I worked at a computer repair store for a year, and then did computer troubleshooting for people part-time for many years, usually visiting their homes to do work.  These were all pretty old people who knew shit about computers, or people with teenage sons, so it was always a disaster.  However it was relatively easy work - clean the fuck out of it with spybot & adaware, get rid of Norton/McAfee(which had expired subs anyway), throw on AVG and I was good to go.

I stopped doing that years ago, but I’m still the go to guy for my family and extended family.  They have a computer problem?  I’m the guy that fixes it.  I don’t particularly enjoy it, but meh, I know that most people know shit about computers, and they’d get raped if they went to the Geek Squad or whatever, so I’ll clean it up happily while watching some DVDs or whatever, and not bother charging them.  Good karma, innit?

But yeah - I’ve seen a lot of bad computers.  The worst was my sister in laws that I had to work on back in January.  I had to back everything up before reformatting - but it wouldn’t even copy/paste.  I had to boot into MS-DOS and do it manually, and it wouldn’t recognize my USB drive or key, so I had to install a fucking hard drive on there, and then copy everything to it.  To make matters worse, the hard drive was only 2 gigs(a real old one) and they had about 20 gigs of stuff, so yeah - I had to take it out, install it in another computer, move everything over etc - about 10 fucking times.

Brutal.  And easily the worst computer I have worked on.

Until tonight.

I have my brother in laws computer here to fix.  It’s been here for about a week, but I didn’t have time to do anything with it.  Finally I had a spare hour, and figured I’d clean up any spyware(I was told it was “slow”),  back everything up, and reformat.  Nice and easy.

Ummmmm…..no.

How can I best explain how bad this computer is fucked up.  Let’s see…

Have you ever ran Hijackthis before?  If you don’t know what it is - it basically lists all the processes running on your computer on startup etc.   The average user might have 20-30 entries running.  I’ve seen 40-50 for fucked up cases, and I think the highest I ever saw was about 70 or 80, and most of that was just Logitech shit.

So yeah.  20-30 average, 40-50 if a bit fucked up, 70-80 in extreme cases.

This Hijackthis log?  I think it warrants the return of a Scotsman trademark:

Over 8000.

Over 8000.

Over 8000.

I wish I was joking.  I really do.  But I am not.  I am not even close to joking.  This has over 8000 fucking entries in the hijackthis log.

Seriously.  If you gave me a computer and told me to fuck it up - I couldn’t even BEGIN to get over 8000 entries in the hijackthis log.  I am pretty sure if you went to Limewire, typed in “sex” and then downloaded any file that ended in .bat or .exe, you wouldn’t get even close to 8,000.

Just unbelievable.

Here’s the log for anyone curious.  I’m off to kill myself just now.

http://www.scotsmansblog.com/hijackthis.txt

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What a technologically advanced world we live in!

You can read the full article here - but to summarize, Geocities, the free web hosting service from 19-fucking-95, is pretty much dead and buried.

This is one of the saddest events for internet related matters. Seriously. If you were on the web from 1995-2000, there’s a strong chance you had a webpage at Geocities.

The very first website I ever created was at Geocities. I can’t remember the exact URL, but I never even knew HTML and used Geocities Website Builder software to create it. If it wasn’t for that, I probably would have never got into the business I am today.

I still remember my first homepage. BluenoseGjMcGs Website was the name of it. It was more just a personal page where I put on some pictures, funny soccer quotes, jokes etc. I also ran a brief TNM e-fed and posted stuff on there too.

Then when I created my first wrestling website, the Pro Wrestling World, I had it on Geocities. Amazingly, I still remember the URL - it was /http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Arena/9333

Unfortunately the site is long gone, and the earliest web archive is just a forwarder to our new site.

I remember having about 300 different Geocities accounts, as we had lots of files to host but Geocities had a size limit for your account(no bandwidth limits at that time). Just thinking about all this brings back memories. The biggest thing at that time I remember was EVERYONE had Geocities accounts, and then they all left to go to uh…Simplenet.com I think it was. Like people had URLs like WrestlingGod.Simplenet.com and so on. Then one day due to bandwidth, simplenet just booted every fucking wrestling site off them, which was epic lolz.

Anyway, very sad to see Geocities gone, as it kicked the ass of all it’s competitors, like Angelfire and Fortunecity. Unfortunately they never could figure out how to really profit from the site, especially in this web 2.0 world. It seems silly - but to me, it’s like an NFL Player seeing the kids team he played for at 4 years old shutting down - they got me the start in this business, and who knows if I’d still be in the position today without it.

To Geocities: Thanks.  I owe my livelihood to you, as do many others I am sure.

Well at the end of this month, I’m going to cancel my Blockbuster Unlimited Game Rental deal that I had going since the beginning of February.  It’s actually a great idea, but the problem is that you feel obligated to play the rental game.  My game collection is huge and I haven’t been playing a lot of games that I should be, so I’m going to cancel it till like June or July and then get it back.

I’d always planned this to end around this time, for the release of the new Fallout 3 DLC.  Just a shame I wasn’t able to rent some games I really wanted, like RE 5, or Lost for Janise, or WWE Legends, or a ton of others.  Oh well.

So taking a look at my games, other than Fallout I have to play:

• Rainbow Six Vegas 1.   Story mode and T-Hunt on Realistic.
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2.  Story mode on Realistic.
• Bioshock.  Hardest difficulty.
• Left 4 Dead.  Only played 2 story modes.  Also gotta play it online.
• Burnout Revenge & Paradise.  Just need to play these more.
• Dark Sector.  Hardest difficulty.
• Civilization.  It’s just been sitting there for a LONG time gathering dust.
• RE4 for the Gamecube.  Yep.  Still not played.
• Mass Effect.  Barely scratched surface with it.
• Gears of War 1.  Gotta go through co-op with Risto.
• Gears of War 2.  Gotta go through on Insane.
• Fifa 09.  Just haven’t played thus much at all since purchasing.
• Halo Wars.  Same as above.  Rented it.  Played 1 skirmish.  Loved it.  Ordered it online.  Arrived last week.  Haven’t played it yet.
• Saints Row 2.  When the new DLC comes out, going through it again on competitive co-op.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance.  A lot to do in that, gotta go through it on hardest difficulty too I think with Risto.
• Skate.  Played for an hour.
• Rock Band 2.  Need to just play this more.  Hopefully get an NPP jam session soon.
• Lego Star Wars.  The fact I don’t have 1000/1000 in that is bugging the hell out of me.  I intend on playing this, Batman & Indiana and getting those.  I’m starting to care about achievements again.
• Call of Duty 2 & 4.  Call me a sadist, but I want to go through both of these(and probs COD 3) on veteran.  I got big balls.

So yeah - whew.  Lot of games to play.  I want to clear out my shelf of games I’m not interested in and just keep ones that I will - you know - actually fucking play.  Add in all the work I have for myself and yeah - gonna be busy times ahead.

I’ve no idea why, but I decided to spend oh the last 90 minutes setting up my blog here so that Twitter updates get posted on it.  The subject will say “Update from Twitter” I believe, so now every time I…..”Tweet”…as the cool kids say, it’ll show up on my blog!  Pretty neato actually, but really I coulda spent my time a lot better.

Oh well - off to bed, up in the morning for a massage, then some work before Brando gets in town.  We were going to go drinking right away but I have to look after the kids till 8pm, so we’ll probably just chill, take it easy etc and not bother doing much.  Then Saturday it’s off to watch UFC in prime mothafuckin seats, BOOM.  Can’t fucking wait.

Alright.  Must sleep.