My friend is trying to turn me into a member of Geek Squad

I have been pretty quiet this week because my laptop was out of commission for a couple of days this week.  One of my virus scans detected a worm attached to a file in another one of my anti-virus softwares.  Of course, that led to panic when another tech person I consulted said it must be pretty bad considering where it is attached.  The advice given there was to go to a "professional", like commercial tech support.  And to think that I came across 8 different topics I wanted to blog about that day!  Hmph!

To make the long story short, I ended up begging/bribing/cajoling asking my friend Rob for help.  Rob is one of those amazingly talented "Mr. Fix-It"s.  There does not seem to anything that he cannot fix.  Really!  So Rob spent a lot of time scanning my hard drive and then refining my laptop's performance the very next day.  And what you know?  There is no virus (my virus scanner gave me a false positive) and the sluggishness of the last couple of weeks (or is it months?) is gone!  

And Rob's patience in trying to teach me about technology -- words cannot describe how painful it must be to teach a tech-phobe like myself.  Truly, I am very happy to just use the programmes.  I am perfectly happy not having to know anything more about electronics and technology (though electronic and techno are a separate matter...)  So what did I learn from the Learned One of Technology anyway?  Let's see what I remember...

• How to use my new softwares for anti-virus/-spyware, registry cleanups, repairs, etc.
• How to stop programmes from auto-running (and sucking up all my power!)
• A rather impressive browser called Opera (I might have to switch from Mozilla Firefox!)
• Something(s) about Linux
• Something about unlocking cell phones
• Something about video editing
• Something about converting analog to digital (video/cassette tapes to DVDs/CDs) but we want to record through analog to digital to warm up the sound
• Something about data backups, including hard drive images, and comparing backup tapes to other forms of backup
• Something about WordPress (Oh, can I mention that here??)
• Something about...

 So how did I repay my friend?  With food, of course!

Really, I cannot thank you enough Rob!!  You're awesome!!  Thanks!