My computer went belly up right after breakfast and a 13-minute coughing fit (which turned out to be the highlight of my day). So after my panic attack subsided a little we called the computer repair shop we had gone to a couple times in the past for some advice:

Jen: Help! We got the Barack Obama child pornography thing. What do we do?
Computer Guy: I heard about that virus, bummer. There really isn’t anything we can do for it. The only thing we can do for you is wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall
Windows 7. That’d cost you between $150-$200. In most cases, people just pay the $300 to the scammers to unlock their computer.
Jen: Uh, OK. Thanks for the help! Bye.
Me: Um… Not gonna happen and – Over my dead, lifeless body!

I spent the rest of the day messing around with my old Windows XP machine I use as a backup (thank God I have that!) and trying not let myself get too aggravated about the whole situation. I’ve never been a violent person but boy, was I seeing red! I often found myself wishing that I could get my hands (if they actually worked) on whoever was responsible for my grief and teach them a lesson. Then I remembered one of our Bible study meetings – in it we talked about the quote from God that goes ‘Vengeance is mine!’ Being the biblical scholar that I am, I’m not sure about the chapter or verse – or even what book it’s from, but I’m 99.9% positive it’s from the Old Testament. It’s got an OT feel to it, anyway. I always thought it was kind of a harsh sounding and tough talking thing for God to say until our group leader (a guy who’s forgotten more about the Bible than I’ll ever know) gave us his interpretation. It went something like: ‘What He’s saying is, ‘Vengeance is mine, not yours. Doling out the justice is my job, not yours. You should just run along, I’ll take care of this.’’ (or something like that.) Whew! What a load off my back! Now I can quit fantasizing about catching and punishing a bunch of vicious and destructive computer nerds. Nobody wants to be some sort of vigilante crime-fighter anyway, running around in a leotard and a cape all day – no thanks. Besides, it takes a lot of negative energy to carry that much animosity for or hold a grudge against someone. Ain’t nobody got time for that!

— Shameless product endorsement —
I use an online backup service from Carbonite. For me, using it or something like it is a must since I rely so heavily on my computer and its files. It runs in the background and continuously backs up my files to its secure servers using the internet. It costs about $80/yr., I think it’s worth every penny because it gives me so much peace of mind.
— End commercial —

By the time I went to bed that night, I was pretty much resigned to the fact that I was going to be getting a completely new system. A whole new setup? Yikes! That meant brand new communication hardware and software to learn! A new computer! (gulp) Windows 8! Oh well. What are you gonna do? I’ve been hem-hawing around about doing a major upgrade for the past six months and I guess this was just the kick in the pants I needed to get moving on it – as much as I didn’t feel like it.

The next day we hit the stores in search of a new computer. Have you been to the new H.H.Gregg store up by Mid Rivers Mall next to Costco? Well, if you’re wanting to check it out sometime you might want to go up there sooner rather than later. We were there on Saturday afternoon and it was fairly deserted. I’m afraid that it’ll end up going down the same path that Ultimate Electronics and Circuit City did, but what do I know?

Jen saves the day (again)
Anyway, by that night I was all bummed out and dejected so I just laid in bed and watched the latest episode of Dracula. I think it’s probably a chick show but I don’t care, I happen to like it. Even though I threw in the towel, Jen didn’t. She Google’d the problem I was having and found that the virus was pretty widespread. People explained how they got around the problem by entering safe mode, manually launching Windows and then running an anti-virus program to remove it. Long story short, she performed CPR on my laptop and brought it back to life to fight another day. She beat that virus like it owed her money!

It seems to me that she’s done something like this before for me but I can’t remember the details. It’s probably about time I give her a raise, though. She deserves it!