Too Bad Computers Don't Last Forever

Growing up my dad always told me that computers last a long time because there are no moving parts. I have since learned that while they do last longer than mechanical systems, they can't last forever. Furthermore technology evolves at such a quick pace, while a computer may still work, it eventually becomes so slow compared to newer ones that it may seem broken.

This week I had the computer interface on my dishwasher go bad. Rather than buy a new dishwasher, I had a repair person come to take a look at it. He quickly diagnosed the board that handles the user input (a fancy way of saying button presses). Unfortunately they don't make that part any more and so I am stuck paying for the service visit and a new dishwasher. I don't mind the price of the service call as I now know the problem and won't wonder if it could have been fixed for less than the price of a new dishwasher.

While earning my degree in Electrical Engineering, I discovered that there are actually a number of problems that can occur with computers and electrical components. I thought I would list them out should you experience a similar problem with one of your computer-controlled appliances.

• Magic Smoke Escaping - While working in the electronics labs at school, we had a running joke that all components contained magic smoke that allowed them to work correctly. Sometimes a student would apply more power to a resistor than it could handle and the resistor would burn up, letting out all of the magic smoke. It left a nasty smell and everyone knew what happened.
• Capacitors failing - Capacitors are one of those components that have a relatively short lifespan. Unlike resistors, when capacitors fail, they do so with an explosion that sounds like a loud cap gun. Well at least they do when you apply too much power. If the capacitor is old, it may leak and then stop working slowly. My guess is that one of the capacitors in my dishwasher failed slowly and that is why it no longer works.
• Water is Bad - Electricity and water are not good to mix together. When the service technician came to look at my dishwasher, we found a leak and there is also a good chance a part got corroded and stopped working. For those with waterproof electronics, companies will spray a chemical on the electrical components that creates a water-tight seal to protect them. It actually works fairly well but is not a guarantee water will keep electrical components dry. Sometimes that barrier fails and the water will release the magic smoke from a very important part of the phone.
  
• Metal Migration - This is something I learned about in school but have never seen actually happen. Basically electricity coursing through semiconductors will move some of the material to the point it fails. This will only happen inside of integrated circuits or chips. It can happen with memory or logic chips. As I mentioned, I have never seen it happen in practice but it is something engineers have to take into account when designing components.

I have already ordered my new dishwasher but now that I have thought about the issue a bit, I'm sure if I removed the user interface, I could easily locate the failed capacitor or resistor and replace it. I have the technology and the troubleshooting know how. The only cost would be time. Then again, I would also have to fix that leak too. It is so much easier just to buy a new dishwasher.

The Importance of Play

I spent 11 years working in Research and Development for Sony PlayStation, a video game company. While there I looked at a number of studies trying to prove that video games are bad for children. Ultimately the outcome proved that allowing kids to play for an hour a day is actually good for them. Those that played in moderation proved to be better at problem solving and social interactions than those that did not play at all. I always found that interesting and shared it with parents when they questioned me on the subject.

Last night I read an article in the January 2024 issue of National Geographic about how play is also important for adults. The article didn't single out video games but included all sorts of games, whether it be sports, cards, or just horsing around. It went on to look at behavior in animals and how those that play are better able to handle new and unfamiliar situations.

One example of animals playing that stood out to me is young dogs learning to play together. There is an important social interaction when stronger dogs learn to be somewhat submissive so the play fights are not always one sided. They have to learn to balance wins and losses. Having witnessed plenty of dogs having fun, I realized the truth of the article.

As we enter the season of New Year's resolutions and trying to better one's self. I think increasing the amount of play in our lives is something we can all get behind. I don't think you necessarily need to go out and buy a video-game console but it might not be a terrible idea. Some other things you might want to try are regular game nights with friends or family. You could also look at trying a new sport. I understand Pickle Ball is a lot of fun and easy to play.

