The World According to Chuck

In case you’ve been living in an IE bubble, Firefox 3.0 makes its official debut today, and they’re trying to establish a new world record for most downloads in one day. There is no old record, by the way.

Since my trusty stats tell me most visitors to this very site are Mozillaphiles, I don’t need to say anything else. Although I’d note that, aside from the whole world record fun idea thing, asking people to download a program on a day when you’re expecting 5 million downloads is questionable in terms of inspiration. Um. Think maybe I will wait until later in the week.

Full disclosure: I’ve never had a computer virus, or any problems with spyware, adware, malware or wear-and-tear ware. My kids at different times have destroyed computers due to unwanted visitors, but my personal PCs have always been clean (if a little dusty), and I’ve had many.

I’m a bit of a snot about this, or I was. I guess I assumed it was a matter of good computer hygiene, of paying attention, being careful and not doing anything dumb, like believing hoaxes that say, “This was on CNN!” or “My cousin (best friend, sister-in-law, neighbor, etc.) is an attorney and s/he checked this out…,” falling for pfishing, clicking on links without at least hovering, and visiting questionable Web sites.

Along with updated protection, of course. I’ve had virus software for years, and various utilities, along with downloading Windows Defender within approximately 30 minutes of its release.

Really, I thought it was just sloppiness on the part of other people, and I’m not sure I still don’t agree with that. On the other hand, a few weeks ago Julie clicked on one of her daily sites, an ordinary blog, and got bombarded with malware we’re still working on extricating (it’s much better, but this is a stubborn infection, and I’ve come close to giving up and rebuilding the damn thing from the restore disk). So I suppose it can happen to the best of us, or at least the spouses of the best of us.

I spent the day after Christmas, then, overhauling her laptop, doing things I should have been doing all along (she had over 7 gigs of temp files; I really felt bad about that). I ran multiple spyware programs, I cleaned her registry, I deleted junk, I installed like five layers of protection, and I persuaded her to switch to Firefox (with NoScript, of course; a great add-on). Now if I can only get her to use a reader (sigh) and STAY AWAY FROM AOL.

Anyway, I took the opportunity to do some housecleaning of my own, with some new utilities I got from the good folks at PC World. I loaded the COMODO firewall, I dumped McAfee for Avast! (much less RAM gobbling, and free), I vacuumed my startup and dusted my registry.

And it made a big difference.  My computer is four years old, an inexpensive Dell laptop, the best I could afford at the time, and still it runs smoothly and quickly after all these years.  Yeah, I’d like a Mac, and maybe that’ll happen next, but in the meantime I’m very happy with what I’ve got, for what I do.

But after I did all my touching up and tweaking, and got this baby humming along, I was surfing and had a frightening thought.  And maybe it’s just the holiday, but still it’s a little  scary, after all these years, and I’m not sure what to do.

I think I’m bored with the Internet.

There’s nothing on the ‘net — not blogs, not games, not naked pictures of Elizabeth McGovern — that sucks the hours away for me like satellite pictures, particularly Google Earth. I’ve actually spent an hour tracing the route I take from home to downtown Seattle, image by image, which beats that “watching paint dry” metaphor hands down.

PC World has a nice piece up with 16 unusual pictures found on Google Earth, from a monument to Oprah on an Arizona farm to what looks to be a fighter jet parked in front of the Paris version of a 7-11. The article provides coordinates that you can plug into G.E. and waste your own time.

(A group of elephants, but duh.)

And speaking of PC World…

…they also have a great article on 20 open source downloads, complete programs, often comparable with software costing big bucks, absolutely free. It’s all about philosophy, or altruism or something.

At any rate, I use a couple of these and can vouch for them. And the price is right.

A couple of months ago, my wife was searching the Internet for information on mortgage interest rates, as we were considering refinancing our house. Unfortunately, as smart as she can be, she began innocently filling out an online form that had an insidious trick question. In this case, there was a box that said “phone number” and an empty space to fill in. Those bastards.

So we were inundated — and I can’t use a stronger word, because I don’t really know one — with phone calls from mortgage companies. They didn’t just call; they left long, detailed voice mail messages that called my wife by name and made comments about how long it’s been since I cleaned the garage. It was annoying, but at least I was pretty sure Julie wouldn’t be filling out any more online forms in the future.

Recently, though, I’ve noted an amazing increase in my email from people who seem really concerned about my penis and its functionality. Much more than usual. I wonder about this.

John Hargrave, a very funny man, decided to take the bait. He not only ordered Viagra online, but he decided to test its effectiveness by taking it before undergoing what most of us would consider the least sexually stimulating experience we might have in any given week.

That is, church.

(Warning: This comical piece involves adult themes, including musing about the sexual preference of a beloved animated advertising icon.)