Beer, The Govenator and Monk

First beer. I recently tried two new beers from Stone Brewing Co. The first is their 8th Anniversary Ale. I must say I was disappointed. Their 7th anniversary beer was much better. This years beer had no unique flavor and was kind of flat. The second beer is Stone's Russian Imperial Stout. Now that's what I call a beer! Thick, dark and full of flavor. One bottle and you're done - more or less.

Now politics. This is my first post related to politics. I just wanted to say that no matter who you are going to vote for this November, our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, just gave a great speech at the RNC. I hope he runs for president in 2008.

Lastly, I just read that the character of Sharona Fleming on the TV show Monk, played by Bitty Schram, is off the show. The actress, and her character, are going to be hard to replace. I also didn't realize that Bitty Schram played the woman from A League of Their Own who "cried" in baseball.

Spyware Removal

I now consider myself an expert on removing "spyware" from computers. I got a call from someone who I hadn't talked to in years asking me how to remove a virus from his computer. After several unsuccessfully attempts to help him over the phone, I brought over a CD with several programs that will remove spyware. It took three hours to remove the poltergeist that was hiding within his computer. I proclaimed: "This computer is clean", and luckly it didn't turn inside-out and get sucked into nothingness.

To fix his computer I ran several programs. I first ran "AdAware" which will find and remove various programs and cookies that may or may not do any harm to your computer. On the first run, it found around 30 bad items, including "malware" and "data miners", both of which are much worse than spyware. That still didn't solve his problem. When we tried to go to his credit union web site, the browser got redirected to another site, and then his default home page changed to that site. So then I ran Spybot Search and Destroy. That program found six more programs to delete. The problem was still there. So I ran AdAware again after downloading the latest update to it and it found another 20 files to delete. This finally fixed the problem.

The main culprit was a program called "Cool Web Search" and after researching that program on the internet it seems it is one of the nastier programs out there that infects computers. It is not really a virus, so Norton Antivirus won't catch it. It installs on your computer automatically when you visit "certain" web sites unless you have ActiveX disabled on your computer, and most people have that enabled. I read about another program called "CWShredder" which is designed to remove this program, but I didn't run it on his computer, but if the virus comes back, I will try that. A good place to download the programs I have talked about is download.com. So the moral of the story is: Practice safe computing, or, he who visits questionable web sites will suffer.

Mexico Photo

Here were are at night in a beach bar with two people we met while playing Whiffle Ball earlier in the day.

Pyramid Resort

I spent this weekend at the Pyramid Resort, which is located about 20 miles south of Rosarito, Mexico. This is my third trip to this resort. While it is always nice and relaxing there, the skies are overcast much of the day due to the cliffs on the east side causing an orographic lift (look it up). So what did we do? We ate food, drank beer, hiked up to the top of the cloud forming cliffs, danced like white people, listened to music and played a great game of Elvis whiffle ball. Elvis whiffle ball is just whiffle ball with Elvis playing on the boom-box. We were joined by two spectators who wanted to be part of the fun. They just happened to be from San Diego too. As usual, the worst part of the trip is crossing the border. We always seem to get in the line where the customs agent questions every car and asks for ID. Now it is time to do laundry and get ready for work.

Pyramid Resort

Iron Mountain

Keeping with my current exercise and health craze, I hiked to the top of Iron Mountain this morning. This was the first time I have hiked it alone, and without someone else to keep pace with, I walked too fast at the beginning and was very tired by the time I got to the peak. From the top you have a good view of the area burned by the big fire last October. In fact, I saw a fire burning off in the distance. I used the telescope at the top to look at the fire and saw aircraft dropping water on it. Why didn't they do that last October? I wasn't worried about the fire reaching me, since all the brush was still burnt. It looked like a volcano exploded - if you have ever been to Mount St. Helens you would know what I mean. It took me one hour to walk up and one hour to walk down. I was the last person off the mountain - the sane people will hike it in the evening when the air is cooler. It is now time to rest my legs and get ready for my next local adventure.