I Got The Koobfaced in Korea Blues

Hey folks. Let me start off by saying to all the people I infected with either my message that I had won a free Ipad or this one, "How's it going (your name)? Look at you in this video.. What are you doing? LOL!" I'm sorry. I got the second message from a guy on my list who I genuinely know. He's from Gwangju and I thought maybe he'd found the video of me "running to the hills" one night at Stompers in Itaewon. So I opened it. I didn't go to any page where it said to download anything and I didn't see any vid but I got the virus.

Not long after people were sending me messages that I had sent them a message saying I'd won a free Ipad. Then facebook completely crapped out so I couldn't answer these people and warn them not to open anything. Then today I got a mess. from a guy on my list who doesn't even know me saying, "???" in response to a mess he got from me saying, "How's it going, (his name)? Look at you in this video.. What are you doing? LOL!"

I can't even log in or out of facebook now. I go to the site and I get just the top line with the friend requests, messages and profile and such. But there's nothing below it AND none of that stuff works. Facebook is totally Koobed for me!

But that was not all this virus did! My computer slowed down to a crawl. Well, the internet did anyways. I could still watch dvd's and work offline with no trouble at all but the internet was useless. Not just facebook. I checked the processes with the old ctrl/alt/del and there were all kinds of processes running at 70,000 K, 80,000 K, even 100,000 K when usually most are using less than 10,000 K of memory. No wonder my computer was brutally slow!

So I lugged it over to Jacky's computers. He plugs it into his internet and it runs like a dream! I don't think he went to facebook though. But we checked the processes and they were down at 7000, 4000, 3000 etc. where they're supposed to be. Of course he wanted to tell me fifteen things it WASN'T. He said my vid. card fan wasn't working, (it's new), my vid card was burnt, my mother board was burnt, blah blah blah. I told him about the strange happenings on facebook and that system restore wasn't working. In fact I told him to try system restore about 10 times until I said, "FOR THE 10TH TIME TRY SYSTEM RESTORE!" So he finally did and it didn't work. Well of course THIS was my fault too. "You must have used it too many times," he accused. I told him I hadn't even used it once.

So I says, "This is a sign that Windows is deteriorating, right?" I knew it was. He agreed. I asked him how much his Kaspersky antivirus cd's were. 50 bucks. Then I asked how much to re-install Windows. 50 bucks. I asked if a facebook virus would disappear if he re-installed Windows. He said, "Definitely." I MADE him say "definitely" because, as I've written so many times before, Koreans will say "yes" when they have no business saying it. So I went with the re-installation.

Turns out I should have gotten BOTH. You see these Koobface viruses can be deleted with ordinary anti-viruses or by re-installing Windows. BUT, they get into your system restore and automatically restore your system to a time when you had them. Then they start screwing up your computer again. Pretty evil. Who are the scumbags who make these things? Whoever it was will be recruited very highly somewhere I'm sure.

Anyways, I found some instructions online that said I had to get an anti-virus so I downloaded a free Avast. Then I pulled the internet plug, went into start/my computer/properties/system restore tab and disabled the system restore. Then I restarted my computer in safe mode, (by banging away at F8 while it starts up), used the safe mode without net support and did a full system scan with Avast. It found some bad stuff. I can't remember what all the names were but I nuked most of it. One bug required a second restart and full system check to get rid of so I did that. Then I started in normal mode and did one more full check to make sure.

My internet is running just fine now. BUT facebook is still fubared. I've sent messages to them and they have promised to reply but I think there are probably a gozillion people who sent similar messages to I doubt they'll get back to me. I hope they solve the problem though. I miss facebook already. I still wanna wait for a while and see how well my internet maintains before I enable my system restore again.

But in other, more positive news I went to the interview in Youngju and it was fantastic! The trip there... not so much. If you look on a map it should take a couple hours to get from Pyeongtaek to Youngju but I took the train and let's just say it's not a very direct route. The guy at the train station said that to go to Seoul Station then take a subway to Chongyangni and get a train south from there would be the fastest way. It only took 6 1/2 hours. I was way late. But the interviewers didn't mind too much. Tim and Michael. Nice guys. They said several times during the interview, "This looks very good."

