. I don't like spiders, Vishal, but I do love hearts. Are you sure you don't want to just leave the heart-shaped viruses? They sound pretty. Think it over and get back to me.

Fondly,
Sarah

I'm a Party Hopper

So here I am, stalking my old co-workers, and I come across this image on Luis Hurtado's website. As you can see, my former colleague Luis is a talented graphic artist (he's also a nice person, if you must know).

However, I have no idea what this poster is for. Did Chris Gore and I go party hopping together at some point? It must have been a great party, 'cause I gots no recollections. In fact, I probably owe Chris an apology. The mind often prefers to discard what the mind does not want to face, if you know what I mean. And by that, I mean that I like Red Bull/vodkas.

Amazing what you can find out about yourself on the internet.

Reasons Why I Don't Do It

22. I'm not an entrepreneur.
21. I have no experience.
20. I hate my hair.
19. It's daunting.
18. I'm too tired.
17. I fear change.
16. I don't like schmoozing.
15. I have nothing to wear.
14. I have to work out.
13. I'm too shy.
12. I'm too short.
11. I'm too old.
10. I don't know Perl.
9. I'm too busy.
8. Ok, I'm too lazy.
7. My pores are too big.
6. It's so far to drive.
5. And gas is expensive.
4. It's a waste of time.
3. It's a gamble.
2. It's crazy.
1. I'm afraid of rejection.

The Grammar Police are Scratching Their Heads

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you're probably familiar with my deep appreciation of the English language. I love spelling eccentricities, obscure definitions, palindromes (although it's always bothered me that the word 'palindrome' is not one), crossword puzzles... things like that. I spend way too much time on this crap.

One phrase has always baffled me, though.

"I could care less."

We all know that when someone says "I could care less", they actually mean that they could NOT care less. It's not as if the rest of us are confused by that. But why aren't we? It's not said sarcastically, so as to obviously infer that the opposite is true (like when I see a picture of Paris Hilton on the internet and mumble that she "just seems so nice"). I can't imagine how English as a Second Language teachers deal with such a ridiculous phrase morph. "I know it seems crazy, class, but both 'I could care less' and 'I couldn't care less' should be taken to mean 'I could NOT care less'." Why aren't students revolting? Why have any rules at all if people are just going to talk backwards and opposite and in nonsensical code?

Can you think of any other ridiculous phrase morphs that should be brought to my attention?

Speaking of English as a second language, my Columbian friend Maria (who I met in India earlier this year) once asked me to explain 'I was' vs. 'I were'. As in: "If I was/were planning on swimming, I would have brought my bikini." Maria's English is quite good, but I knew that the term "subjunctive" would be lost on her, so I tried to explain it in layman's terms. It went a little something like this:

"Well, this is a tricky one. See, it's kind of like something that's true versus something that's not true. Like, if you were to say 'If I were a lion.' You're not a lion and you're never going to be a lion, so you say 'were.' It's just what you do. So it's like something that isn't true. But if you were late, you'd say 'I was late.' Because you were late, and you know it and everybody else knows it. You know?"

I think it's because of teachers like me that English grammar rules often go unobserved. A lion? Poor Maria.

Seek and Destroy

What can I say - I was once a hardcore Metallica fan. In third grade. My song/blog title is kind of misleading, actually, but "seek" is the closest I could come to "search", and I'm going to talk about searching in this post. Whatevs. It's early and I need about 4 more quarts of caffeine before I achieve coherence. Yes, I realize that 11 a.m. is not really very early to the rest of the world. Thanks for pointing that out, Einstein, but you're way off-topic. Moving on...

I've gotten a handful of innocent emails recently from folks looking for old Windows tips or Downloads of the Day (articles I used to write in conjunction with TechTV segments), or just cool stuff I used to file away in the "Web/Tech" category of this site. They're all legitimate inquiries, since recently I removed category displays from my main page, effectively rendering all future searches through the archives as useless as a day spent finding a needle in a haystack. I didn't do it on purpose - I just really thought that nobody cared about learning how to add custom images to their Windows XP Start button anymore. Obviously, I was wrong. So I've added a new search function below my Archives list in the left-hand column on this page. It seems to work pretty well so far. You're welcome.