More bugs

Neighbor dropped in saying his laptop was sluggish. Usual routine pulls up some interesting spyware and tracking cookies...usual stuff more or less. Noticed his firewall was shut off, which was one of the bug's doing no doubt. The fun part was that it took 3 programs to clean out all traces of the infections, and to add to that, a number of bugs seemed to be in software that came pre-installed from HP. Yet another reason to be critical of any trial software one finds pre-installed with a new computer. Returned it to him with a clean bill of health and am ready for some seltzer. He tried giving me some money for the work, but I'm not comfortable with that yet. Still worry that any computer I touch is going to turn into a smouldering pile of debris the second they take it back and turn it on.
I'll keep the Dorm Room I.T. free for now.

All in all a successful night and once again my free cocktail does the trick.