Re: Pro bono laptop repair, Monsieur Hire, and jam

I thought when I read the title that Bono opened a professional laptop
repair.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Johne Cook
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 2:25 PM
To: DADL (off topic)
Subject: Re: [DADL-OT] Pro bono laptop repair, Monsieur Hire, and jam

Like, U2's The Edge?

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


On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Mike Findlay
<[email protected]>wrote:

> Do you do the same work for folks who like the Edge?  ; - )
>
> Mike F.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Johne Cook <[email protected]>
> Sent: Mon, July 25, 2011 2:27:33 PM
> Subject: [DADL-OT] 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/REV
> IEWS/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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