now my computer is hospitalized!

so today . . . I am blogging on my phone. again.

as it turns out I have a very aggressive virus on my computer. rollie couldn't get rid of it. diandra says it looks like the one that killed her computer. I am hoping mine is salvageable. james, the computer wizard (who, coincidentally is not geeky at all-just very smart) is going to try to save it. blogging on my phone is doable, but not so easy. so until I am back up & running on my computer, I probably won't be blogging a lot.

here is my advice to you--get an external hard drive and REGULARLY back up your files!!! I have a 500 gb hard drive, but I haven't backed anything up since early last spring. why? because my files are not all neatly organized yet. and you know me, I want them to be perfect! but today I am wishing I had saved all my imperfect files on my hard drive--they would be better than no files at all. so if my computer comes back to me intact, I will back it up every weekend-just in case . . .

more advice--buy the biggest, baddest anti-virus software you can find. and use it! viruses are real, and they can affect even insignificant users like me. I get all the email notices about the latest virus threats (thanks mom!) but I guess I have been cautioned so often without ever actually encountering one, that I've kind of become immune to their threat. so even tho I know they are real, I guess I don't think they will find me.

and lastly, don't click on anything you don't recognize! this sounded like it was trying to alert me to a problem. it looked like it was a windows program. it wasn't. it was a disaster waiting to take over my computer and slurp up all my info.

my final warning-beware of anything called "total security." it is a digital nightmare!