obfuscational hazard

It’s amazing how awful you can feel after four hours of sleep, Monkey Keys. Sure my PC was still in pieces all over the drawing room floor, but that didn’t stop me from finishing game night. The loaner PC I had been forced to use only served as a reminder of how imperative it was that I revive my poor lost computer.

January 26, 2010: Hour 44

The workday was a miserable mess. My discombobulated head floated about the office searching for a mental pillow. My failure was nibbling behind my ear with too much incisor to be considered pleasant. The boot disk, the last vestige of hope I had for detonating this insipid house, had failed. It seemed I would be forced to format the entire drive and lose everything.

“Never.”

Excuse me?

“Come on, Dylan old buddy. This is YOU you’re talking about. Never say die, fight to the end, something something cliché! Are you seriously going to let a little house in the middle of the highway stop you from saving all your stuff?”

But I’ve tried everything, Motivation Key.

“Did Winston Churchill say he had tried everything when Reagan told him of the Death Star? Never. When the Spanish told him the earth was flat, did Isaac Newton gravitate to the bar? Never. Did Brittany Spears stop singing when she got fat? Did dinosaurs stop scaring after meteor-ed flat? Did Lou Gehrig stop playing because he corked his bat?”

Never!

“You can say that again. Now go out there and DESTROY HUGEPOS!”

I will, and thank you, Motivational Key!

January 27, 2010: Hour 78

As motivated as I was, there was nothing I could do until Wednesday. Work and life kept me from even attempting to dislodge HUGEPOS. This was probably for the better as HUGEPOS and Fred were still honeymooning, and no one wants to see that.

I went back to the drawing board. Why were these commands not working? There must be a REASON HUGEPOS was blinking repeatedly at me with the brain damaged look of its own offspring conceived with Fred.

I recalled reading earlier about how my hard drives were too newfangled for HUGEPOS to understand them. Several folks had said there was an update for HUGEPOS so it could learn how to read my hard drives. Perhaps, if I could upgrade HUGEPOS, I could then make another wrecking ball disk and blast the house in the middle of the highway to pieces.

January 27, 2010: Hour 79

Upgrading most software requires simply downloading a small patch. It normally takes about 30 seconds. If you’re updating a HUGEPOS (Norton, Windows, Steam, etc.) you are forced to use a BIGGER POS proprietary update utility. This inevitably will get lost on its search through the internet, and won’t find a thing. It was therefore no surprise at all when I clicked the HUGEPOS update button and…

“It blinked repeatedly at you with the brain damaged look of the paint huffing inventor of Symantec Update?” You guessed it, Quick to Quip Key. Norton’s website had a link to download an updated uninstall tool as well. Clicking on this resulted in… well… I’m sure you can guess.

If I was going to update HUGEPOS, I’d have to find the update files on some random blog or forum.

January 27, 2010: Hour 80

It was starting to look like a hopeless pursuit. I scoured forum after forum only to find dead links that had been abandoned years ago. HUGEPOS was nearly lost to the annals of forgettable software. People had moved on. There were newer, even more worthless Norton products to vent about. My little house problem had been forgotten. Then I found the most beautiful blog I’ve ever seen. It didn’t have a flashy background, and it had no pretty banner. My salvation came in the form of a white background with black Chinese text simply called Gary’s Glog.

I don’t know who Gary is, but I would like to shake his hand. He had the two files I needed to update HUGEPOS when nobody else did. I am not fluent in Chinese, but I have to assume his blog entry on that day in 2008 read something similar to the following:

I’ve finally fixed GIANTTURD! I had to update it first, which proved to be a nearly impossible task. If anyone two years from now falls victim to this same insidious trap, there’s no WAY they’re going to find these two files. I am therefore going to post them on my blog, and ensure they stay there until the end of time to help pay it forward.

Heed my warning people of the internet; do NOT under ANY circumstances install GIANTTURD. If you can’t read Chinese, go find someone to translate this page for you before doing anything that would build an obnoxious sandcastle on the beach between you and the surf. Good luck, and may the force be with you.

- Gary

If only I had followed Gary’s advice, all of this could have been avoided. I installed the two updates without a problem in less than a minute. I then made my wrecking ball floppy disk with my borrowed USB floppy drive.

I gingerly plugged the floppy to my battered PC. This was my last chance. If this disk failed, my PC would be doomed. I took a deep breath, and powered the machine on.

It blinked… once. Then I could see the house in the middle of the highway before me. HUGEPOS smiled in the window. That happiness suddenly turned to fear. It turned to terror. I was in the middle of the highway in an M1 Abrams tank. I was grinning ear to ear.

HUGEPOS screamed and ran to the kitchen.

“Fred, Dylan’s found a way in! He’s going to kill us all!” Fred’s vision darted to the front window and my incoming armor.

“Quick, darling. head out the back! I’ll hold off this loser!” HUGEPOS kissed Fred, and ran for the back door. Fred grabbed his M72 LAW and kicked down the front door. “Hey pig! You think you can get through this house? Smoke you!” He loosed his rocket, but my depleted uranium armor easily deflected it. His cheap plastic computer case, on the other hand, did not offer him the same protection from my tank. A moment later, there was a crater where Fred once stood.

HUGEPOS ran out the back.

“Hey, Dylan!” she called over the house. “It looks like I’m gonna make it away! I’m gonna spread this same terror to the next unsuspecting sap, and there ain’t a thing you can do!”

“Maybe not, but I can.” HUGEPOS whirled around in time to see Gary’s menacing glare. His jian was raised high above his head in killing position. “I couldn’t kill you two years ago, but you’re not getting away this time!”

“Gary, NO!” HUGEPOS screamed. The protest was a short one. A moment later, HUGEPOS fell lifeless to the ground.

Gary sprang atop my tank and turned to me with a smile.

“I guess this is it,” He said looking back to the little house in the middle of the highway.

“It sure is…” I fired one high explosive round from the tank’s cannon. The little house shattered into flaming splinters that showered the air like stars on a clear night. As the smoke and debris dissipated, I could see ahead of me. The path was clear. My stuff was safe.

My PC booted into Windows for the first time in four days. It was over.

January 27, 2010: Epilogue

I don’t think I’ve ever uninstalled software that quickly after booting, Monkey Keys. I made sure every last shred of HUGEPOS was properly purged. Never again will a Norton product grace my hard drive. One 30 second Google later and I found five more free programs that would do the exact same thing. These were all made within the last few years.

“There’s one thing that still bother’s me, Dylan.” What’s that, Scooby Key?

“Couldn’t you have just booted with a Windows CD and done a system restore?” I blinked repeatedly at the Monkey Key…

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 1:50 am and is filed under rant, saga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.