And then I have days like today where everywhere I went I was able to do something that made things just a bit easier for the client. 

And it is on days like this that I remember why I do what I do. 

I just wish I had more of these and less of the others.

I ran a few ideas through my head and came up with the perfect solution.  I hooked my video camera to my older Toshiba laptop and signed up for an account – a free account – on a service called Ustream – which you can find at ustream.tv.

Setting up the camera was quite easy.  I just plugged the USB cable from the camera into the laptop.  Since I had used the camera on the laptop before, the drivers were present and loaded without a problem.  Had I not done this before it might have taken a bit to download and install the drivers, though if I remember the Samsung site was easy to navigate.

Signing up for Ustream was a bit more of a pain.  It required more info than I usually like to give and gave me grief when I typed my password wrong the second time.  The site also pestered me to enter facebook and twitter info, which I was not ready to do.

Once I had the account getting the video online was a piece of cake.  I started the broadcast, they software recognized my camera and I went live.

http://Ustream.tv/channel/bee-hive-of-activigy

Take a look at the two recording I made.  Let me know if you’d like some help doing something like this.

We discovered that we have a lot in common and we try to chat via Google Chat a few times a week. 

Matt introduced me to the concept of being Geographically Untethered.  What he was referring to was being able to work and make money from just about anywhere.  At the time he had thoughts about hitting the road in his motor home and continuing his consulting business from wherever he happened to be.

This was an idea that hit home with me.  My wife and I have been telling people that we are leaving for parts unknown on July 6th of 2012.  The day after our wonderful youngest son turns 18.  It will be our independence day….

And our three sons all know it!

Which brings me to the point of this post.  Yes there really is a point!

On Thursday I will begin a journey to Arizona that will last about 10 days.  I will be attending the National Speakers Association Convention and will be visiting with my Mom for a few days.  I will also be seeing a client in Anthem, AZ as well as catching at least one of Matt’s music performances.

All the while I am on this journey I will continue to support my clients in the Salt Lake City area.  I plan on doing as much as I can remotely via a program called Copilot.  I use this regularly even when I am in town and I have found it to be quite a time saver.

I have made arrangements with one of my vendors to provide onsite support if it is needed, though I think I can solve most issues remotely. 

Over the next few posts I will share some of the other ways that I am preparing to work from any computer in any part of the world.

My apologies to Saturday Night Live – and to my friends who remember the early days of the show, but:

SPYWARE BEEN BERY BERY GOOD TO ME

I spent a lot of time, hours of my life that I will never get back, fighting with spyware and for the most part fixing the infected computers.  I had one system I was about to give up on, though I persevered and eventually triumphed over the nasty programs.

This week was interesting because I worked on two computers that belonged to people who were not current clients.  I help one of my vendors with one of his clients on Friday, which turned out well.

This morning a friend brought me a computer from his new employer.  We had talked about the spyware issue and I had suggested that he run Malwarebytes to fix it.  It didn’t work so he brought it to me.

This system turned out to be the most challenging spyware infection ever.  The registry was modified to run over 9000 programs at startup.  The programs didn’t seem to do anything, though the system never would finish the startup process.

I tried a bunch of times to get the system to run Malwarebytes to no avail.  I poked around until I found the 9000 startup entries.  Once I had determined that this was the problem, I pulled a few things from my bag of tricks to see if I could fix things.

NO SUCH LUCK – So I gave up.  I called my friend and left him a voice message to call me and see what plan B was.  He never called back.

As I worked on other projects today, I kept going back to the problem machine.  I tried a few free programs that I thought would clean the registry, with no luck.  I finally found something that worked and I was on my way to another successful cleanup.

How much time was wasted on this and how much money.  I would say that I spent about 5 hours messing with this system and about another 8 hours working on other systems this week. 

13 Hours of my life that I will not get back.  However at my billing rate…..

SPYWARE BEEN BERY BERY GOOD TO ME…….

I have to admit that for years I was the one doing the programming.  I suggested to every client that they install PC-Cillin on all of their computers.  And that they keep it updated and running.  All the time.

Times were different a few years back.  Viruses were being created and deployed on a very regular basis.  It was a serious threat.

For those of you who don’t know me well, and don’t know about my business, let me share some things with you.  For the past 23 years I have provided computers and computer support, training and troubleshooting to over 300 small businesses in the Salt Lake City area.

At the present time I am responsible for maintaining computer systems for about 40 companies.  Together these companies have over 400 workstations.  It is up to me to make sure that they work and that they work well.

Over the past year I have not seen a computer infected with what we have come to know as a computer virus.  I think the last outbreak I worked on was the "Blaster" a few years back.

I have seen many computers infected with malware such as "Antivirus 2009" or "Security System 2009".  These programs literally take over your system and prevent you from doing anything.

So what is the point of the malware?  Good Question!

The current wave of hackers who create malware are after your money.  They are going to get it if you actually buy their software, which the say will keep your computer safe, or they will let you think you are buying their software and they will abuse your credit card info.

So how do you protect yourself from the malware?  Try these things…

1.  Turn off the preview pane in your email client – if you get a message with spyware attached and the preview pane is open, you could become infected by just clicking on the message.

2.  Install and run on a regular basis a program called Malwarebytes.  Download it from www.download.com and install and update it.  Perform a quick scan and then a complete scan.  This will remove any nasty programs with little effort.

3.  Stay away from Hotmail – in my experience Hotmail has been the biggest culprit.  Use Gmail from Google.

4.  PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT IS ON YOUR SCREEN – if you visit a website and it blasts you with warnings that your computer is infected, just stop and shut your computer off.  Toggle to your open programs and save your data but do not do anything else in your browser.  If you are familiar with the task manager, you could open it and use the end task function to close your browser.

