Iron Pol

I guess it's a good thing it's my "off" season.  My time off since completing Ironman has been busy.  Mostly busy with things that were neglected during the challenging summer of training.  You know, little things like yardwork, house work, and other similar tasks.

One of those "responsibilities" falls into the IS category.  At my church, mostly because of past efforts, the job of caring for the churches computer equipment has fallen on my shoulders.  It's usually no big deal, as we only have a few computers, and only one of them has a connection to the Internet.  The past week, that has been the concern.

When our pastor's computer was first purchased, I took charge of it for a few days, installed some top-tier anti-virus software, explained how to ensure it was updated, and set it up to update and scan automatically.  Unfortunately, I overlooked one small detail.  The computer spends most of its time disconnected from the Internet and shut down.

So, it was no surprise when, after hearing about pop-up and speed issues, that I discovered the last update to the anti-virus was some 34 months ago.  That was roughly the time it was installed.

This weekend has been dedicated to undoing the damage that has been done over the past several weeks.  The numbers I've been dealing with sound something like Ironman training and racing.  Numbers like 135.  That's the number of spyware programs identified on the first check.  Or 3:57.  That's how long the first deep anti-virus scan took to complete.

Currently, I'm going through what might be called a brick.  I have a series of four programs I'm running to try and root out the last of the errant files and programs.  Each takes several hours to run, and I try to minimize the transition between each stage.  Because let's face it, I'd like to get at least SOME sleep, this weekend.

And I have to get this resolved in the very near future.  It is only a few short days until I go into the winter training mode.  October is going to be "get back into the swing of things" month.  And November will be the second annual "Swim every day for a month" program.  December through April will be a series of six to eight week programs aimed at greatly improving my aerobic base while helping improve my run pace.

That will be difficult to do if I'm lugging a laptop around.  So, a word of warning.  Keep your anti-virus up to date.  It takes a REALLY long time to undo a few short hours of unprotected surfing.

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