Before I went to work today, I ran Spybot, Ad-Aware, and Window Washer to clean out my computer since I forgot to do so last night.
I come home today after work and fire up the computer. Before I have the chance to click on the browser (IE 6.0), a Zone Alarm request box pops up and wants to know if GMT (that’s Gator) can have access to the internet.
What the fuck?
I ask my step-daughter (age 21) if she had used the computer today, She says yes, she was getting cheat codes for a PS2 game (which is a minor rant by itself). I asked, “Did a dialog box pop up asking you if you wanted to download Gator?”
She says, “Yes”.
“Did you click on Yes?”
“No!”
I say, “You must have, because the computer is infected with it.”
She vehemently denies it. This is not the first time she’s done this. Last time it was Bonzi.
I run SpyBot and Ad-Aware again to flush out the Gator crap and restart the computer. I click on the IE and I get the dreaded “Page cannot be displyed” screen. What was funny (not ha-ha funny) was that Zone Alarm did not ask me for permission like it’s supposed to. I called Comcast (through which I have my cable modem) and they went through a few steps, but it didn’t help. If I turned off Zone Alarm, I could access the Net with IE. I dread the thought of trying to surf without ZA.
Luckily, I have Opera 7 as well. It has no problems getting through ZA. I then spent about 90 minutes copying all my bookmarks over.
I’ve sent an e-mail to Zone Labs hoping they will be able to help me fix the IE problem.
Back to the pitting. My step-daughhter is apparently incapable of doing anything wrong (to her, at least). She never stole money from her young brother, she never broke the Enterprise model sitting on top of a six-foot bookshelf by throwing a stuffed dog around the room, and she never, I mean never, clicked “yes” to download Gator (or Bonzi) on my computer.
If she were 8 or 9, I could understand the lying, but she’s a freakin’ adult. Sometimes. When she wants to do things she wants to do, she’s an adult. Whenever she’s caught doing something she’s not supposed to do or something somebody else wants her to do, she’s a child.
She is now officially permanently banned from my computer for any reason. She’ll whine that she needs to use it for school (part time college). Tough shit. She has my old computer running AOL (for which she pays). She claims, of course, that it locks up all the time and she can’t go to the sites she needs (all lies). When I let her use my computer for “school”, she ends up looking for MP3s or hunting stuff (yes, she’s a hunter), of some such non-school related sites.
She’ll go to her mother (whining like a child, of course) to appeal to me to let her use the computer again. In the past, I have relented. Not this time. I refuse to cater to her inability to accept responsibility for her actions anymore.
She complains about the conditions here. She pays no rent. Contributes nothing to the household. She comes and goes as she pleases (as long as she checks in from time to time). She does have a job. The only thing she has to pay for is AOL, her land line phone, and her share of the car insurance (after she sold the car I gave her and bought a new one, I insisted she pay the difference in the coverage). A couple of months ago, she got a $100 speeding ticket. This put her in financial straits with us (welcome to the real world). We allowed her to catch up as she could. What killed me was when she went out and bought yet more hunting stuff! She had no money to pay us, however.
My wife agrees that she needs to grow up, but refuses to put her foot down (the kids are the only trouble spot we have in our marriage). Whenever I do, she gets upset. I hate being in that situation.
I might lighten up on the computer access if my stepdaughter will just admit she downloaded Gator. However, I know her too well to even believe she’ll do this.