One of the reasons I ended up working at PlayStation is because my older brother gave me a refurbished PlayStation 2 for my birthday one year. Every Thursday evening we would get together and play SOCOM II online together with my other brother and my dad. We had a lot of fun and I miss those nights of taking down bad guys. Perhaps I will restart that tradition with my own sons and my grandson who loves to play games. I think that will be one of my goals for next year. Feel free to share some of your ideas on how to increase your own play.

Explaining Christmas to Non-Christians

I work for Sony and my boss is from Japan. As today is Christmas, I thought about trying to explain the holiday to him and what it really means. On the surface this must be a strange event for those that don't have a Christian foundation. The reality is that we have a lot of pagan traditions combined with Christian ones and it can be hard to figure out the source of this celebration.

Christmas is supposed to be the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Who is he and why is he so important? There is a lot that can be said to answer that question and it can be difficult to provide a quick summary but I'll give it a shot. Christ taught that no matter what we have done in the past, we can improve and become better people. Yes, there is a lot more that can be said, but that one sentence is something that non-Christians can understand. It is especially true for those in Japan as they have a culture of constant improvement.

As we close out this Christmas season, I hope we can all see past the commercialism that seems to overshadow this time of year and take a moment to think about why we celebrate this holiday. Your answer may be different than mine, but merely taking the time to think about why it is important is a good thought exercise. Your comments are welcome.

Christmas Eve Toy Assembly

My kids are all grown and some even have kids of their own. That doesn't mean I won't be assembling toys this evening. I think it is a time-honored tradition to wait until the last minute before wrapping and assembling toys for Christmas morning.

Fortunately parents of today have a number of options to help them for those hard-to-build toys. A simple Internet search will yield Reddit threads and YouTube videos to help you create a magical morning for your children. The trick is to make sure you have all the necessary parts and tools. Nothing is more difficult for a child than waking up Christmas morning and not being able to play with your new toy because of missing batteries.

Last night I did a walk around my neighborhood and saw a fellow grandparent putting together a playhouse. I heard the the sound of a drill tightening wood screws and saw the nearly completed structure, sans roof in the open garage. Today I saw him again and asked about the spectacular gift. Things are going well and he is glad he began the project a bit early. He should be finished up by about the same time Santa gifts are expected under the tree.

A Last-Minute Gift Idea

Today is the Saturday before Christmas, which will be on Monday. If you are still looking for a gift idea, you might be cutting it a little close. I have finished with all of my shopping but thought I would provide one last gift idea for those that might be searching for something useful but not have any idea of what to get.

Yesterday my youngest son asked if I had a computer with full-sized USB connections. I found the question funny because all of my computers have regular USB connections, also known as USB-A. He didn't bother bringing his laptop with him on this trip. Instead he is relying on his iPad. After all, it is vacation and he shouldn't need to do any work.

Interestingly I have a USB-C to USB-A converter I can loan him. Thinking about last-minute gift ideas, this would make a great one. Now I don't need to find a gift for him but perhaps you have someone in your life that could use such a device. It is one of those things that when you need it, you need it bad.

Christmas Break Begins

Today I finished up work for the week and don't have to go back to work until January 2nd. I know that kids in school have a week more than I do and that those like my daughter only get one or two days off. I consider myself fortunate to have a week of free time. For me, this is time to relax and take care of some personal projects. The question I have to answer is how many of them are computer related or technical.

Several years ago I purchased a ham-radio antenna. It has sat in my office for 2 winters now and I really should put it together and set it up. Then I can play around with talking to people around the world by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere. Almost all of my ham radio experience has been using short-distance and line-of-sight frequencies. That is what I use when I help with the Salt Flats Endurance run and the Wastach 100. It would be good to gain some practical knowledge in other areas of the hobby.

There are also quite a few video games I own that I would like to play. Not having to go to work frees up a lot of time and would allow me to at least start one of them. Perhaps I could finish my Spider-Man game and then justify owning Spider-Man 2. I also have the new God of War game that I have yet to take the plastic off. That could be fun. Then there are countless games I own simply by being a member of PlayStation Plus. While most look like a waste of time, there are quite a few that look very interesting.