5.  Stay away from sites that might cause problems.  Game sites and porn sites are notorious for downloading malware to your computer.  If you must visit these sites, consider a separate computer for these functions.

6. Make sure you have a good backup of your data and if possible a clone or image of you hard drive.

That’s it for today…. more on this in the future.

I had one client call me to remove the newest PC-Cillin from her system – she wasn’t able to get any work done. I am pretty sure that she hadn’t even read my blog post. I am most certain she doesn’t know I blog or even what a blog is.

In the coming days I will post an entry on how I think we can protect our systems without the AV software. More on that later.

I did however get some very interesting reactions to a comment I made on a Facebook friend’s post about the trouble he was having with his wife’s computer. I made a simple statement that he should consider getting her a Mac.

I live and work in the PC world. Of my 40 or so clients, mostly small businesses, only two or three have Macs. I have always been adept at faking my way through most computer problems, so when the Mac clients needed help, I was able to get the job done with minimal problems.

Which is why people buy Macs. So I bought on too. Not a new one, a 5 year old PowerBook G4 which I upgraded to the newest operating system.

I am sitting on my front steps, typing this on the Mac – It is more portable and usable than my other 3 laptops. Even though the screen is only 12″ and the resolution is limited to 1024X768, I find it very comfortable to use.

I am finding that my long time clients and friends cannot believe that I would ever recommend anyone buy a Mac. I must admit that the first time the words came out of my mouth, I was quite surprised.

I am amused at how much I am upsetting people by talking Mac. I never really said anything bad about Macs in the past, I just never said anything good about them. Mostly because I didn’t know much about them.

The more I use this machine, the PowerBook G4, the more I like it and understand why people like Macs so much. Things just seem to work like they are supposed to.

Of course if Windows and Pcs worked like they were supposed to I would not be as busy as I am.

Hmmmmmm………..

Way back in the day, twenty something hacks spent all day in their mother’s basement trying to prove to other hacks that they were smarter than Bill Gates and Microsoft, and created viruses.  Bragging rights was the reward.

When the Internet boom began and dot coms were paying for eyeballs, hackers learned to write software that would take over your browser and open up dozens and dozens of windows to make the dot coms think they were getting tons of eyeballs.

After the dot com bust, eyeballs were worthless.  The next wave was the spyware/malware writers who would turn you computer into a zombie to spread the malware to millions of other computers.  These guy were trying to sell you viagra and fake rolex watches through email sent by the zombie computers.

And all along I was telling my clients that they needed to buy Trend Micro’s PC-Cillin software and make sure that it was updated and running and doing its weekly and monthly scans. 

Back a few versions, PC-Cillin was less intrusive and used less overhead than most of the other programs like Norton and McAfee.  When I installed the software, the system continued to run well.  And the computer was protected.

That was then…. Now it sucks….

The latest and greatest version has caused many of my clients systems to grind to a painful halt.  Programs don’t load, screens don’t refresh and boy are they not happy.  On most systems we have just turned off the real time scanning, which defeats the purpose of virus protection.  Some systems had to have the software uninstalled.

The problem as I see it is Spyware/Malware and not viruses.  And the antivirus software isn’t stopping it.  And to make things worse, it won’t fix it after the systems is infected.

I’m having a very hard time convincing myself that my clients need this latest and greatest version of Trend Micro, or any virus protection at all.  Over the past year, many of the machines that were "protected" by PC-Cillin have become infected by spyware/malware.  The most common one is a variation of something called "Antivirus 200X" or the latested version "Security System 2009".

The problem is the user who for whatever reason reach a place on the Internet that warns them that their system has become infected and that they should run this "update" immediately.

The problem is guys like me who have been telling users to update their software when prompted to. 

The problem is the media who loves to report on hackers and virus breakouts that never amount to much.

I no longer believe that antivirus software is the answer.

I don’t know if I have the answer, though I have some definite thoughts about how to survive in your computer is attacked.  Maybe tomorrow…..

I have 56 followers, most of whom I believe are real people.  When I get an email telling me that someone is following me, I check to see if they are real and who else they are following.  If they are at all questionable, I block them.

At this time, I only follow 28 people.  Most of these are not even tweeting, so my list of tweets is small.  There are a few people who tweet alot and say little, though I haven’t take the time to unfollow (if that is the term) them.

I’d like to share my favorite three tweeters with you.  @jasonalba, @michaelbenidt, and @dnewman.  Each of these guys tweets regularly and does so with meaningful information that people can actually use.

@michaelbenidt posted just today about Chris Anderson’s new book Free, which I am anxious to read.  The post lead me to a site where I can read the book online for free and also had a free audio book available for download.

Thanks Michael – See you in Phoenix next week.

Over the past week I have encountered the System Security 2009 malware/spyware program on 3 systems at 3 different clients.  This rouge software is downloaded to your computer either through a web page or an email.

I was able to recover all three computers – one by removing the spyware, another by reformatting the system and the third by installing a new hard drive and recovering the data from the infected hard drive.

The main thrust of this program is to trick the user into thinking that her computer is infected with spyware when it really isn’t.   The software presents itself as a virus/spyware scanner and tells the user that the system is infected with so many different viruses.  The software give you 2 options to exit though no matter what you click, the virus loads itself onto your system and you are infected.

If you ever visit a webpage and it tells you that you are infected the best thing to do is just stop what you are doing and if possible just turn off your computer.  At this point your system has not been infected and you should be able to resume working after the restart.

If you know a how to end a task using the task manager program you can just end your internet session and you should be safe.

The frustrating thing for me is that none of these infections was the fault of the user.  Each user just happened to go to the wrong site, and as far as I can tell, they were not bad sites.