Bout of Books: Friday

~ Today's Books ~

 

 

~ Today's Statistics ~

 

Books I've read from:   Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Pages read today:  41

Books finished today:  This field is rapidly becoming redundant 

Running total:  0 books; 229 pages   

Non-reading progress:  A little Tweeting and blog-hopping, all very restrained for a change!  No movie again, which kind of sucks. 

Today #insixwords:  Reading steadily until malware swept in

~ Reading Notes ~

 

2:30pm

Another late first entry, I do apologise - but it was with good reason, I promise!  After the last few days of being sucked down the internet rabbit hole instead of getting stuck into my book, I thought I'd give myself a fighting chance by staying away from my laptop this morning.  I had another strange-bedreamed lie-in (yes, Miss Hanna, I maintain that 9:30am IS a lie-in!), had breakfast and got straight on with it.  I've still not read that much - I've been chatting to my grandmother, singing to myself, hoovering a little, and hanging out of the window trying to take a picture of our resident kestrel flying or hovering (I kept missing it taking off and just getting fetching pictures of empty twigs, oops), amongst other things - but I HAVE read another chunk of Jane Eyre.  I've stopped for a late lunch now, partially because I'm starving and partially because Jane and Rochester have moved from fireside flirting into one of their rather surreal half-amusing half-deadly serious moral debates, and it's turning my head in circles, which can mean only one thing... TIME TO IMBIBE MORE CAFFEINE.  Carry on!

 

 

7:00pm

My my, today has just flown by!  I've barely been online at all really - just a quick foray onto Twitter and an hour spent catching up on non-BoB-related blog posts from my blogroll - and I feel like I've read a lot, yet a quick page count leaves me at a miniscule 25 pages!  I can only conclude that all the banter and philosophical exchanges between Jane and Mr Rochester, some of which have required rereading to really catch their flow and meaning, have been as time-draining as they have been enjoyable!  I'm going to carry on for a while longer anyway - Jane's starting to fall in love, and I've just hit the "What the hell was that crazy laugh... do I smell smoke?" part, which is definitely one of the highlights of the book, so ON I SHALL GO!  Also, it's Friday night, so I'm thinking I might read for an hour or two more and STILL maybe watch a movie after.  *stifles tiny yawn*  I mean, I don't HAVE to go to bed by 11pm like some kind of book-wielding nun on my week off, do I?

 

 

2:00am

I did try to go to bed earlier, in the end.  That nasty wisdom tooth started gnawing through my face again, so I had painkillers and a cuppa and a cold pack thingy, and watched an episode of Family Guy (my movie plans were thwarted AGAIN by yet another badly-timed phone call, a distracting crossword and a sister determined to STOP me watching a DVD by bouncing on the bed talking about Despicable Me). 

 

I popped back online afterwards to catch up on Twitter etc before I switched off for the night, but my computer suddenly started to shut down, with a big warning filling the screen saying my computer had been locked down by the Metropolitan Police e-crimes department, with the name of my PC and system details, a long list of potential reasons why this might be happening (stuff like illegal music and movie downloading, viewing or distributing illegal porn or allowing someone to use your PC to spread viruses) and a warning that a case was being brought against me within 72 hours with varying levels of fines and jail time, unless I paid a £100 fine to unlock my PC.  I tried just switching the laptop off and back on again (classic panic response), but it wouldn't let me go beyond my password screen before the same warning appeared.

 

It was only when I was DONE having a heart attack that I started to think rationally, and not only realised that I don't have so much as iTunes on this laptop - it's too creaky to take it - but also that in no universe have I ever heard of paedophiles, hackers and illegal music maestros being shut down via a time-out and wiggling out of it with a £100 fine.  Also, I'm not in Datchet, even though all the spam I've ever received seems to think I am.  I ALSO remembered that I handily have my new laptop, set up and internet-ready, waiting for me in a drawer, so I Googled this bastard and found out that, as I suspected, it is a particularly nasty Trojan that's been mutating and spreading globally since 2011 or so, and now seems to be doing the rounds again in various forms, scaring people shitless wherever it goes.

 

Long story short, a couple of hours and a satisfying amount of PC magickery later, I'd managed to follow internet instructions to use the control prompt safety option on my laptop, run a trojan killer programme from my USB stick, and kick this thing back where it came from.  I'd never heard of it before, but now YOU have, so if it hits you you'll know not to panic!  There are a few mentions of it on Twitter, and the website I used to find out how to delete it had lots of comments from the last day or two, so I'm assuming it's having a bit of a surge at the moment.  On a side note, I've also never managed to get around one of these things myself before, so I'm actually quite proud of myself for walking myself through the steps and dealing with it!

 

Anyway, this HAS made me realise that it really is time for this laptop - with its dodgy volume controls, temperamental quirks and lapsed security software - to go to sledgehammered PC heaven at last.  I was hoping to hold out to the end of Bout of Books before I started making the leap, but I reckon if Hannah wants to spend some time with me on her day off tomorrow and watch a DVD or something, it's the perfect opportunity to do a final back-up, retrieve my favourites lists, delete my stuff and make the move to my new laptop.  Less reading then, I reckon - but it'll be worth it to have my security back!

 

Bedtime at laaaaast!