With Christmas just around the corner, I have finished most of my 3D printing projects. I have printed up quite a few nativity scenes and Christmas-tree ornaments. I suppose I could take on a new project and perhaps print up the model of a battleship I found when I discovered the silver filament I have is really gray. It really would bring my skills up a level as the attention to detail requires me to up my game considerably.

I also wouldn't mind taking some time to do a bit of reading. I have a stack of technical reading that I have been putting off due to other pressing matters. While some might consider the subject matter an extension of work, I find it entertaining and wouldn't mind using my break to increase my technical skills.

Thinking about self improvement, I have really enjoyed learning to play the guitar using the video game RockSmith. I have thought about doing the same thing with drums and getting a copy of Rock Band. The only problem is they don't sell the game with the drum kits any more. Instead you have to purchase an electronic drum set with a MIDI interface and connect it to the game. That would be fun and I could involve my other family members.

Finally there is one last project I think would be a lot of fun. I am in the midst of coming up with a space-ship cockpit. I am thinking it would be fun for my grand kids to have a control panel with illuminated switches, lights, and dials that mimic a fictitious space craft's instrument panel. I have some of it designed but just need to order the parts and assemble it. I think my 6-year-old grandson would have a blast letting it fuel his imagination of flying across the galaxy.

Yes I have a lot I can do during the next week or so. I won't be able to get to all of it especially since I have family visiting and a healthy amount of skiing planned. I still look forward to starting one or two projects listed above. 

Christmas Travel

My son and his family are about to leave home and head to the airport to start the long journey to visit my wife and I in Utah. He just texted me and let me know that his 2-year-old daughter has her backpack on and is ready to head to the airport even though they don't have to leave quite yet. My wife and I are equally excited for their arrival.

Should you have family coming to visit you and you are as excited as I am, there are several things you can do to monitor their progress, especially if they are flying. The first thing to do is have the airline and flight information readily available. I have all this information pulled up in a small window that I won't close until they arrive. You can go to the airline website and check the status of each flight leg to see if delays will complicate travel. I just checked my son's flights and so far everything is on time.

The second thing you can do is arm your loved ones with the information on how to set mobile phones up to use in-flight texting. All major airlines now make that service available for free. You may need to use specific texting apps like iMessage on iPhones or WhatsApp on Android devices. Knowing what is required will help you stay in contact during the trip. When I used to fly a lot, I would text my wife as I flew over our house. If she left once she got my text, we would meet at the airport without anyone having to wait for the other. Texting during the flight can also serve as a medium for sending funny flight stories, like when the 2-year-old spills Sprite all over Mom or Dad.

There are also websites that allow you to track flights in real time. If you go to flightaware.com, you can see where the flight is. While the airline may list the flight as being on time, you will be able to see if that is really the case. Sometimes planes have to fight nasty headwinds. Other times, they get nice tailwinds that speed things up. Being able to see where the flight is, eliminates a lot of wondering.

Unfortunately being connected and seeing where your loved ones are during their journey does not speed up anything. If a flight is late, there is not much you can do about it. The only upside to being connected is knowing when a flight will arrive early, which does happen occasionally.

SPAM E-mail Can Be Funny

Every day I go through my SPAM e-mail to make sure the filter didn't catch something I want to receive. To some, this might seem like a chore. To me it is a humorous exercise that always puts a smile on my face. Today I thought I would share some of my favorites from yesterday's SPAM.

• Mysterious Israeli Nuclear Arsenal: International Intrigue Deepens - This is funny to me because Israel has had nuclear weapons for quite some time. It forms the plot from Tom Clancy's book "The Sum of all Fears." It is hardly newsworthy let alone "International Intrigue."
  
• BREAKING NEWS: Putin Drops "Financial Nuclear Bomb" on America - If this is breaking news, why have I been getting the same e-mail for over a year.
• Dr. Fauci's Final Strike Against America? - With the COVID pandemic reduced to a footnote thanks to vaccines, someone is out there trying to keep Dr. Fauci's memory alive.
• RIP: 401(k)s, Pensions, Mutual funds . . . - I don't think they are going anywhere soon. Inflation may reduce their value but they still remain viable investment vehicles. Sometimes they even keep pace with inflation.
  
