I've had a busy couple of days, gluing and sending out our thank you cards, picking up our honeymoon tickets and ironing on fabulously blinging "Mrs X" transfers onto my honeymoon clothes:


Don't be alarmed, I've only got the one, and I've only ironed it onto one black T-Shirt, which I plan to wear on the plane.

I am getting more excited by the day, and I can hardly contain myself. And we still have over two weeks to wait! I'm slowly starting to pull a few things together that I know I will need to pack; like travel detergent, shorts, dresses, sun cream, books... I'm only packing these things because the Great British summer has, once again, been a total washout this year, and I doubt I'll be needing many of my summer clothes before we leave.

But there's always hope, and I would love to be able to top up my tan before we leave - there's nothing worse than being pasty on the first day of your holiday; trying to disguise your milk bottle legs. I'm not as pale as they come; I generally classify myself as having a European colour - perhaps like those in the south of France - opposed to pale colour of my fellow English roses. Having said that; I'm well versed in holidaying with Hubby's family, who are lucky enough to live on the Med and soak up the summer sunshine from April through to October.

I'm also breaking in my white flip flops; the first of 2009, and I stepped in bubble gum already. Sad but true!

And on a final, rather sour note, my laptop has decided to re-acquire the virus it had on 11th July, and therefore is out of action again until Hubby can work out how to get rid of it. Pfft. I'm seriously unimpressed, because all of our wedding photos are on it, and I hadn't managed to get around to burning them yet! Nevertheless, I knew the signs this time, and as soon as it started happening again, I came offline and started a series of gruelling virus scans, which have continued through to this morning when I had to leave for work.

I just hope it's sorted before Saturday, because I'm not spending my birthday without an internet connection...

Virus Warning - I was sucked in, please don't let it happen to you

I thought I would post a warning about a virus, after my own laptop was infected last weekend. I pride myself on not being gullible to cons and scams, but this one had me fooled.

The virus is called PC Security 2009, and it embeds itself onto your computer without you realising. You soon find a little red cross icon on the bottom right corner of your screen. From this icon a message pops up warning you that your computer is infected, and that you should upgrade your antivirus in order to ensure these infections don’t become a threat to your computer.

This is a screen shot of what the virus looks like:


Unfortunately I couldn't find a screen shot of the warning messages, but it's similar to the pop up speech box that tells you when your wireless is not connected.

The infections the virus is warning you about are not real; this is simply the virus posting these messages. The messages soon come every couple of minutes, and make it very hard to use your computer without getting annoyed by them.

The virus also limits your online browsing. You can still view websites, but when you go to a new page, you may find a warning message urging you to upgrade your antivirus. It will give you two options; either upgrade to protect your computer, or continue browsing without upgrading. If you click to continue without upgrading, nothing happens. The web page you want will not load. The only way you can continue is to click to upgrade.

Once you do this, you will be taken to the PC Security 2009 website, where you can enter your credit card details in order to download a copy of the antivirus that will supposedly help you rid your computer of the apparent infections. Do NOT enter your credit cad details. I made the mistake of doing so, and I received no confirmation, no receipt; and I’d given them my mobile phone number too.

So, thinking it a little suspicious, I Googled the name of the site, and I found a list of sites warning against this virus, and detailing how to remove it from your system. Click the link to see the results of my Google Search (I promise it's safe to follow this link)

Seeing this, I then had to call my bank and put a stop on my credit card. Soon after this, a “system scan” began scanning the files on my computer, and it found over 700 imaginary infections. I say imaginary, because the infections aren’t really there; this is the virus making you think they’re there.

Within the hour I received a phone call from the hoax company, requesting more information, which this time I did not give. It took a good 6 hours to rid my computer of this virus, because it embeds itself in lots of different places, with lots of different files; so it’s hard to track down. I ended up downloading “AVG Free” to my computer, which managed to sort everything out.

Since Saturday I've been inundated with emails from the scammers, asking me to activate my membership. They also managed to debit my credit card of £55, which the bank is refusing to reimburse me, and I've received another couple of phone calls.

My poor judgement cost me £80, and my entire Saturday. I’m normally pretty smart with things like this, but this particular virus is designed to look exactly like Microsoft, so you think it’s authentic. Don’t be fooled by the same virus. If you find you have a virus on your computer, do not browse any sites with your, or any other person's personal details on (i.e. internet banking, emails or social networking sites).

Please forward this information to anyone who you think would benefit from this.