{"id":976,"date":"2006-08-15T16:51:36","date_gmt":"2006-08-15T21:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=954"},"modified":"2008-12-15T16:52:08","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T21:52:08","slug":"thoughts-from-the-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2006\/08\/15\/thoughts-from-the-tower\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts from the Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><b>Demons in the Machine<\/b><\/p>\n<p>As I sat down at the computer, I realized that my simple Quest to do a little research for this article had suddenly become slightly more interesting. It seemed that space and time had collided at some point near the center of our desk, creating a portal directly into the Pits of Hell (a subdivision owned in part by a subsidiary of Microsoft). Until recently, it hadn\u2019t occurred to me that computers could become possessed by Demons. (Break out the holy water\u2026)<BR><br \/>\n <BR><br \/>\nFor those of you who don\u2019t believe in Pure Evil, I\u2019ve got one word for you: Malware. That lovely collective of viruses, spywares, adwares, and any other digital boogeymen that seem to exist solely to steal time from us mere mortals. (Resistance is futile, we will be assimilated.)<BR><br \/>\n <BR><br \/>\nSteal time? Yes, that\u2019s right. Just ask my wife. I tell her,\u201dI\u2019ll be ten minutes; I\u2019m just checking my e-mail. Four hours and 666 viruses later, I stumble out of the office. Dehydrated, bloody and battle-weary, I bravely recount the epic struggle that took place only one room away from where she sat. (Just for the record, holy water didn\u2019t do a damn thing!) She looks at me with eyes that reflect the wisdom of the ages and calmly states \u201cI thought the computer was running a little slow.\u201d Aaaaaaaaakkkkkkkk!<BR><br \/>\n <BR><br \/>\nSo if anyone out there has a good banishing spell for getting rid of Malware Demons, let me know. Maybe then I\u2019ll have time to figure out what I\u2019m going to write about\u2026<\/P><br \/>\n<P>***<\/P><br \/>\n<P>author bio:<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Not so long ago, in a galaxy close to ours&#8230;( OK, it&#8217;s our galaxy )<BR><br \/>\na young boy left the swamps of Backwoodsia and ventured forth into the great, wide-open world. Settling into Lesser Urbania, he began studies which would lead him to his lifelong vocation of wizardry. After establishing Stormhaven Manor, located in the state of Imagination ( sometimes referred to as Delusion ), Lord Kestrel Stormwatcher married the love of his life, Lady Mira~Nise the Unshod, also known as The Shoeless Gypsy. Together they study the Mysteries of the Universe and search for The Perfect Brownie Recipe&#8230;<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Demons in the Machine As I sat down at the computer, I realized that my simple Quest to do a little research for this article had suddenly become slightly more interesting. It seemed that space and time had collided at some point near the center of our desk, creating a portal directly into the Pits of Hell (a subdivision owned in part by a subsidiary of Microsoft). Until recently, it hadn\u2019t occurred to me that computers could become possessed by Demons. (Break out the holy water\u2026) For those of you who don\u2019t believe in Pure Evil, I\u2019ve got one word for you: Malware. That lovely collective of viruses, spywares, adwares, and any other digital boogeymen that seem to exist solely to steal time from us mere mortals. (Resistance is futile, we will be assimilated.) Steal time? Yes, that\u2019s right. Just ask my wife. I tell her,\u201dI\u2019ll be ten minutes; I\u2019m just checking my e-mail. Four hours and 666 viruses later, I stumble out of the office. Dehydrated, bloody and battle-weary, I bravely recount the epic struggle that took place only one room away from where she sat. (Just for the record, holy water didn\u2019t do a damn thing!) She looks at me with eyes that reflect the wisdom of the ages and calmly states \u201cI thought the computer was running a little slow.\u201d Aaaaaaaaakkkkkkkk! So if anyone out there has a good banishing spell for getting rid of Malware Demons, let me know. Maybe then I\u2019ll have time to figure out what I\u2019m going to write about\u2026 *** author bio: Not so long ago, in a galaxy close to ours&#8230;( OK, it&#8217;s our galaxy ) a young boy left the swamps of Backwoodsia and ventured forth into the great, wide-open world. Settling into Lesser Urbania, he began studies which would lead him to his lifelong vocation of wizardry. After establishing Stormhaven Manor, located in the state of Imagination ( sometimes referred to as Delusion ), Lord Kestrel Stormwatcher married the love of his life, Lady Mira~Nise the Unshod, also known as The Shoeless Gypsy. Together they study the Mysteries of the Universe and search for The Perfect Brownie Recipe&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1001,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/1001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}