• China's Secret Plan to Bankrupt Millions of Americans? - This one could be real and I think it is called Temu. With prices that low, people will continue to buy useless crap they don't need.
• Zelensky's Surprise: Ukraine's Military Boosted by AI! - I think the more surprising headline with Ukraine's defense against Russia is that it is still going on. Theoretically Russia should have rolled over Ukraine in the first 3 months of fighting. The fact that the fighting is still going on leads to questions about Russia as a military powerhouse.
• Bombshell Confession from Gates (SHOCKING) - Why would I care? Somehow people think that every little thought in certain successful peoples' heads should be major news. It isn't.
• Pending Order [#48752-11] 36 Piece Tupperware Modular Set - Wait I never made that order. That is what the Spammer is hoping I will say and click on something in an effort to contest the order. The best option is to not do anything at all.
• Medicine's Newest Marvel: A Pill Against Obesity - Yes there are some prescriptions you can take that will diminish your appetite but there are more reputable sources for this kind of news.

I find most of these subject lines humorous because they seem so outlandish to most people with common sense. So how to they get people's attention? All they need to do is find one area of insecurity and the spammer will snag a victim. Perhaps they all seem outlandish to you except for the one about AI. You don't quite understand AI and how it is being used and so the e-mail will lure you in to read it. Then BAM! You have infected your computer with a virus, malware, or some other malady. Furthermore the person that snared you now knows your vulnerability and will continue to use it.

Hopefully you have not been lured by one of the previous headlines. If you have, you have my sympathies and I hope you have extracted yourself from any harm it may have caused. My biggest reason for sharing this list, besides a personal laugh, is to help others recognize what SPAM is floating around and keep them from becoming a victim.

Substitutions

My oldest daughter is working in an electronic orders fulfillment center until she can find a job in her field. She does not enjoy it but it does help her pay her bills. Our evening conversation today revolved around substitutions. Someone will order one product that she is unable to find in the warehouse and so the computer suggests an alternative. Sometimes those substitutions don't make sense and my daughter will note it but most of the time they work.

I thought about how I use substitutions in my daily job working with data. Sometimes I work with a small amount of data in a spreadsheet. Other times I work with large amounts of data in a data warehouse. Can I do the same operations in both tools? After doing this for many years, I can answer that question with a truthful, "Yes."

A few weeks ago I received a spreadsheet with 190,000 or so rows. I immediately needed to do some aggregate functions. That means I needed to count how many rows met certain criteria for text columns or come up with a sum or average for number columns. I had the choice of using either a database or a spreadsheet. To me it didn't make a difference which tool I used. Ultimately I inserted the rows into a database and performed my analysis there.

Working with a computer there are always a choice of tools you can use. While you may have grown used to Microsoft's Excel, you might not have that option with a new personal computer. If you have a Mac, the spreadsheet program Numbers is included in the operating system for free. You also have the choice of using Google spreadsheets. They all have their pros and cons but you should never feel locked into using a specific tool.

This is true for more complex software as well. My youngest son is a mechanical engineer and has access to a very expensive computer aided design (CAD) program called SolidWorks. It can do a lot. There are also a number of less capable products that can tackle any personal projects he decides to start without the exorbitant cost. When I needed to create very specific candle holders for one of my wife's Christmas decorations, I used TinkerCAD. I learned it easy and quickly had the design I needed for my 3D printer. There are a number of even more feature-rich options should you need them. The trick is knowing how to find them.

With the ubiquity of open source software and vast array of commercial software choices, you should never feel there is only one way to get something done on your computer. There are always multiple. The trick is learning how to use Internet search engines and sift through the bad suggestions to find good ones. Perhaps that is a post for another day.

I Don't Know Any Popular Music Artists

One of my jobs at Sony is working with Sony Music Group and that involves analyzing the latest music trends. I have a spreadsheet in front of me with Artists' names and the top tracks being listened to on streaming music services and I don't recognize a single name nor song. I take that back. It is Christmas time and one of the most popular songs is by Mariah Carey called "All I Want for Christmas is You." It is at this point that I have to state that she is a Sony Music artist so people don't think I am promoting her music. The truth is, I think the song is overplayed and prefer quite a few other Christmas songs.

