MERVERNATION News

4/28/99
Virus or Coincidence?
on Monday, April 26th, and possibly every 26th of every month there after, a virus called CIH was supposed to come to its rather destructive life. starting with a hard drive wipe, and then a bios buzz, your computer would be left unbootable. this is supposed to be a WIN 95 and 98 virus only. not NT
heres what happened to me on monday.... I went home from work to load up some more software on 3 out of my 7 computers. I turned the 3 systems on, and went to get a drink. my systems ALL have a boot manager. they boot to DOS 6.22 by default unless instructed otherwise within 5 seconds of the boot menu. if a selection is made, then you can go to 95. when I come back, one of the computers is not running. I opened it up, and smelled something burning. it was that typical burnt resistor smell. so I changed out the power supply and still had nothing, then noticed a crispy looking chip on the motherboard itself. bummed out of my skull, I was on the phone with a friend and he mentioned this CIH virus. believeable only because of the day this happened, I figured that was the problem. So I boot up my main system, and play need for speed 3 for a while, after about 15 minutes, the thing shuts itself off on me. I check the power cords, etc,... nothing. so now I am worried. my friend brings over his newest virus scan which he had used to kill this virus on other systems. we ran it on my leftover systems and found nothing. I do have a network installed. I then took out my old 486/100 board and fired up a temporary system, and hooked up the hard drives out of the 2 systems that got wacked. ran the virus scan on them and nothing was found. I was also able to read the data on the drives. they were also still bootable. I took the power supply out of my main system and checked it out. its fried. now I have 2 computers dead, 1 motherboard fried, and the other with the supply AND board fried. was this the virus... I highly doubt it now... 1, would it do damage to other chips than the BIOS, and 2 would it happen in DOS 6.22...?
what happened? I can only assume that I had a power surge. its the only thing I can think of that would do this... but I still feel uncomfortable because I have 4 out of the 7 systems on an APC UPS. the 2 systems that got smacked, were both on that UPS. APC first of all, I wouldnt think, would let a surge through, and second, if it did, why didnt it take the other systesm with it? not that I am complaining... just wondering. I ordered 2 motherboards, and hopefully will be able to re-use the CPUs and RAM, and have my network up and running again.
If anyone at all out there reading this page knows anything about the extent of the damage of the CIH or other virus patterns of the same destructive nature, please e-mail me and shed some light on this subject. I would surely appreciate it.... I will update the page tomorrow and indicate weather or not I got those systems running again. I am posting this update from work.

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4/22/99
There hasnt been a whole lot to post on here. I got a few cool CDs the other day, one mixed by MoonTribe and the other was part of the Trance Acid Experience. this one was #1 mixed by DJ Micro, and #2 which I already had, was mixed by DJ Hardware. I also finally got an e-mail of confirmation from Blue Room reguarding my order. the address I gave for shipping has to match the one on the credit card. the problem with that is I wont be there to receive it cause I'll be at work which is why I gave them that address in the first place. so they sent me a personal e-mail, and hopefully I can send them back one with a request to send to the origional address, but use the new supplied address as credit card verification. I hope that they do that cause I want those CDs BADLY.

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I lost the wheel cover to my car the other day. front drivers side. kinda ticks me off just because it happend, but it doesnt really bother me because I was thinking of taking them all off anyway and painting the rims either gloss black or red. I have a 93 Black Taurus, what color do you think would be good? My origional idea when I first got the car was to tint the windows, paint the rims black, or get black wheel covers, and get the black head and tail light covers. itll be a black streek going down the road. but now I put some Valvoline stickers on the sides, and I have some Mark Martin stickers, along with a bunch of NIN stickers, and I was thinking to make it look like a NASCAR machine. inside is a different stroy, I have blue LEDs lighting up the TAURUS symbol on the passenger side, and plenty of lights in the dash from the 4 stereo components. I have a pretty good bass system I built in the trunk. and I bought, and will be installing some black lights to give the car an eire blue and purple glow inside. the perfect atmosphere for listening to "BlueRoom" CDs.

