Norton 360 5.0 Premier Edition and My Laptop

I literally ran out to buy Norton 360, version 5.0, premier edition a couple of nights ago because suddenly my PC gave warning that my older version of the same had expired that day. just earlier that day, it had warned me I had two days left in my subscription, go figure! I got to Staples, got a total of $50 in discounts off of the regular price, which made me happy, and took it home to load into my laptop. I loaded it just as i have done before and as in the past it said it was removing an older version of Norton. Then it told me the PC had to be restarted and  complied. When it turned back on, a Norton window said there was a problem in that the Norton disc seemed to be missing from the drive. Heck no, I did not remove it but i checked anyway. Yes, it was still in there. Problem was, no matter what I tried, the laptop was no longer registering the fact that there was a Blue Ray/DVD/CD drive any more! That was not good. Not being a computer weenie of any great expertise, I decided that a system restore was in order. I set it to restore to the prior day. It worked, the laptop was now reading the drive as being there. I loaded Norton again. You guessed it, the laptop was no longer reading the CD; what you maybe did not guess was that now it appeared as if tens, if not hundreds, of files had vanished from my computer. Egad, I was not happy that was dreadful. I rebooted and the problem worsened. I decided this called for a system recovery. I was going to try then realized the files for doing the recovery were now among the missing! Somehow, while doing this or that, I found a way to do a full recovery both online and using the recovery discs made at the time my wife purchased the computer as a gift for me 2 or 3 years ago. I tried the online version, I figured it would have been updated many times since I received the computer as a gift. I was wrong. The version of everything was older than what had been on my computer. Then I tried using the discs, there were 4 of them. The computer would not read the drive at first but somehow I got that to work. Then I did the recovery with the discs and while it did not look the same as before, since the hard drive gets formatted during the recovery, thus wiping out everything, it did look like it was working again and luckily it has been working since.

By the way, did I just say the hard drive got formatted. I got that warning before doing it and was warned to back up personal files. I immediately backed up the My Documents file folder. Then, I proceeded. Yikes, I realized, about 2 seconds too late, I had forgotten to back up the only other folder worth saving - My Pictures. I lost at least a year;s worth of family pictures - what an asshole was I! I tried to console myself by saying that is one of the file folders that vanished when Norton apparently screwed things up but I do not really believe it, nor should you. It was late, or early in the AM really, I was tired, suffering from a bad night of insomnia (did not sleep all night, not a wink), I should have waited until after some sleep to do the job but did not, shame on me.

well anyhow, the laptop is working now, better than previously. probably because I wiped out all the useless crap that had built up on my hard drive. I don't mean malware of any sort just overloaded crap. I try to keep malware controlled with Norton 360 and with CCleaner. Of course, there could have been some sort of virus or other malware on the laptop that prevented the Norton 360 from loading properly, I suppose I should report the problem to Norton to prevent such a possibility in the future. I am thinking of running a program they have to double check to see if there is deeply embedded malware on a PC that regular Norton did not discover. The thing is, they warn, this can screw up your computer files and programs. I do not know if I want to do another recovery again. It is not that complicated but at best seems to take about 2 hours to complete. Maybe I should leave well enough alone, call Norton, let them know what happened and ask their advice on how to continue. Can you tell, I got some good sleep last night and also took a nap earlier this evening so, I am well rested and thinking straight for a change as of late! Wish I had waited to do anything the other night, I may have still had the hundreds of family photographs, from the last year or so, that I destroyed by forgetting to back them up! Live and learn or learn from the mistakes of others. You decide next time something like my initial problem happens to you.

I suppose Norton can expect a phone call from me in the next day or two; make it the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow, if I sleep well tonight, I am taking a bust trip to Atlantic City for the day. I am going to try to duplicate at least some of my son's good fortune of last week.

All the best,
Glenn B

Obama Cartoon - Reportedly from England

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Click it to enlarge it.

All the best,

Glenn B

Thank You Bill and Jen of Double Nickel Farm

I wrote a blog post, this morning, to fill this spot. I just deleted the whole thing. Why delete it? Well, after breakfast and while my coffee had cooled off a bit but was still very warm to fairly hot, I sat down at the dining room table and shot a video of myself. In the video, I did pretty much the same thing as I had done with the written words for that post, the post I just deleted. While I am none to photogenic since my radiation and chemo treatments, I decided to disregard the embarrassment I would feel by putting my mug, the way I look  now, on the Internet for all to see. I did the video anyway, regardless of how I look, because I owed some thanks, a good deal of thanks to the folks at Double Nickel Farm. 

That gobbler (as my wife and kids call it), you can plainly see hanging from my neck, is not so much fat (like it would have been before my treatments) as it is lymphatic fluids built up in my neck where I have or had the cancer (do not know if they got it yet or not, will not know until March). It makes me look like I am turning into The Blob even though I lost 24 pounds during treatment and most of the fat on my neck had melted away. I have kept all but 2 pounds of that weight off since then. My haircut might also make you think I did service in the Marines though I was never in the service, well not military anyway. I spent 32 years as a civil servant as a federal agent. No insult to the Marines, I'm not saying that having been a Marine would be an embarrassment. In fact, that would have been an honor had I served with them, I am just commenting on a haircut you would probably never have seen otherwise, at least not on my head except that I got cancer. I got it cut that short, in fact much shorter - it is growing back slowly now, in anticipation of radiation and chemo therapies making it fall out. I figured why not me be in control and do it myself instead of letting the treatments do it. Well regardless of how I look now, I figured a video would be a more personal, nicer way to say what  wanted to say, to thank Jen and Bill of Double Nickel Farm (see www.DoubleNickelFarm.blogspot.com) for a really nice thing they just did for me than would be a super long blog post.

You can see the video on my YouTube page or you can see it right down below here in this post. It is pretty long at 11 minutes and 24 seconds but that is how long it took me to let Bill and Jen and their children, and the world, know how thankful I am to them for what they have done for me and to let you know just how nice they are for doing what they did for me. Bear in mind, I have never met them in person, I only know them through the blog and a few emails we have shared, yet they reached out to me in a really nice way. Watch the video if you want or forget about it as you please, that is up to you, but I am sure Bill and Jen and their 4 young adult children will want to see it, I hope so anyhow. Before I close, even though I am not religious, I have to say: God Bless Them!



All the best,
Glenn B