Hello Melanie, you've got a VIRUS!!!

PURE, UNADULTERATED HORROR!!!
That is what you feel, when the System Alert balloon on the Desktop of your computer flashes. Big, bright, yellow, a triangle with an exclamation mark. Yup, that one.

Two years of Computer Science, and yet, it all proves useless, when a big, bright, yellow triangle is flashing away.
Then again two years of Computer Science, isn't of course, two whole years, since we bunked more often than we should have. But if I may say, a text book, again, does not help when a big, bright, yellow triangle is flashing away!!

Our trusted home computer, has suffered much, in the one year, that it has been left in my care. I'm pretty sure, it would rather have my brother Cliff, stay home, instead of miles away, just so that it was spared this routine torture of an anti-virus going through all it's thousands of files and folders.

Clifford is known to be quite the computer whiz, keeping our computer clean and free from viruses, even seeing the signs, much before anything serious happens.
And then there is me, who thinks the computer is just having a bad day, when it works slower, or hangs from time to time. And mind you, I'M the on who's "studied" the subject of computers :P

The last time, I had to call Ashish to nurse my computer back to health. He did. It took a couple of hours, over a span of three days to fix it. Yes, the problem was THAT huge. "C: drive" was totally destroyed or some such thing. He made sure to make fun of me and let me know what a complete idiot I am. "Who uses the internet, without having a proper anti-virus"....Ahem...ME?!?!

And yesterday, this "Virus Heat" thing, told me I had 174 virus threats on my PC and that I should register and clean it up. I ran the anti-virus I already had and it found only 3. I began to hyperventilate, wondering what was wrong. Keep in mind, this time Ashish is all the way in Hyderabad, hence he's unavailable. I make a coupla long distance calls to Charlene, who by the way, was in a hospital delivery room, or somewhere close to one. In case you're wondering, no, I wouldn't be crazy enough to ask a woman in labour, for advice on how to clean up a virus. "ehh Charlene, I know your a little busy right now, but I was just wondering, could you tell me how....*in the background* "Once more Charlene, one more, one, two, three..PUSHHH!!" Hmmm come to think of it, that would be hilarious. But, no, Charlene's cousin, Jenny, was having a baby. Not that you need to know, but Jenny had a baby boy :)
So Charlene tries to figure out what I'm babbling about. (I tend to do that, even more so, when there's a big, bright, yellow triangle flashing away..
Sadly Charlene was unable to make any sense of my nonsensical babble.

So next I decide to do something on my own. What a BAD idea!! This'll never work!! Oh by the way, during all this time, the warning continues to pop up on the screen at regular intervals, like the boogie man out of nowhere...."MWHAHA, i got you now, lets corrupt some files"

And then! Thank God for the internet, it might give you viruses and everything, BUT, you can also talk over long distances, with brothers who live in Dubai!! I frantically type out everything I have come to learn about this wretched boogie man, and all the symptoms my computer seems to display, while at the other end, Cliff does is research on what exactly could be causing this sudden outburst of big, bright, yellow triangles...

And it has to be said, it took him just a couple of minutes to figure out what was wrong. Which leads me to believe, either he's really good at this, or I'm just plain stoopid!
FINALLY, it turns out "Virus Heat" WAS the virus, and was trying to trick me into registering for the ANTI-VIRUS, which claimed it could get rid of the 174 viruses, fake ones that too, that were supposedly attacking my computer, which would in fact, be the very VIRUS that would cause more problems..
Yeah...ahem...I was kinda stupid enough to fall for that trick...ahem...

So finally, after numerous instructions, and restarting my computer in "safe mode" (yes, I have learnt, that you can actually do that) I was finally able to rid my poor computer of the plague, and big, bright, yellow triangles finally stopped flashing...phew!

What have I learnt after all this you ask?
I need to update my anti-virus, and QUICK!!