How to waste an afternoon
Oct. 15th, 2004 02:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2I got so much accomplished yesterday, getting rid of my old car and getting a new one. Mind you, North End Auto hasn't called me to tell me what they did with my old car yet, so I need to get ahold of them. I need to file that report that I've turned it over to someone else.
Thursday I was planning to get several more things done. One was to contact my insurance company and let them know about my new wheels. Another was to get an oil change for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geojlc's car. A third was to get a good cd wallet or holder for all of those cdr's that I pulled out of my Saturn. In my Saturn, there was a holder thing in between the two seats that held cds nicely. In my PT Cruiser they were sliding around on the passenger seat -- I had no convenient place to put them.
But another thing that I wanted to do was to make a new cd for my new car. I'd been thinking of songs that should be played in my PT Cruiser, and had composed a list of what I wanted. All subjective, of course, but I wanted some blues, some bluesy rock, some old-school rock, and whatever I felt was a nice tune to play as I drove my cruiser down the street. Or just songs that I liked. Whatever.
So I got on my computer and started assembling my cd. One of the songs I wanted was "Touch of Grey" by the Grateful Dead. I'm not a huge Grateful Dead fan as a rule, but I've always really liked the easy-going rambling nature of their one big top 40 hit.
The problem? I don't own a copy of it. I thought I at least had an mp3 version on my hard drive, but I didn't. I own a 45 record of it, but of course that didn't help much. I had also thought I might own it on some cd somewhere, but as it turns out, I don't own any Grateful Dead cds. (I own two Grateful Dead tribute cds however... don't ask me how that works).
My first thought was to head over to Silver Platters and get a cd with that song on it. My second thought was that I could probably download it online somewhere. I try to avoid all the peer-to-peer stuff as a rule, since it's a great way to get a virus on your computer, and anyway it is technically illegal (but I don't really have a problem with sharing music between friends... or downloading from my friend's private and very safe personal server). But anyway, I started looking.
It seems like the Grateful Dead are pretty happy to spread their music about on the internet, and damn the record companies. Not really that surprising, considering the band. Their song "Touch of Grey" has been offered for free on the internet in the past and downloaded a ton, but I could only find pages that talked about this, or pages that I had to join the site in order to download anything.
Then I found a site called NegativeBeats, not to be confused with NegativeBeat, which I discovered later and is a legitimate site. NegativeBeats also appeared to be a legitimate site with a lot of downloads for the taking, but as soon as I hit the site I was bombarded with requests to install some sort of plugin. I kept saying no... but further into the site where I was ready to download the song I wanted, there was an explanation that their plugin was necessary to prevent people from remote-linking to their downloads, or something like that. So basically, I got stupid for a moment and believed their little story, and clicked yes to install their plugin.
It (of course) did not do what it said it was going to do... it didn't appear to do anything at all. But IE started freezing up, I couldn't get my download, and after I'd rebooted my computer (it had to update my files), I had invasive adware/spyware running. I confirmed this pretty quickly because I got a popup ad as soon as I opened IE, and it opens on my own web page. My own web page does not generate popups.
So... after confirming that I really couldn't download the song anyway, I left Spykiller running and drove to Silver Platters.
They had a new cd by Hem out. I snapped that up. They had a new cd by Cake out. I grabbed that. I found that the only Grateful Dead cd I could buy that had the studio version of Touch of Grey was a greatest hits cd that sold for a steep price ($19), but what the heck, if I'm only going to own one Grateful Dead cd, it might as well be a well-assembled greatest hits cd.
After careful consideration I put the Cake cd back (will have to get that later) and bought the other two. Then I headed back home.
Spykiller had found seven things it wanted to kill. When I told it to kill them, it did an unusual thing. It told me that some of the spyware was currently running, and I needed to reboot the computer in order to kill all of it. So I clicked yes.
When the computer came back up, Spykiller did not load as it usually does. This also seemed strange. I brought it up and ran it again, but it could find nothing more wrong with my system.
In the meantime I got a strange system message that some program I had never heard of had been deleted by a third party software, and did I want to reinstall it, which required an internet connection? The only things that had been deleted by a third party program to my knowledge were the spyware programs that Spykiller had just zapped. So I said no.
Next I fired up AdAware and ran it. It came up with 80 things to kill. That was a lot. Some of them may have been lying around on my computer for a few weeks since the last time I ran AdAware, but most of this was new and not just hit cookies or whatever in my Temp Internet folder. So I zapped them all, and then ran updates to AdAware, and then ran it again.
In between, I was able to assemble my Cruiser cd, and listened to it on the drive to work and back home again. When I got home, AdAware had found 83 more things to kill. I killed them too. Then I ran it again. And again. And then I rebooted and ran Spykiller again (which loaded properly like it normally does).
AdAware didn't find anything the two times before the reboot, and Spyware found nothing after the reboot. Things seemed normal again, but I ran AdAware one more time... and it found something else, a registry key. Grrrr. Not sure what to do next, it obviously is hiding somewhere and popping up again when I reboot.
