As some of you know, I reluctantly signed up for the Scotiabank half-marathon (21K) again. Last year didn’t go so well- I didn’t exactly finish. My knees gave out midway through the race. I initially fought the pain by walking a kilometer or so but even that proved too difficult. I embarrassingly watched slow “runners” walk pass me from the sidelines as I waited for the medic to pick me up and drop me to the finish line. It wouldn’t be a understatement to say that it was a low point in my short running career. I think I saved myself a little bit by not accepting any medals at the finish line.

I do not want a repeat of last year this time around. So I’ve been training by actually jogging/running. Let me explain. I thought I was a super-athlete last year that could wing the half-marathon. So whenever I would went to the gym to train, I’d actually play basketball. Basketball is cardio after all so I figured it’s still good. What I failed to realize is that ball doesn’t not punish you for lacking stamina in the same way a half-marathon does. Short interval cardio training does not equal success at a half-marathon race.

So this year, I’ve been working on  increasing my stamina. I need to be able to run for at least 2 hours at a moderate pace to finish the race with a respectable time. Wish me luck!

This week hasn’t been great. I’ve only managed to run for about 20 minutes at a time. I obviously have ways to go.

I usually don’t believe in computer viruses (ie trojans, malware etc) – they attack people with less than average knowledge of computers. Having graduated from computer science and now working as a Software consultant, I like to think that I know a thing or two about computers.

So last night when I logged into my personal computer and noticed that all search hits on Google were taking me to an advertising site, I was hurt. I couldn’t believe that I made the grave mistake of accepting malware. Stupidity. How could I? To makes matters worse, I had uninstalled my expired Norton Antivirus a week ago. Although useless for new threats, it could have prevented this one.

Browser hijacking is, at least in the way I experienced it last night, an interesting problem. Since my search results on Google or dare I say Bing, were filtered and redirected to an advertising site, I couldn’t simply search for a virus remover application and click on a link. So around 11:30pm last night, I copied the link location of many search hits and pasted it to my web browser. But it was not this easy still. If a site forwarded me to an external site (e.g., a download link hosted on another server) – I would have to copy this link location as well.

Around 12:20am, I had exhausted many solutions that had worked for people. I tried:

• SUPERAntiSpyware
• SpyBot
• Manual remedies such as clearing DNS cache
• Online virus removers

But none of them worked until I tried MalwareBytes. This is an amazing Anti-Malware application. It not only found more problems compared to SUPERAntiSpyware and SpyBot but it also didn’t ask me to reboot my computer.

I took a preventive step also – an attribute of my old age – and installed free Anti Virus software licensed for UofT affiliates.

I’m the first in my family to have my wisdom extracted. You see, I’m an immigrant. So this was more of a cosmetic surgery than a required one. True, the wisdom teeth were quite painful especially in the last couple of weeks, but I suspect the pain would have diminished if I waited another few days.

As you may know, I once walked the hills of the Himalayas. Barefoot. Just to see how it feels.

But the truth is I couldn’t afford sandals.

Anyhow, this extraction event was rather embarrassing for me. I felt like a wuss for embracing Western culture and ideals. Wisdom tooth extraction in Nepal is (or at least was) unheard of. You deal with the pain. It’s part of the initiation process of becoming an adult.

But since I’m lucky enough to have dental coverage, I went ahead with the extraction.

I decided to get all 4 without consulting anyone other than the dentist. It made sense to get all 4 done at the same time since I’d only experience the pain once. Or so I thought.

The process took 10 minutes. Other than the blood, the 4 stitches and the extreme pain, it was okay. Maybe I deserved the pain for acting like a wuss. Local anesthesia takes at least 5 minutes to work. Point well-noted.

The pain only lasted for another 10 minutes. I stayed in the operation room initially because I thought I was supposed to. My ears were ringing and the nurse asked me to leave the gauge in my mouth for another 30 minutes. I thought this also implied I should stay in the operating room for another 30 minutes. After 5 minutes and being weird-ed out by the fact that I was still there, she asked me to leave.

I left. Now I was totally feeling like a wuss.

The rest of the afternoon was rather insignificant. No pain. It could’ve been because I was still under the influence of the late reacting local anesthesia and yeah, I took about 10 pain-killers as soon as I got home.

The next day… I got up afraid to look at myself in the mirror. But this was different from every other morning. I thought I’d look like a chipmunk, miss my playoff game and start my miserable weekend.

None of that stuff happened though. I did not have much pain. No swelling.

I hit a few crucial free throws in the playoff game.

And for the first time in more than 18 hours, I felt good about myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a wuss but not in traditional I’m-out-for-the-weekend-after-a-wisdom-teeth-extraction kind of wuss.

Okay, yeah…