Sure, no sooner do I finally shake this cold that’s been gobbling away at my energy and disposition for the last two weeks, than I come under attack from another virus. This one, though, was aimed at my computer..not my body. Ever since the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I, like most of you, have been dumbstruck by all the fascinating yet tragic images coming out of the disaster area. It was while searching through some of those images on Google that my laptop screen suddenly erupted with warnings that I was under attack by all the “wares” (adware/spyware etc.) designed by evil malicious techno terrorists who get their jollies by shutting people’s computers down and locking them up tight. When this happened once before, I made the mistake of clicking on a windows that popped up offering to free my machine of the assailant only to discover that IT was part of the virus too and all I had done was to imbed the bugs deeper into the bowels of my little laptop requiring Keloland’s I.T. guy a couple days to exterminate. I know, some of you are thinking, hey Doug, don’t you know that a virus and malware are two different things? Yes, but I could care less. Oh, wait..I COULDN’T care less. Aside from a few basics, I don’t know..or care..very much about computers at all; at least not how they function. That became painfully evident last night when I decided to rent the big hit movie from last year, “The Social Network.”
It’s the story of Mark Zuckerberg..the kid who founded (or co-founded or stole) Facebook and became the world’s youngest billionaire. I suppose the film deserves all the accolades it received but to be honest, most of it was, for me, like watching a foreign language movie without the subtitles or listening to someone read the owner’s manual of a Hewlett Packard PC for a couple hours; boring unless you’re a geek.
But you have to credit that same technoligy young guys like Zuckerberg invented with providing all of us a chance to witness one of the world’s great tragedies, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, like never before as victims record the apocalyptic events on their high definition home cameras and phones.
It’s incredible how we’ve been able to sit in front of our TV watching Japanese office workers scramble for safety as their buildings shake and sway on their foundations. Then see businesses, cars, homes and even people picked up and swept away by a raging wall of water that followed the force 9 earthquake. It all seemed oddly familiar to me until I realized it looks just like the special effects of a Hollywood disaster movie..only this is all too real.
Anyway, it appears as though many parts of Keloland are in for another unfortunate close encounter with flooding rivers and streams as winter leaves one last calling card before making its good-riddance exit. I read in the paper that we could be in for the worst flooding since 1969. I don’t think you have to go that far back. 1997 rings the bell as the soggiest spring I’ve ever seen. Parts of Eastern and Northeastern South Dakota, especially Day and Brown Counties, still haven’t recovered from that one.
Let’s hope that in a month from now, the waters will have receded without causing too much damage, farmers will be itching to get on with Spring planting, crabapple trees will be starting to bloom, yards will be turning green and filled with robins pecking away at earthworms just below the surface, the golf courses will be open and I’ll have run out of excuses for not taking the Christmas lights down.