Anyway, for the curious, here's my PT Cruiser cd as nearly as I can remember:
Shake 'Em On Down - RL Burnside
New Orleans Is Sinking - The Tragically Hip
3.2 Flue - Splitlip Rayfield
You'll Be Mine - Howlin' Wolf
Strychnine - The Sonics
I'm Gonna Leave You - Queens of the Stone Age
Touch of Grey - The Grateful Dead
Nirvana - The Cult
One of My Kind - Concrete Blonde
Special Rider Blues - Blue Mountain
Pauper's Grave - Rez Band
All I Want - Kenny Brown
The Crossroads - Rush
High On A Mountaintop - Blood Oranges
Mr. Pinstripe Suit - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Shooting For The Moon - Charlie Musselwhite
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Dying Man's Plea - Mavis Staples
Red Shoes - Chris Thomas King
Hate To Say - The Hive
Thursday I was planning to get several more things done. One was to contact my insurance company and let them know about my new wheels. Another was to get an oil change for
geojlc's car. A third was to get a good cd wallet or holder for all of those cdr's that I pulled out of my Saturn. In my Saturn, there was a holder thing in between the two seats that held cds nicely. In my PT Cruiser they were sliding around on the passenger seat -- I had no convenient place to put them.But another thing that I wanted to do was to make a new cd for my new car. I'd been thinking of songs that should be played in my PT Cruiser, and had composed a list of what I wanted. All subjective, of course, but I wanted some blues, some bluesy rock, some old-school rock, and whatever I felt was a nice tune to play as I drove my cruiser down the street. Or just songs that I liked. Whatever.
So I got on my computer and started assembling my cd. One of the songs I wanted was "Touch of Grey" by the Grateful Dead. I'm not a huge Grateful Dead fan as a rule, but I've always really liked the easy-going rambling nature of their one big top 40 hit.
The problem? I don't own a copy of it. I thought I at least had an mp3 version on my hard drive, but I didn't. I own a 45 record of it, but of course that didn't help much. I had also thought I might own it on some cd somewhere, but as it turns out, I don't own any Grateful Dead cds. (I own two Grateful Dead tribute cds however... don't ask me how that works).
My first thought was to head over to Silver Platters and get a cd with that song on it. My second thought was that I could probably download it online somewhere. I try to avoid all the peer-to-peer stuff as a rule, since it's a great way to get a virus on your computer, and anyway it is technically illegal (but I don't really have a problem with sharing music between friends... or downloading from my friend's private and very safe personal server). But anyway, I started looking.
It seems like the Grateful Dead are pretty happy to spread their music about on the internet, and damn the record companies. Not really that surprising, considering the band. Their song "Touch of Grey" has been offered for free on the internet in the past and downloaded a ton, but I could only find pages that talked about this, or pages that I had to join the site in order to download anything.
Then I found a site called NegativeBeats, not to be confused with NegativeBeat, which I discovered later and is a legitimate site. NegativeBeats also appeared to be a legitimate site with a lot of downloads for the taking, but as soon as I hit the site I was bombarded with requests to install some sort of plugin. I kept saying no... but further into the site where I was ready to download the song I wanted, there was an explanation that their plugin was necessary to prevent people from remote-linking to their downloads, or something like that. So basically, I got stupid for a moment and believed their little story, and clicked yes to install their plugin.
It (of course) did not do what it said it was going to do... it didn't appear to do anything at all. But IE started freezing up, I couldn't get my download, and after I'd rebooted my computer (it had to update my files), I had invasive adware/spyware running. I confirmed this pretty quickly because I got a popup ad as soon as I opened IE, and it opens on my own web page. My own web page does not generate popups.
So... after confirming that I really couldn't download the song anyway, I left Spykiller running and drove to Silver Platters.
They had a new cd by Hem out. I snapped that up. They had a new cd by Cake out. I grabbed that. I found that the only Grateful Dead cd I could buy that had the studio version of Touch of Grey was a greatest hits cd that sold for a steep price ($19), but what the heck, if I'm only going to own one Grateful Dead cd, it might as well be a well-assembled greatest hits cd.
After careful consideration I put the Cake cd back (will have to get that later) and bought the other two. Then I headed back home.
Spykiller had found seven things it wanted to kill. When I told it to kill them, it did an unusual thing. It told me that some of the spyware was currently running, and I needed to reboot the computer in order to kill all of it. So I clicked yes.
When the computer came back up, Spykiller did not load as it usually does. This also seemed strange. I brought it up and ran it again, but it could find nothing more wrong with my system.
In the meantime I got a strange system message that some program I had never heard of had been deleted by a third party software, and did I want to reinstall it, which required an internet connection? The only things that had been deleted by a third party program to my knowledge were the spyware programs that Spykiller had just zapped. So I said no.
Next I fired up AdAware and ran it. It came up with 80 things to kill. That was a lot. Some of them may have been lying around on my computer for a few weeks since the last time I ran AdAware, but most of this was new and not just hit cookies or whatever in my Temp Internet folder. So I zapped them all, and then ran updates to AdAware, and then ran it again.
In between, I was able to assemble my Cruiser cd, and listened to it on the drive to work and back home again. When I got home, AdAware had found 83 more things to kill. I killed them too. Then I ran it again. And again. And then I rebooted and ran Spykiller again (which loaded properly like it normally does).
AdAware didn't find anything the two times before the reboot, and Spyware found nothing after the reboot. Things seemed normal again, but I ran AdAware one more time... and it found something else, a registry key. Grrrr. Not sure what to do next, it obviously is hiding somewhere and popping up again when I reboot.
Anyway, for the curious, here's my PT Cruiser cd as nearly as I can remember:
Shake 'Em On Down - RL Burnside
New Orleans Is Sinking - The Tragically Hip
3.2 Flue - Splitlip Rayfield
You'll Be Mine - Howlin' Wolf
Strychnine - The Sonics
I'm Gonna Leave You - Queens of the Stone Age
Touch of Grey - The Grateful Dead
Nirvana - The Cult
One of My Kind - Concrete Blonde
Special Rider Blues - Blue Mountain
Pauper's Grave - Rez Band
All I Want - Kenny Brown
The Crossroads - Rush
High On A Mountaintop - Blood Oranges
Mr. Pinstripe Suit - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Shooting For The Moon - Charlie Musselwhite
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Dying Man's Plea - Mavis Staples
Red Shoes - Chris Thomas King
Hate To Say - The Hive
