Damn, not a virus after all

A bit disappointing, really

I think if a doctor diagnosed me with some rare tropical virus I would have something exciting worth dropping into a conversation, something to explain the strange yellow spots, the ringing in the ears and the disgusting bulging eyes.

How disappointing it would be to find out some time later that the diagnosis was wrong and that I was, in fact, presenting with symptoms of having underpants a size too small.

So it is with Esmeralda's 'virus'. It's no virus at all, dammit. (Not that her underpants are the wrong size or anything. I make sure of that, as part of normal computer maintenance.)

Baz le Tuff (pictured working at my desk), whose reputation for his digital acuity is only exceeded by that for his immense collection of girls' bicycle seats, having spent most of yesterday and two hours this morning applying his physician's skills to Esmeralda, had one of his famous Copernican-scale insights. "It isn't a virus and we've been pissing up the wrong tree," he told me with that steely look of certainty he once had many years ago when he predicted that the Fonz would do something weird soon, "like maybe jump a fish, or a whale, or some aquatic creature like that". He had that look in '69 when he told me that Meatloaf would "be bigger than Elvis". It's uncanny.

Hackers come home, we love you
It was instability in MS Outlook Express, not a worm. So it's not "Death to hackers" after all, but "Death to William Gates".

The symptoms were that all incoming emails were getting sent by my computer an attachment that said in the subject "This address is no more. My new address is ..." So it looked like the work of a trojan or worm, or some bug at least.

What is was, was MSOE applying an old Message Rule incorrectly. Friends of mine will know that I've had Message Rules problems in the past. For example, I might have a Rule that says all emails coming in from Jack must have a red subject header, and they occasionally come in black or blue. I've also found that new rules I was trying to apply, would not apply at all.

In May when I changed my email addies, I made a rule to send as an attachment an email that gave my correspondents my new address. Over the past few days, MSOE has been sending it to every correspondent, not just to those using my pre-May addresses. This explains why seven different scanners including McAfee, Norton, Avast, Kerpovsky (or Kalashnikov or Kaminsky or whatever it's called), Panda and Housecall were unable to clean the 'virus' that never was. MSOE somehow applied an old rule to the wrong incomings. This it did all by itself, as I haven't been near the Rules setting for some weeks, maybe months.

By removing the rule, and in fact removing all the rules, just to start with a clean slate, the bug is fixed. And I hope to get my work schedule back to its default setting, viz, Frantic.

Thanx, Monsieur le Tuff. I wouldn't be where I am today without you. Not that I hold you to blame. And thank you to readers of the ezines who have been patient. At least, I think you have. I haven't checked my In Tray yet so I hope I haven't spoken too soon.