I spent some time following the news yesterday and listening to all the reports about hackers and viruses that are infecting computers everywhere . At least thats what they seemed to be saying. No one that uses a computer is safe and no one that knows someone that uses a computer is safe either. While I consider myself a fairly savvy user of the internet it occurred to me that I often run my computer with the antivirus turned off because I don’t want it scanning EVERYTHING and it slows down my computer in a way that only someone who spends 14 hours a day at the keyboard can detect.
Last night I noticed an advertisement online that looked interesting.
Clicking the ad took me to Amazon of course. It appears that the advertisement was for Clorox Wipes. I gave this some thought for a while.
Later I was watching the Weather Channel and the program was discussing the impacts of and how to safely avoid things like volcanos, tornadoes, hurricanes and the dangers of flooding in metropolitan areas. Apparently there are some seriously disgusting things that end up in the streets when ten feet of water rush over an entire city. I reflected on this for a while too. You have time to do these things when in a hotel room and your kids are not asking you to play with barbie dolls and such all evening. Did I mention all the music videos with Elsa and Anna? It turns out that once you watched them all you have to watch them again. Its been nine months and my kids would still rather watch Frozen than go see something new most days.
I ordered a six pack of over priced beer from room service and continued watching TV. While I watched, the Weather Channel got into a new show that spent time dedicated to discussing the horrors of the cleanup from Hurricane Sandy. Houses that were submerged in water and common contaminants from flooding had molded and started to decay. These images burned into my brain. I kept working on the computer trying to stay awake a little longer.
As I finished the last bottle of beer and looked at my computer I realized that all those things that were on my TV where present in my everyday life in small amounts ... and that I use my computer all the time. I was horrified at the thought of touching my computer again. In the dim light of the hotel lamp all the little smudges and fingerprints and flakes of dust and debris just glared sitting on the unblemished aluminum of my shiney apple laptop.
How should I clean up my computer? Clorox Wipes? I decided that I was being silly and changed the TV channel to CNN. They were doing a story covering the ebola outbreak in Africa and a few of the scares that people in the US might have contracted the virus since they were currently in isolation and being tested. I started thinking again. I do that a lot when drinking, alone, in a hotel room. I have friends that I know that get sick at the drop of the hat. And I have a family, and small children. I don’t want to have them infected by something that I brought back from a business trip. Its bad enough when they get sick from something at daycare.
What about my laptop? I take it with me all over the place. Sometimes I let people I just met sit at it and type. I needed to clean my computer. It was clear that Clorox Wipes wouldn’t get into all the nooks an crannies of a modern laptop. What about all the space under the laptop keys? Thats where the bacteria and viruses would regroup I wisely surmised. I called room service. The cool thing about traveling a lot is that you figure out how to get almost anything you need from the hotel staff as long as you can rationalize it properly.
Housekeeping does not keep Clorox Wipes in house. They do not use them since they are too expensive. They do however use things that go in spray bottles. They also have bleach in the hotel laundry.
When the cap is removed from the Clorox container bleach flows freely out of the bottle. As it sloshes across the computer, it easily gets into nooks and crannies of the keyboard and even disinfects the inside of the computer. With little effort I was able to take a white towel from the hotel bathroom ( this appears to be what they use bleach for in the laundry ) and wipe up the bleach on the counter and floor after I dried off the computer.
This morning I saw another warning about how hackers are getting everyone’s contact information and personal data. Those hackers can kiss by backside.
My computer appears to be free of 99.9% of all physical bacteria and viruses. It smells clean. Well, it smells like bleach anyway. Growing up I learned that pig farms smell like "money" and bleach smells "clean.” This might have something to do with spending time driving around in the country to see family and having parents that worked in a hospital growing up. We are all products of our environments somehow. I still remember many of the catch phrases from my youth. "Attention K-mart shoppers ..."
As an added benefit it does not appear that any of these pesky hackers are going to be able to get your personal information or mine off of my computer either. For absolutely free I have removed the following items from my computer, bacteria, viruses ( real, imagined, digital and biological ), as well as any malware.
I learned this morning that people at the Apple Store think money smells like a guy carrying an aluminum paperweight soaked in bleach and a holding out a credit card. Apparently money also smells like fresh plastic.
I hope that Apple’s point of sale software is protected from hackers too. If not I can offer them a one time solution to protect our data as well.