Ship Shape Notebook

I had a wonderful surprise awaiting me after I woke up this morning. I turned on my computer to check email and Norton Anti-Virus flashed on the screen several times. The software notified me that it was scanning scores of emails that Outlook was sending out seemingly to random addresses with nonsensical titles like "purple ideas." Soon thereafter I could no longer use the antivirus software. After numerous downloads of third party software scanners, my computer remained in a state of disarray. In the early evening, I copied my Word files, pictures, and music onto some CD-Rs and used a built-in program to restore the computer to factory condition. Luckily all the necessities--Microsoft Office, Explorer, Media Player--remained in the hard drive. Despite all the time that was killed today, it was fun to feel like I owned a new computer again as I renamed my hard drive, setup new email accounts, and so on. The worst part about this is that I lost all of my email addresses from Outlook. I'll have to be extra cautious from now on...

It's still raining in Kyoto, but the precipitation will probably provide us with a spectacular hanami (flower-viewing) season. Here's a photo I took at To-ji this past Wednesday. Perhaps a sign of things to come.