Pro bono laptop repair, Monsieur Hire, and jam

Some people mark the changing of time by the seasons, others, by the
beginning and ending of sports calenders. I mark the passage of time by how
often I am 'volunteered' to fix Alicia's laptop.

Alicia is sort of related. She is the younger sister of Mike Badtke, the
husband of my daughter, Ashlei. Alicia recently graduated from High School,
which means she still hangs onto the self delusion that she knows
everything. The fact that her mother, Cindy, approaches me on a semi-annual
basis to fix the laptop simply side-steps the issue, I think. Alicia doesn't
have to confess her ignorance or her (fairly common) internet indiscretions,
and I don't have to rub her nose in it. Cindy loves her daughter, and I
don't mind playing the geeky hero on occasion.

I was approached on Saturday to help Alicia get her new iPod Touch to work
with the laptop on Saturday. The presenting problem was simple: the iPod
could not be connected to iTunes, because iTunes wasn't connecting to the
iTunes store. I noticed that she had three different antivirus apps, all
expired. As I expected, none of them connected to the internet to receive
updates. While digging into the issue, I noticed that the weather app in the
sidebar also wasn't updating because it apparently couldn't connect to the
internet, either. However, her browsers connected to the internet just fine.
And then I noticed the Frostwire icon on the desktop. I looked at the amount
of battery she had left and closed the lid.

I said there were more things going on than I would have laptop battery
power available to fix that day, and asked for the family to take the laptop
back home and send it to church the following day with my daughter, Ashlei
(who lives near them and attends my church). I asked for them to send along
the new iPod and a power cord for the laptop.

The problem was simple - the laptop was infected by virii likely acquired
during the downloading of songs on Frostwire. (The Frostwire service itself
is just another P2P app, however, songs people download are frequently
infected and young downloaders don't always know how to protect themselves.)
I settled down for an afternoon of clearing out non-functioning programs,
disinfecting the laptop, and then installing new programs to keep her laptop
secure.

I spent much of the afternoon waiting for various lengthy processes to run;
I installed and loaded and ran and updated and immunized Spybot Search &
Destroy. I ran Malware Bytes. I unloaded all the non-functioning and
out-of-date antivirus apps and got one current one loaded. There were any
number of complete hard drive scans, both quick and full. There was a lot of
time to kill while her laptop was performing various and sundry tasks, and I
spent that time watching stuff. I got caught up with Suits (USA Network). I
went looking for a good noir mystery thriller to keep my mind engaged.

And that's how I found Monsieur Hire, the obscure French-subtitled film. It
cropped up in one of my Netflix searches, and was described as just weird
enough to sample. I have a thing for good noir, and sometimes even less-good
noir. I fired it up and watched the first five minutes, then five more, then
five more. What saved it was how it suggested suggestive scenes (if that
makes sense) without ever being explicit. This is not an overt film. I was
just curious to give it some time to develop.

I'm glad I did. Roger Ebert gave it four stars. I wish I'd thought to
research it first, because I could have perhaps committed fully to it
earlier, but as it was, it was on an every five minute bubble, forever at
risk being turned off in favor of something else (my back-up plan was to
finally watch Nic Cage in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which I still haven't
gotten around to seeing). There are times for mindless flicks, and times for
something with foreign subtitles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsieur_Hire
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900615/REVIEWS/6150303

Something socially aberrant happens, but it is so matter-of-fact that I kept
watching. The movie wasn't about a fetish, although a lesser film would have
been obsessed with one in its place. I thought I knew where the film was
going to go, and it kept subverting my expectations. The 'hero' wasn't
heroic, but was both completely sure of himself and completely vulnerable.
The girl wasn't a victim and yet willingly threw her at two completely
different men. The young man wasn't completely stupid nor predictable. The
inspector was a good man (or was he?) who had an interesting way of
conducting a murder investigation.

About halfway through, I realized with a start that I was hooked. Because of
the subject matter, I never would have sought out such a film, and yet, and
yet, and yet.

After watching my fair share of mindless CGI-laden summer blockbusters,
perhaps I was ready for such a different kind of film. I was most impressed
by what the film left out. It was an elegant little exercise, and I have to
say that after getting to the end, it really left me impressed, and (in a
way) entertained. It really was about what is, and isn't, love. With
subtitles.

Back to the laptop - strangely, McAfee turned out to be very effective
finding and removing viruses, but was too devoted to locking her system down
so tight that it wouldn't connect to the internet, the original problem I
was there to fix. I finally wiped McAfee back off her system and replaced it
with the free AVG, and all was good with the world. The afternoon turned
into twilight and I finally got the laptop back to the place where I was
able to connect iTunes to the internet to get her iPod Touch to work. By the
time I was done with everything else, that was almost an afterthought. It
was by far the easiest thing I did all day.

I arranged to meet Cindy at an Arby's restaurant to drop off the laptop.
When she pulled up, she asked how much I wanted. I demurred, as I always do,
invoking the 'family discount.' She smiled produced a small, heavy paper bag
containing two jars of home-made jam. The 'payment' didn't match the effort
or my time, but I was strangely touched. (As it happens, it's really great
jam, as only real home-made stuff can be. The love poured in helps in some
undefinable way.)

I went through the drive-through and splurged on some dinner for us and went
home to sit with Linda and catch up with Big Brother 13, a shared guilty
pleasure. I'm sure I'll hear from Cindy again about fixing Alicia's laptop,
likely in 2012. Who knows what new obscure treasure I'll dig up then.

Honestly, I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |
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