I heard someone had shut down the call center in Arkon, OH, and didn’t bring any work @ home agents online. The call center got slammed.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone is trying to make me look like a hero these last three days of the Internet provider project.

Now I am home. And the race for the October rent now breaks from the gate.

The number one challenge before me in the month ahead is turning a deaf ear to the scareware in my head.

I shall be forever indebted to this job that I just stopped working, for it was through a year and a half of supporting antivirus software and listening to customers describe the scream-bloody-murder urgings of scarewares that I really came to understand what goes on in my head in times of crisis. There is really nothing with which to compare false fear that is better than fake antivirus software.

All both really do is get in my face all the time, cry loudly and long about how much danger I’m in, and try to sell me the wrong solution to the problem. Actually, nothing is needed save for a calm assessment, research, and work.

The first thing I do in the morning is go to this class on Broad Street downtown that supposed to help me asses my transferrable skills and show me what kind of jobs to go after. I’ll catch you later.

Recently, I got the crazy idea to learn Javascript. The people at w3schools.com claim that Javascript can be easily picked up by anybody with a good working knowledge of HTML. And perusing through the lessons, it does seem easy. I saw how I can declare variables and do arithmetic with them, manipulate strings, put the computer through counting loops, and so on.

How useful Javascript is for a guy like me who only wants to entertain people with a couple of blogs is another debate for another day. One thing I have found out that one can do with Javascript is make an alert box, one of those official-looking boxes that seem to spring out of the operating system.

If people knew how easy these were to make, they wouldn’t be so quick to take them so seriously.

I seem to have hit upon one of the deceptive tactics used by the scoundrels who write the rogue antivirus “scarewares” that bilk so many people out of their money. With one of these alert boxes, it’s a piece of cake to convince a computer user that their PC is infected and well on its way to running off to join a botnet.

Another thing I saw on YouTube is a video from Fireworks Tutorial that purportedly shows an really simple way to remove Antivirus 2009.

I’m not sure how truthful this video is. It claims that Antivirus 2009 operates by showing the user an exact copy of the Windows Security Center that is supposed to tell the user what antivirus software is handling the virus protection chores. In Antivirus 2009’s copy, the virus protection is “not found”.

You can’t pitch a program into the Recycle Bin that’s currently running. According to the video, Antivirus 2009 keeps itself from being recycled by keeping a simple, do-nothing process called “av2009.exe” going in the background. Find this process in Windows Task Manager and kill it, and you should be able to delete the program.

I don’t think it’s that simple.

Yesterday, I downloaded Anti-Malware from MalwareBytes.org into my own computer and scanned with it, just to see how it works. I may need to know how to do it some day.

The reason I did this is because the ISP provider for whom my call center works discontinued their computer repair service, their counterpart to such outfits as Geek Squad, Firedog, and the fictional “Nerd Herd” from NBC-TV’s Chuck. They want to take the money they’ve been putting into that and concentrate into their digital TV and high speed Internet.

Not that I’m worried that much about it. In fact, I’m looking forward to not getting dinged on my QA scores for not referring customers to this repair outfit.

The problem I foresee is the possibility of getting the deadly combination of hard-ass Lawgiver customer and a clueless, perhaps fearful, new Internet agent who promises that I’ll clean his computer that got infected when we failed to stop viruses from reaching his computer like the salesman promised we would. Cleaning infected computers is not in my job description, but try telling that to somebody who believes backward and forward that we are now contractually obligated to give him a cleanly disinfected computer by the time he puts down his telephone.

Most of the customers I talk to on the phone are not happy campers. They don’t like the idea of having to shell out extra money to achieve the security they believe was promised them just for joining my company’s high speed internet service. Some get very upset when I tell them of this program that they still have to download into their computers. And some are very ready to hit the roof after they’ve downloaded our anti-virus software and it still gets defeated by Antivirus 2009.

Antivirus 2009 is a tough customer. I hear tell even the mighty Norton Antivirus is having their troubles with it. I’m worried about this. Suppose all the rules of the tech support game were chopped down to:

• My infected computer is to be disinfected by the time I put down my phone
• No sending me emails allowed
• No passing me off to anyone else allowed
• All the way, all by yourself
• Anything less than total victory, and your company is fired

I don’t know if I can play by those rules.