Read This While I Impart Some Knowledge

On Friday, I was using my laptop like I do.  I was just finishing up my first eBay listing when everything went very wrong.  While everything was being the exact opposite of what it should have been, I would have not been surprised if dead kittens appeared in my bedroom and started shooting lasers out of their eye sockets, and they had sharp teeth too.  Keep in mind that I have a fever right now so my writing might appear anywhere from mildly to severely insane to all you 98.6 degree readers.

There were no kittens, no dead kittens, no undead kittens, no living kittens, no cryogenically frozen kittens, no laser-eyeballed kittens, and no fire-breathing kittens.  There was, however, someone remotely controlling my laptop.  First they deleted my eBay listing as I was just adding the finishing touches.  Then they started opening and closing various programs so rapidly that I could not do anything about it.  I barely managed to open a Microsoft Word document and type that they need to 4-letter-word off.  They seemed to deliberate this suggestion while highlighting and centering the text that I had typed, then adjusting the margins to their liking.  Then they disappeared without a trace.  My assessment was that some merry prankster, probably a teenager, had learned to remote access computers and was having what he or she thought was a bit of fun.  They had left without a trace, so I redid my eBay listing and posted it, then got ready to go to G's.  When I got to his house, I relayed the incident and he had a much different interpretation of events.  He thinks that a hacker accessed my computer and probably has all my passwords now and will soon wreak havoc on what small amount of money I have.  He encouraged me to change all my passwords, which I did without hesitation.  He also told me to look up how people remote access computers when I got home, which I did.  I learned that it is possible to remote access a computer if the user has remote assistance enabled.  This feature allowa a person to call customer support or even a knowledgable friend and then the person helping you can access your computer from their own, without having to travel to wherever you are.  That is its intended purpose.  However, really anyone who knows how can access your computer in this way and do whatever they want to.  To disable this feature, go to "control panel", then click "system", then "remote settings", then uncheck the box that says to allow remote assistance to your computer.  You can thank me later, after your kitten nightmares finally stop.

In other news, we got Little Big Planet 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 on Saturday.  The Huskies lost the football game, and Stanford continues being undefeated.  On Sunday, we went down by the waterfront to G's school.  He finished writing his presentation, which is the final thing he has to do to earn his master's degree.  I did a lot of reading in a very good book.  We had planned to walk along the waterfront a bit, but didn't end up having time, because we had to pick up our tickets for the Husky basketball game that evening.  We watched the Seahawks game, which by some miracle, they actually won!  Then we went to the Husky basketball game, which they won by 6 points.  They were up by 19 at one point, but became complacent near the end.  It was really fun, and I'm happy that we won.  Then we went home and I made spaghetti for dinner, and we also ate the rest of the chicken soup that I had made earlier in the week.  So my weekend turned out pretty good.  Now I have a fever, but it's a good excuse to eat ice cream for breakfast.  And today I will watch Hulu while finishing listing things on eBay.