I'm glad my friend is back home.

The weekend is over and a rather nice one it was. The awful weather that we were told would envelop us didn’t occur. Although it was Cloudy, it was relatively nice. Daughter Gator visited us along with her dog, and hers and ours just had a wonderful time chasing Momma Gator and DG around the yard. The girls had spent some time making plans of what has to be done in the yard.

But that was yesterday and today is the first day of my next weekend. Being retired, I’m generally free to do what I please every day. Ah, the beauty of retirement.

My best friend arrived safely back from Florida last night. He and his wife finished their trip driving to Maine from the Outer Banks in Virginia where they had visited his sister for a couple of days. So the snowbirds are back from more than three months enjoying the sunny south, except this year they had some pretty decent storms to contend with.

One reason I’m happy to have my friend back is he’s fearless when it comes to computers. I’m having a slight problem or two with mine. I need to rid myself of my allegiance to Norton protection. It doesn’t protect. One would think that just running the “remove programs” facility would take care of the problem. But it doesn’t. Norton doesn’t clean completely and leaves behind little registry entries that can raise havoc. This is where my friend comes in. He really doesn’t know a whole lot about registries, but, as I said, he’s fearless and will dive right in.

He’s also cleaned his computer of Norton and has an inkling of what to look for. That helps.

I’m not kidding about Norton’s not protecting my equipment. One day last week I ran a full scan of one of my computers using Internet Suite 2008. It found three tracking cookies that were easily deleted. Then I ran a full scan using a different program and it found 147 intrusions, including three that were identified as Trojans. The other program did clean them all out; at least it said it did. But it was then my final decision to end my many years relationship with Norton.

I’m also having trouble with my home network. That isn’t a nice thing for a retired network administrator to admit, but I like to chalk it up to changing times since I retired. Again, my fearless friend won’t hesitate to just dive in. He believes that the newest version of Norton is the root of my problems and thinks once that’s changed, the network will glow back to life.

I’m hoping he’ll be able to find time to spend here sometime in the next two or three weeks. He first will have to get his Maine routine back to normal, his home back to normal, and make visits to various places people have to visit after a quarter of the year away.

Friends are so good to have. Welcome home, by friend.

GiM