I know I may be old but I didn't think I had grown so out of touch with songs that are popular. The songs I hear on the radio are not even close to what is popular for those that stream music. Now I will confess that I am looking at data for a decidedly younger crowd that is fairly tech savey. That confuses me though as the second most popular song is by Drake and titled "IDGAF" which stands for "I Don't Give a F..." I'll let you fill in the last 3 characters but am surprised youth find the song so popular. While I know Drake is a popular Hip Hop artist, I have never heard any of his songs.

Streaming services have really changed the music we listen to. It is now possible to create your own playlist with only the songs you want to hear. When you hear some songs too many times, like "All I Want for Christmas," you can unlike it and add new songs to your list. While I have a radio in my car, I also have the ability to play songs from my smartphone so I am not subjected to songs that someone else thinks I should be listening to. Unfortunately I think that is true because I don't care what other people listen to. Youth probably don't have that luxury.

I remember riding the bus home in junior high and an older kid asking another if he liked the group AC DC. Not wanting to sound ignorant, the kid replied, "Of course." The older kid then probed by asking him to name a song. I went home that day trying to find out who AC DC was and some of their songs. The only tool I had was the radio. Fortunately "Back in Black" was popular at the time and received a lot of air time. I knew at least one song and felt that would keep me from getting pummeled on the bus by any older kids.

One of the advantages of streaming music is that you can find music that you really like. I hope there isn't any peer pressure trying to get you to listen to music that others think is popular. If that is the case, then we are no more advanced in our music listening than we were 30 years ago.

90 Minutes Saved Me A Week In Las Vegas

This morning I started work a little earlier than usual as I attended a summary of Amazon's recent announcements from the AWS re:Invent conference held recently in Las Vegas. When I first started my career, I loved traveling and going to conferences in other cities. Then I spent a lot of time in planes to the point I now prefer to stay home, if possible. So any time I can have the host company of a conference summarize all of the important points in a 90-minute video conference, I am extremely happy.

AWS made quite a few announcements and they distilled them down into 3 different topics for the call this morning. I won't run through everything I learned as there are 2 announcements that really stood out. The first topic dealt with artificial intelligence. About a year ago, ChatGPT started getting a lot of attention. Naturally AWS is incorporating this technology in their product offerings. They also addressed how they are keeping the data used to train their large-language model (LLM) called Q, separate from your company's proprietary data. That is very important as you don't want someone outside your company asking Q for sensitive information that he/she shouldn't be able to access.

The second announcement I found interesting is using Q to generate database queries. I learned structured-query language (SQL) back in 1986 and thought it to be very natural-language like. As databases have grown in size and contain data in a variety of different tables, those queries have become less and less like natural language. You can now ask Q questions about your own data and as long as it has access to it, will show what you are looking for without knowing how to write the correct SQL. I will be interested to see how Q works in actual practice. I don't worry about it taking my job creating complex queries. Instead I see myself being able to do much more with its help.

My call this morning condensed a week-long conference into 90 minutes. I then pulled out 2 announcements that are important to me. Now I can go back to our AWS sales representative and get the in-depth information I need. To me, that is a step forward towards greater efficiency. For those that don't get to travel often, you may prefer the week in Las Vegas.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Last night I had one of the neighbor kids come over and ask me to help him mount a new pair of bindings on a new pair of skis. He had been skiing earlier in the day and damaged his old skis. Naturally he wanted to get the new ones ready to go. I used to work in a ski shop and mount bindings professionally so I know what I am doing, otherwise I don't recommend mounting your own skis. I also have all of the equipment to mount bindings correctly.

Before he came over, I asked about the brand and model for both the skis and the bindings. This is important so I knew what I was getting into. Naturally he had Look Pivot 14 bindings, which are the most difficult binding to mount. Fortunately I have a jig for them to help drill the holes in the right place. I told him to bring a boot with him.

