Computer viruses

Why do people (and I use that term loosely) write viruses? What thrill can it possibly give them knowing they were responsible for completely wrecking some unknown person's PC? Are their lives that boring and incomplete?

Being a novice computer-user, my friend Stasek feel victim to a virus. Actually, it was not even his fault (I'm blaming the brother-in-law). Somehow (even with a firewall, pop-up block and anti-virus software) he managed to download something that completely mangled his computer.

I am a developer (not a very good one either) and am definitely no veteran computer-virus exterminator. However, assuming I had a better chance of solving the issue than Stasek did, I went to his house last night in an attempt to his rid his machine of the infection.

However much I hated the virus, I have to applaud it's ingenuity. It completely disabled the anti-virus software, re-configured the start menu, and prevented installation of any new software. I could not even run most programs.

After a few hours and feeling completely helpless, I decided to use the system restore functionality of the Hewlitt-Packard PC. As it turns out, no data was lost and he just has to do a lot of reinstallation. However, I have never felt so defeated, humiliated, and downright stupid having to resort to such measures. To make matters worse, I cannot help but think that most of those way-cool PEG guys could have solved the problem in 5 minutes with their eyes closed.

So.. congratulations to you Mr. Virus-Maker! Not only did you cause enormous grief and copious amounts of wasted time, you managed to knock my self-esteem down a few more notches.