Every once in a while, a client will send me a file I can't open. Ignoring the warnings from my system, I usually try at least once to open it in another program. If that doesn't work, I request that they send it to me in a different form. Yesterday, I received an email from the school that had an attachment with an unfamiliar suffix. As usual, I tried once to open it. What a mistake. It wrapped itself around every program on the computer, replacing every shortcut I had with itself. This was neither a worm nor a virus; just a basic program I didn't happen to have, but my computer was extremely interested in helping me open it, to the extent that it tried, literally, everything.So now I still have every program I've loaded, but I can't get to any of them except through extraordinary backdoor means.
Paul has never seen this before. After sitting and staring at it for a while, he thinks he may have a solution that doesn't involve dumping and rebuilding the hard drive, but it's gonna take all weekend.
I have learned a valuable lesson, pretty much at the cost of my sanity.
And because these things come in threes, yesterday we had no heat, and today my car won't start.
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