My neighbor arrived exactly when he said he would and we headed down to my ski tuning room. The first thing we did was measure the screw-hole distances on his new binding with those on the jig. I'm glad we checked as Look has 3 different hole patterns for their Pivot-line of bindings. I had pulled out the wrong one and needed to get the right one. Then we double checked it with the bindings. Everything checked out.

Now we needed to size the jig for the boots. My jig requires knowing the sole length of the boot. This is normally stamped on the bottom. My neighbor's boot had 2 numbers: 265 and 307. The smaller number is etched larger and prominently while I barely noticed the 307. Having looked at a lot of boot soles in my day, I knew that 265 wasn't right and so I pulled out my ruler which has imperial units as well as metric. The number I needed is in millimeters and so I used the metric side. As I suspected his boot sole is the larger of the 2. I set the jig accordingly.

Next is making sure I used the correct drill bit. Skis with metal in them can use a slightly larger bit while those without need a narrower one. Most skis will tell you which bit to use. My neighbor's skis did not. However they did say they contained a metal layer in the ski. That told me to use the larger of my 3 bits.

I drilled the holes and then added a waterproof glue into each one before placing the binding pieces on the ski. I then started each screw until it bit into the freshly drilled hole. Then I let my neighbor finish screwing the bindings to the ski. I followed along afterwards making sure the bindings hugged the skis tightly. Then we put the boot in and made sure it fit. It did. Next we made sure to set the DIN's and forward pressure appropriately so the skis fall off when they should but also don't release prematurely.

My neighbor felt a huge sense of accomplishment after helping to mount bindings on his new skis. Throughout the entire process, I had him double-check all of the settings and he felt included in the entire process. He is probably up on the hill right now testing them out.

So what does this have to do with computers? Throughout the entire process of mounting the bindings, we followed the rule of, "Measure twice, cut once." In our case we used a drill instead of a saw but the net result is the same. With computers, the consequences are much less severe and so we tend to measure once and if it doesn't work, go back and measure again. For me and some of my coding projects, this can often mean trying different values 3 or 4 times. Things go so much easier when I take the time to double check all of my values first.

Tackling Problems After Sleeping on Them

Tuesday afternoon I started working on my daughter's Jeep Cherokee to replace the thermostat. We meant to start in the evening but I had some time during the day and so we could begin the work earlier than expected. I'm glad we did as I broke a part and had to make a run to the dealership to get a new one. Had we started in the evening, the parts department would have been closed and we would have had to wait until morning to finish the work. It turns out we did anyways.

At around 9pm that evening we found ourselves still trying to remove a bolt from the thermostat housing buried under a mass of other engine parts. My daughter could feel the bolt with her fingers enough to guide the 10mm socket to the head of the bolt. We loosened it only to have the socket slide off the bolt. It eventually got to the point where we couldn't get it back on. It would have helped if I could feel the bolt but no matter what I tried, I could never get a hand close enough. We decided to call it a night and pick up the next morning.

I've always been told that we do our best work in the morning when our minds are fresh. That is why office productivity experts will tell you to avoid e-mail when you first arrive in the office and to tackle any problems you are working to overcome. It is great advice and it proved true while working on my daughter's car. Amazingly I shoved my hands down into the bowels of the engine and could feel the bolt head with not only one hand but both at the same time. We maneuvered the socket with its attachment of extenders and u-joints and managed to get the stubborn bolt out. It then only took an hour or two to replace the thermostat and get the car back together.

Lately I have been going to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual which allows me to wake up that much speedier in the morning. I am using that time to tackle problems and get the most important tasks of the day completed. While I don't recommend going to bed thinking about a problem because you won't sleep very well, working on it in the morning may be the solution you are looking for.

