Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Cleaned off more tape residue from the student lounge door window. Swapped out a sticky keyboard for a new one for Chris. Confirmed recent critical Windows Updates were installed for me, James, Chris. Chatted with Mike Renoude who is double-checking that our wire to the WAP we're going to install is live. Met with Diane Nguyen, whose Win 98 laptop got infected with a bunch of viruses, worms, and trojans because she didn't have a firewall or anti-virus software. Purchasing McAfee VirusScan 8 and Personal Firewall online was no problem, but downloading and installing it was a pain. Their download process runs an ActiveX installer, so they presume you're installing to the same computer you download from. I can't believe how stupid this is. If I have an infected computer, I don't want to hook it to the Internet. I asked live support for McAfee if there was a way to download an installer and Patrick Samuelson told me no there was no way. So instead, I used Sophos tools to disinfect in MS-DOS mode, then connected it, and downloaded and installed McAfee. Dinner at Sparky's by myself: grilled chicken boob sandwich, fries, water: about $8 before a $1.75 tip. Brian Kusler's 34th birthday party and Brian, Kelly, and Jesse's place. Kelly made a huge pan of paella. I brought light pink tulips—it's hard to buy flowers that aren't red or pink or white around Valentine's day. Patrick decided to stay home because he needs to wake up early—this party is too late for him. Everyone else was there: Little Brian, Adrian, Nico, Simma, Kim, Nina, Big Brian, Deep, Tom, Eric. Brian and Kelly broke out a bottle of red wine which they bought in 1994 and which turned out to be quite deliciously velvety and full.