My weekend was pretty fantastic until late Saturday, when Norton Antivirus prompted me to install an update to Norton Antivirus 2009. My machine started freezing up. I called Norton technical support and talked to a guy in India who’d only been working with computers for 10 months. He spent the next three hours — two of which were remote, an hour of which was after I left for Passive Arts — working on my system. We uninstalled 2009, reinstalled 2008, and then couldn’t get 2008 to work. 2009 is a total fucking loss.

The only way I can get my computer to work (that is, not crash and get out onto the Internet) is to uninstall every last bit of Norton. It still prompts me on boot to run the install for 2009. There is absolutely no fucking way I’ll do that.

So, I sent Norton a very nasty email, demanded a refund (I only renewed in July), and I’m without an antivirus program.

Any suggestions?

Passive Arts was pretty delightful. They were throwing a Halloween party with a punk band (“The Debbies” I think) and I really liked the clean, well-lit interiors. You can actually see the person you’re playing with. What a concept! And it was only $10. Granted, it’s a haul down to LAX, but the price of admission and the quality of play space is worth it.

Now to go back to sticking pins in that voodoo doll’s privates…