Interesting thing on the way to the electronic forum . . .

Yesterday, on an otherwise lazy Sunday, I was noodling around on my laptop at home. I went to open up an article on the Strib homepage, and all of a sudden I had a request from an anti-virus service to update my settings and run a check. This anti-virus program told me that I was at risk of downloading a new and dangerous "Trojan" virus, and that I should upload the most recent version right away. It even provided the easy button to push to begin the download. Convenient, right?

Wrong!! After it began doing a few "fixes" to my computer, I realized that although the symbol for this anti-virus "service" and the colors/fonts for it were similar, I was actually beginning to download the virus itself! I called my resident tech guy (my system administrator-in-training husband) who came to the rescue, and prevented my computer from doing anything else harmful.

I was so surprised at how bamboozled I was! I never fall for this type of thing, and here was the perfect virus disguised as something to help me.

I guess I better be wary if anyone approaches me with the too perfect looking apple in the next few days, too. I would hate to end up like Snow White!

001010111100010100

As I sit here and try to write this, I am currently not a happy camper with some technology. In our program we are trying to use Infinite Campus to do our grading (it's a bit different than mainstream) and are running into many roadblocks. I can't think of a day when I haven't seen Jason Pelowski in our office trying to answer the new question of the day when it comes to the system. A fellow teacher reminded me that with innovation and improvements come change, but I'm not entirely sure I want this change. We are at the point where we are making fundamental changes to our program to suit the technology, and not the other way around. Isn't technology's purpose to make life easier? Shouldn't the issues we're having with the infernal campus be easily remedied because of this new fangled technology?

I can't really think of anything positive to say right now about technology--sorry! Maybe, too, it's because I've been teaching about the old ways in Russia. It seems like we're moving at breakneck speed into the age of technology and I'm feeling connected to the old, Russian serfs out there. Ugh.