Update on Mac Malware

Yesterday I posted about malware that infected my wife's Mac computer. As soon as I published the article, I checked to see if my wife had taken her laptop to work. She hadn't and so I brought it down to my office and ran one more test. I ran yesterday's "find" command prefaced with "sudo" so it looked like this:

sudo find / -name AccessibleEngineSearch -print

The "sudo" command tells the operating system to run as the super-user with permissions. You will need to enter a password before the command runs. Sudo enabled the command to look into more directories than when I ran it the previous day. I found one more instance of the "AccessibleEngineSearch" malware in the startup directory. That means whenever the computer started up, it would try to load the malware. I removed the file and rebooted the laptop. I no longer receive the message telling me that AccessibleEngineSearch can hurt the computer.

My wife came home for lunch as she works less than a mile away and I shared with her that I completely removed the malware from her computer. She also shared that she went through her Applications directory and deleted a number of programs that she didn't recognize. That is another important task when you discover malware on your computer. I didn't feel comfortable doing that as I didn't know if my wife installed a useful utility. I'm glad she took care of it.

As I mentioned, Mac's don't get a lot of malware. When they do, the operating system can keep a lot of damage from happening. It is also fairly easy to remove the offending programs. One still needs to be careful though as bad things can happen on a Mac.

Malware on a Mac

Yesterday my wife came home from a very busy day as her office switches from locally hosted software to web based. She is the one spearheading the project and yesterday they went live on the new system. Naturally there are some first-day pains as the staff try to figure out how to do things using the new and unfamiliar software. To make matters worse, my wife's Mac picked up some malware.

I happened to be in an online meeting when my wife came home and so when the meeting ended, I left my office to ask my wife how her day went. She seemed extremely frazzled and started talking quickly about how the new software has everyone anxious and to top things off, her computer had a virus. My wife is not very technical and so I asked how she knew her computer has a virus. She opened her laptop and showed me a message about "AccessibleEngineSearch will damage your computer."

The message told me that the Mac operating system smartly caught the problem. Unfortunately it rendered the computer unusable. When I clicked on the message to dismiss it, I had about 3 seconds before the message reappeared. It is a good thing I have another computer in the house to help me fix the problem. I quickly did an Internet search and came across several websites explaining how to remove the offending program.

AccessibleEngineSearch is a browser hijacker that throws up unwanted advertisements in your browser. The trick to eliminating it is hunting down all of the files that have infected the computer and removing them. I started with the documented ones:

• ~/Library/Application Support/com.AccessibleEngineSearch/AccessibleEngineSearch
• ~/Library/Application Support/com.AccessibleEngineSearchDaemon/AccessibleEngineSearch
• ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.AccessibleEngineSearch.plist
• ~/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.AccessibleEngineSearchDaemon.plist

I then emptied the trash and rebooted the computer. Things improved but I still kept getting the message and so I did a bit more searching. This time I pulled out my Unix skills and opened the command prompt. I then ran the following "find" command to look for all instances of AccessibleEngineSearch on the computer:

find / -name AccessibleEngineSearch -print

 If you are not familiar with the "find" command found in all flavors of Unix and Linux, the first argument tells the command where to start looking. I specified the / or root directory so that it would search the entire file system. The next argument is where you specify the name of the file you are looking for. Finally there is the -print on the end that specifies to print the results on the screen.

Naturally I got a lot of "permission denied" errors because I ran it as a user and not the superuser. It still gave me 2 directories that I found and deleted. Once again, I rebooted the machine and the errors disappeared.

Reading through various websites on this issue, I saw the recommendation to install Malwarebytes. I installed the free version and ran a scan of the computer. It found 30 other files infected with some sort of malware. I quarantined the files in question hoping that the computer is clean. Then I rebooted the computer once more.

Unfortunately there is a message about AccessibileEngineSearch when I start the computer and log in. Once I dismiss the message, it doesn't reappear and so I imagine there is one more file hanging around in the system loading area. It probably is in one of those directories I didn't have permission to read when I ran my find command above. I can rerun the command prefaced with "sudo" and eliminate the problem for good.

One of my favorite things about the Mac is that it doesn't get many computer viruses or malware. Unfortunately that has made me a little lazy about protecting them. As shown by the scan on my wife's computer, they do exist and are need to be addressed. You can say I've learned my lesson.