The deal is a great one and although the place isn't really near ANYTHING, I think I'll like it. Mountains all around and I saw some fishing stores in town. But before I get my hopes up I'm going to stop. I don't have the job yet.

So after the interview I took a bus from the college into the BUS terminal in Youngju. I figured that couldn't possibly be slower. I KNEW there were roads linking the two cities. So I asked for a ticket to Pyeongtaek. The buses don't go there. Closest is Suwon. I said that would be fine. Suwon is 15 minutes from Pyeongtaek on the subway or train. So I got my ticket and she says, "The bus won't be leaving for another 2 hours." So I asked if there were any buses going anywhere right away. There was one to Seoul. So I called my friend Guns in Seoul and he said he'd have some free time after his Valentine's date with his girlfriend so I decided to go have a beer with Guns. I said, "Kangnam Terminal?" She says, "No, Dong Seoul." That's East Seoul. On the other side of the city from where Guns was. But I said okay let's go.

It worked out okay. Guns' girlfriend's father came to see her so Guns could come out to play. We went to a little bar near his house called Uncle K's. Mr. Kang is the owner and has put out a few CD's. I think it's folk music. I didn't get to hear him play but he was a nice guy and played some songs we were requesting. He also had a few beers with us. Then Guns' roommate came for a few beers and we all slept at their place. They had to get up pretty early, poor guys, but I didn't get outta there till about 11. Made my leisurely way home and found that my internet was still slow. (I didn't know then about the Koobface virus). I asked the daughter of the landlord to call the internet company because even after reinstalling everything the internet at Jacky's was WAY better than mine. But then again, I remembered that toward the end of our squabble at Jacky's we checked the processes again and they were climbing up there. I don't think the net would have worked very long THERE either. Anyway, she comes over and says I should just unplug the internet and then plug it in again. And she's saying there's nothing wrong with the internet and I'm about at the end of my patience telling her how the other internet was good and mine is useless so I said, "Listen, listen, listen. It's no-" She interrupts me again. So I said, "No, you listen with your ears, not your mouth!"

I know, I know that was rude. But I was able to explain it to her so she trusted me and she agreed to call the company. They're coming tomorrow morning to look at it. THEN shortly after she left, and I smiled and thanked her, I started checking for fixes for the problems I had and came across the Koobface virus fixes. And after doing the Koobface boogie for a few hours, taking out garbage, washing dishes and cleaning up during long virus scans I now am up and running again. I don't think I need that internet guy to come tomorrow. But how am I going to tell the landlady's daughter to cancel without looking like a heel? Especially after that ears and mouth crack. Should I leave a post-it note on my door? "internet okay. no need for repairs" Should I just act surprised when the net works fine when he gets here? Or maybe I'll just tell him what it is. Maybe he'll know something about the Koobface virus.

Buuuuuuuuut if I ask him if he can fix the Koobface virus, whether he can or not he'll say, "OH sure! Here's what you have to do..." and he'll start banging away at my computer changing all kinds of things not making anything better but leaving little computer footprints that I'll be fixing for a few months. It has happened pretty much every time a Korean has touched my computer. They can't help themselves! I swear! It's like a disease for them. And so is say yes now and try to figure it out later.

So it's good to have my computer working again. But it would be even better to have facebook too. I hope it's not lost forever. It would be nice to put a comment on my facebook homepage apologizing for passing on Koobface and add a link to this entry, but no can do. It seems everything linked to my email address is screwed. Including, believe it or not, this blog! I can go to blogspot.com and write new entries and edit and everything but I can't go to http://koreanchronicles.blogspot.com. It has to do with cookies I think because if I go to anonymouse.org and type in my blog website it works.

So what I'm gonna do is try another computer and see if I can access my facebook page and blog website from it. If so then I may have to make a choice again: have Windows re-re-installed or buy the antivirus. Until then I'll try cleaning my cache and disk and defrag and do an adware scan.

Yeah I got the... Lord you know I got the... feel like I never gonna lose... never gonna lose the Koobfaced in Korea Blues.