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4/19/99
David Copperfield ruled once again. it was a very good show, and the part where he made people dissappear was really neat. he threw 15 inflatable balls into the audience and had people smacking them around for about 2 minutes untill the music stopped. when it did, whoever was holding a ball was selected to dissappear,.. 13 of them anyway,. and the other 2 were witnesses. they went on to a big platform, covered by curtains, and within a minute they were gone... no clue where they went.. I saw a guy after the show, who was selected and he said he didnt know where he went,.. he just flew someplace... if anyone out there knows more about this, please e-mail me. All together it was a fun night. if hes ever around again, Id go see him, and I will notify everyone I know as well.

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4/13/99
This is pretty cool,.. I finally got this site to show up on a search engine. its there with Excite and Webcrawlers list, but Im not sure what other ones have accepted yet. if you hit this site in any other ways, shoot me an e-mail and let me know where you found it.

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Going to see David Copperfield tonight, and indeed, the show if different than the dreams and nightmares tour. this one is called U! and I would have said that in yesterdays update but because the only place I saw the "U!" was on my ticket, I wasnt sure if it was the section I was sitting in or something,. and I didnt want to look like a fool. :) this is supposed to be a pretty neat show.. he will interact with the audience by making 13 people disappear, 3 people levitate, and some other stuff. I wonder what it would be like to be picked and disappear... probably be in some box with no light and then all of a sudden be back in front of the audience again... I guess someone will find out tonight. Ill let you know what happens.

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4/12/99
Here we are again. with nothing better to do but sit around at work, and update the page. well theres nothing really WRONG with that,.. but wouldnt we all rather NOT work? anyway,.. I had a pretty good vacation, we did plenty of stuff all week and even durring the drive home. I found plenty of nice NASCAR stuff while I was there and bought enough of it... got some nice NIN shirts and stickers, and also got some chocolate at Hershey park. there was a lot to do, and I will post some of the most interesting stuff here later. to be honest though, If you blindfold me, throw me in a car, plane, train, or beam me to either the Jersey shore, or Myrtle Beach,.. once your on the BEACH I wouldnt be able to tell the difference. but for some reason people want to insist that Myrtle Beach is just so much nicer. who knows... its still nice, dont get me wrong... I just dont see the BIG attraction to the sand down there compared to the sand up here. but Im back and now I have something else to look forward to. this tuesday at 9:00 PM My girlfriend and I are going to see David Copperfield. Hoagie is going with us also. it should be really fun. Her and I have seen him 2 times before, and this will be our third. I believe the show will be different this time because I think the name of the tour has changed from "dreams and nightmares" to something else Im not sure of. Ill let you all know what happens with that excursion on wednesday. I guess thats about all for now. Just wanted to update the site here so you would know I am back,.. not that it really changed your lifes that much. lol. later.

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4/7/99
Well I promised I would update the page from Myrtle Beach and I am doing so. it was a chore figuring out how to make the thing connect but I figured something out. hooked up the campground phone line that goes to our motorhome into the xjack connector of my modem, then hooked up the adaptor of the modem for sockets into the telephone, and was ablt to dial the calling card number on the phone, and when it was ready to accept the number, I hit dial on the dial up networking connection and unplugged the phone and it worked. I couldnt do it all in DUN cause it wouldnt hold that many numbers. a very clean connection believe it or not. speaking of believe it or not, we went to some of the ripleys attractions. we also (and this was the best part so far) went and had lunch at the NASCAR cafe. it was a HUGE meal and good too. we have a few more things planned and maybe I will update once more from down here later this week. we got ourselvs some new NIN shirts. they glow in the dark. thats about all so far. I checked my mail, and will be replying to the few that I was to reply to with a phone call. (Marlin) dont worry Im not gonna let you hang. and of course my sisters will get a call. Hoagie didnt e-mail me, but I will call him too cause I know hes probably bored at work. Well bye for now, see you all soon.

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4/4/99
I know I havent been doing anything on this site for a few days now. things have been busy at work, and at home. so Hoagie I appoligize for not giving you something to read while your bored at work.

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I will be going away for 1 week starting on the 4th of April, around 6:00 PM. My girlfriend Verona and I will be in Myrtle Beach untill the following Saturday. I am going to be bringing my laptop with me, and just for fun I am going to try to update this site from down there in the motorhome. so from both Verona and Mermaid, have a Happy Easter.

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