Rainbows and virus

Thursday morning I plugged my laptop into a socket at my good friend and partner Steven's house (Danish Steven, not US Steve). I worked on one of our projects there all day and didn't notice anything wrong. When I sat down to work back home Friday morning everything was wrong. I had caught myself a bad infection of a virus/worm called W32/Fujacks, which had taken over the computer and done its best to infect most of my web projects as well as bogging down the machine, sending off my keystrokes, offering my CPU to bot-nets and what other malice it could perform. That in spite of me not doing anything dirty and having a firewall up-and-running - but no anti-virus software. I should say that this is my second attack in the almost 30 years I have worked with computers.

I spent the first part of Friday cleaning it (thanks Trend Micro Housecall and AVG!) to no avail. After having cleaned some 5,500 infected files I rebooted and just found another 1,300 files. Now a scan of my computers takes more time than I care to wait, so there was only one thing to do: start Housecall on all the computers in the house and go fishing!

My very good friend Henning was off work early, so we were on the road before the worst afternoon rush hour. We were ticking towards fishing water while anti-virus software was ticking through terrabytes of data on laptops, servers and workstations back home . I was supposed to be working, but honestly: the break was welcome!

The weather right now is scorching hot and the water is steadily heating up here in Denmark. Clear sun from a bright blue sky and no wind is not exactly the recipe for succes when fishing in the Danish salt, but we took the chance. We knew that we had to find fresh water and some commotion, so we aimed for one of the peninsulas sticking out into deeper water. Most days there is a fast current around these points, and this day would prove that to be true.

When we arrived there was a malstrom of current due to the incoming tide. The tide here is usually very low (a couple of feet when it's high), but it can still create some movement. We were alone on the spot, and I decided to get into the water next to the stony reef on the point, because we had seen and caught fish there before. Fishing on the side of a reef where the current presses in water is often a good idea, and this day was no difference. I saw fish within minutes in the shallow and fast moving water, and within a few casts I hooked a large fish.

It took off like a rocket, stripping out my loose line and running off with most of a WF line in one rush. It took a couple of similar runs before coming to hand. A hefty 7 lbs. rainbow - probably in the 24-26" range - could pose with me in the bright sun. A few pictures were taken before I released it. We of course fished the same spot all night, and Henning had several takes plus two nice fish in the hand in the rough current, while I had fun with my Burning Man popper, which lured two more rainbows to a chase in the surface. Unfortunately I lost them both within seconds. But it sure was fun to watch these large fish follow the fly and grab it in the surface!

10stille

10stille

When the current died, so did the fishing, and soon I was back in the virus lab. I let go of the keys at 3 in the morning, machines still working frantically to heal themselves.

I spent a better part of Saturday morning sleeping, woke up, had coffee while loading some new AV-software - and called Henning.

Me: "Recap?"
Him: "Sure!"

So off we went again. A little later, but still in good time.

Needless to say that we could not quite repeat the success from the day before, but I still managed to land two nice rainbows, which both fought like few other trout do. The beauty of the water, the great fishing, the sunset, the weather. Everything was just soothing to my virus-infected soul, and when I got back home all my checkups had returned reports of a healthy system with no virus. So Sunday was spent working (Henning called of course: "They're taking now..." but I resisted the temptation), and now Monday noon the weather is exactly the same, and no doubt that they are taking again... But it's all work and no play, I'm afraid.
Being a self employed consultant has its benefits (like going fishing Friday and Saturday afternoon), but also its drawbacks (like having to catch up Sunday and Monday).

10stille

10stille