In the morning, we went down to Frasinetti's winery to attend the Sacramento County Historical Society's awards. This year they stuck us in a smaller room. We went to sit with Father Steve Avella, who gave us our cathedral tour last year. His mother and a friend were there. I asked what he's doing now that the Cathedral is closed while it's under repair. It turns out he teaches at Marquette! Conversation was fast-paced and we were into jobs for kids when it was time for the awards. He won one for a new book about Sacramento that he's written.

Back at home, it was time to try something with the computer. I've had the Brasil virus for years. This has been manageable if I went into the explorer and took the programs off before I logged off. Who knows where I got it, probably after 9/11 and I may have tried to read something without checking it.

I'm unclear on the timing, but at one point I tried to reinstall Windoze because I hoped maybe then my battery would work. It told me I couldn't do it while running Norton (since Windoze is a virus) so I took Norton off. It still didn't work, and I then couldn't reinstall Norton, so I've been a sitting duck. I've been very careful, but there've been quirks I've been working around. The "Dialup Networking" screen will pop up. At first it was just once, I would turn it off and things would go on all right. Then it was four times, but once I turned them off, I could work. This last week, though, it's on and on, and if you look at what my 'puter is doing, it's spending all its time and resources on "msupdate" and none on what *I* want it to do. I can't stay connected, for instance, nor if I do, I can't read anything. It was definitely time to bring on the big guns.

Rich linked it to his and ran Macafee. Oh, my. 32 files corrupted with Dupator. Most of them could be deleted with the program, others needed to be done manually. Then it was time to replace them. I found my boot floppy, and we worked and worked on it, all afternoon, so frustrating. As I said to my mailing list:

I'm having a major disaster here with my laptop. It's been virused for over a year and I've been dealing with it, but lately it's gotten a lot worse... using all its resources to try to "msupdate". So yesterday Rich linked it up (now, this sounds like it's all his fault, but believe me, I think he was right) and virus-checked and cleaned it with his machine. (Long ago my setup wouldn't work with Norton on, so I took Norton off and the setup still wouldn't work, and then I tried to get the virus-checker back and it wouldn't work.) Well, there were 32 files with Dupator. We removed them, replaced them, and yet, now, it won't actually run any programs. (Nor will it run its own setup disks. I suspect the problem has been with that software all along.) It's a glorified word processor and photo storage unit at the moment. Now, I need both those things, but I need a few other things as well, like photo *editing*, for instance. How I miss my dwarf!

Finally, time for Church. This is my favorite service, when the darkened church fills with the light symbolizing Christ. We had upwards of 20 adults being Baptised, another 10 or so who were already Baptised being received into the Catholic church, and one who just needed Confirmation. SOOOO beautiful! I was gaping at the huge number of new Catholics and the guy next to me, one of the sponsors, said "and they say the Church is dead." I replied "Roll away the stone."

They have been saying, all of us are dying.
They have been saying, all of us are dead.
Roll away the stone, See the Glory of God! Roll away the stone!