The call I was waiting for... I think

Two years ago one of my friends, Jim, called me for help with a laptop on the fritz. He told me that suddenly it became very slow and unresponsive while working on documents and browsing the internet. Now if you know anything about computers, you know that basic web browsing and working on documents, spreadsheets, etc. does not require a powerful or even new computer...

I went over to his house which was a short train ride away. When I got there he had his laptop dangling over the balcony and I shouted up to him to get his attention. I said "the computer doctor is here, don't destroy that laptop". He laughed and brought the laptop inside. 

I asked why he was going to destroy the laptop that I had just traveled by train to try and save. He said it couldn't be fixed anymore. That morning he turned it on and he saw a screen with the FBI logo and it claimed that his computer could only be unlocked if he paid $1000 in bitcoin.  

I knew what this was... After checking the laptop myself, I verified that he had downloaded what we nerdgeeks call the FBI virus. It is a ransomware program which was very well designed and I have to say whoever made it was a clever fellow. 

Anyway, I managed to disable the program and pull it out manually. Before you knew it, Jim was back to surfin and tapping those ivory blues as we like to say! You might not believe the moral of the story though. 

10 minutes after I left my house, a tree fell down in my front yard and crashed through my home office. If I had been there it surely would have squished me! Now I have to admit, I didn't really want to help Jim that day. PC Maintenance was never my forte and Jim had scraped my car a week earlier at our bowling tournament but now he's my #1 friend because as far as I'm concerned he saved my life...