June 2008

Imagine planting a pine tree, a small seedling, using a spade shovel. Not too difficult, right? Now imagine doing that 1000 times. Repeat every spring for 14 years. That’s exactly what Bob Zirnhelt did on 11 acres where he and his wife live in Davison, Michigan.

Beginning in 1991, Bob began buying young trees from the Genesee County Conservation District. Every spring he would buy 1000 seedlings and plant them around his home. “It’s one of the best ways to enhance the beauty and improve the value of your home,” he says. Bob is a code enforcer for the city of Burton, and knows a thing or two about home values.

Read Full “Zirnhelt’s Trail” Story on NewsFlavor.

The other night I spent about 2 1/2 hours at the house of a friend, trying to free his PC of some particularly nasty malware, SpyGuarder and Vista AntiVirus 2008. Both are classified as rogue anti-spyware programs. This type of malware attempts to trick you into buying their full versions by running free scans with a trial version, and showing you all sorts of viruses, trojans, keyloggers, etc. with which your system is supposedly infected. They then offer to remove all these infections if you’ll just click the link and upgrade to the full version of their program, which of course, costs money. There are a number of problems with both these programs.

1. Your system doesn’t really have the infections these programs claim. Or to be more accurate, they have no way of knowing one way or another, since the so-called “scans” they do are completely fake. Nor could they remove the infections if you did have them, since they do not actually fight spyware or viruses, but are likely to install some of their own. Of course, if you elect to do this, future scans will say that your system is now clean.
2. These programs are obnoxiously persistent. Any attempts to cancel the scans, close the windows, or kill the processes just result in another process being launched.
3. These programs prevent legitimate anti-spyware programs from installing and running. Generally, when trying to clean spyware out of a system, one of the first things I do is install and run Adaware from lavasoft. Vista AntiVirus 2008 would not let me install it, popping up a fake system message saying basically that the Administrator for the PC has configured it to disallow “installations of this type.” Spybot Search & Destroy did work, but did not remove the two nasties I was dealing with. SpyGuarder similarly prevents the task manager from launching, claiming that “Task Manager has been disbled by your Administrator.”
4. The presence of either of these programs indicates that you may have the zlob or other dangerous trojans.

No doubt some of you would have advised me to run various legitimate anti-malware applications like SpyHunter, which can apparently automate the removal of SpyGuarder and Vista AntiVirus 2008. Pride and miserliness made me opt to do it by hand, which I did with the help of instructions found here and here.

Vista AntiVirus 2008 has several other identities, all which do the same bad things to your system, such as Windows Antivirus 2008, Windows AntiVirus Pro, etc. These, as well as SpyGuarder, are advertised on professional-looking web sites, and give the appearance of being the most advanced anti-malware products on the market. Do not be fooled, do not install either of these products - the commercial or the free versions - on your computer under any circumstances. If you find you have been infected with either of these anyway (it’s possible to pick them up via “drive-by” infection), take steps to remove them immediately.

Added 7/1/2008: I had to go back and remove yet another fake security program. His commercial virus protection had long since expired, so I installed AVG Free, which found and removed about a dozen viruses and trojans, but then his desktop and taskbar disappeared. After searching around on the internet, I found that Malwarebyte’s RogueRemover Free is a great free tool which completely fixed the desktop problems and removed some additional adware / spyware. It will definitely be joining Adaware and Spybot Search & Destroy in my arsenal.

In Goodrich, Michigan, the water level in the Millpond has been a source of contention for over 30 years between residents, the Village Council, the DNR, and the DEQ (Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality). Now it seems that the dam is leaking, possibly requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) in repairs. My first newspaper article for Flint Area Media was covering this story, including some background as well as the latest developments. Please read the Goodrich Millpond story online at Associated Content.  Incidentally, because of a delay in printing, this is an AC exclusive for the time being.

I recently started writing articles for a publisher who puts out several newspapers local to our surrounding communities. The Davison Messenger, The Tri-County News, The Burton Banner, etc. Some of them were existing publications which he purchased, some are new startups. All are collectively published under the name of his company, ‘Flint Area Media’ (FAM).
Production problems and slow sales have caused some delays in getting the papers out regularly, but I have hopes that these glitches are temporary. The organization is currently moving into a newer, larger building, and I take that as a good sign.

Of course, I expect to be paid for the articles I write, but I’m also doing it for the excitement of seeing my byline in print. Plus, although FAM eventually expects to make all their articles and stories available on-line, they are not ready yet for that. In the mean-time, Mike (the publisher) has given me permission to post them on the 3 sites I write for (Associated Content, Helium, and Triond). I’ll place links in future postings.