On facebook, I am a fan of several animal shelters, and recently, I also spent some time on petfinder, since my mother was "in the market" for a dog. I cannot believe the number of OLD animals that need to be re-homed. Who would give away a senior pet? A couple days ago, I got my haircut, and I noticed that my stylist had a flyer posted advertising a nine-year-old dog that was free to good home. I asked him about it. He said he didn't know the people, but a co-worker of his wife's was "downsizing;" the last kid had left for college and they were moving to a condo, and among the things they were shedding were their two dogs. He told me he had made it his mission to find new homes for them, and he'd already successfully placed the seven-year-old. This led to us exchanging how incredulous we are over such behavior, and how despicable such people are. (And people wonder why their adult children move far away from them and rarely visit. No mystery there!)

Speaking of facebook, full disclaimer is that I do appreciate it for the connections it has kept and made. I have a strict policy that I never friend or accept friend requests from current students. But what to do when someone I don't like sends a friend request? This has happened to me twice. Ignore is an option of course, but it still seems rude. It seems I have another moral dilemma, less important than yesterday's spider one.

I am still struggling with the laptop, but I made progress. Discovered what the problem is. It's bad, a rootkit virus. I am not giving up yet!* On a happier note, I solved the phone problem. They are giving me a "dry loop" for DSL, and a credit on the telephone back to February! So with the credit and a la carte DSL I won't have to pay anything for another two months. Yay!

From the "if we were real investors, we'd be trouble" file: about two weeks ago, we sold some collectible silver we had for a really, really, really long time. We knew the price was up, and it seemed like good timing. It had never been worth this much before, and for a significant period, it had been worth less than what we paid. We wound up making money on it, which was awesome. It paid for our Irene storm damage in Samsonville (lots of gravel). Was it ever good timing! Yesterday it went down 9 percent, and today it plummeted another 18 percent!

Finally: I received a link to this from Wooden Horse Publishing, in an email that warned and asked that recipients tell others: "Be careful if you write online and quote other sources, even in comments.  In a recent blog post we highlighted a company called Righthaven LLC - a business founded solely to monitor and sue small websites and blogs."

* Added: I think I fixed it! Cautiously optimistic. I have rebooted, and it's working! Now running another scan and preparing to create a restore point. Fingers crossed...if it's good to go at this point, it "only" took two days. However, no reformat/recovery needed. If I have indeed sorted it out, I will write more details and pointers, for the google searchers who land here in a panic, hoping to solve their terrible virus problem.