My Brother From Another Mother and the FBI Is Hacking You

Are there a few of us out there?  Sure. Many moons ago when the "Toaster" came into my family I embraced it and joined up with a group of similarly minded individuals called the Element Owners Club. There I met others who loved E's as much as me and a few that were even lucky enough to grab the personalized plates "TOASTER" in their respective states.  I, of course, am that lucky guy in Maryland. About 5 years ago I got to meet the DC plate holder and today I met my New Hampshire Brother from another mother (dealership/state/etc).

I was on my way back from claiming my free doughnut over at Krispy Kreeme in honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I was very happy to receive something for virtually nothing but the deal was if you talk like a pirate, you get a free doughnut. If you wear pirate costume you got a free dozen. Unfortunately I'm a little short on pirate gear since I donated my puffy shirt from the Idiot-rod a few years back but I did have my Brother-in-Law's Derrick Brook's Tampa Bay Buccaneer's jersey. I think if I went with a matching hat I might have had an outside shot at the free box but alas.

Back to the Toasters, I saw "New Hampshire" one car up on my right and I pulled in behind him and tried to get a shot of his license plate (in full violation of Maryland law) but to no avail as the sun was still on it's way up. But he must have saw me since he signaled for me to pull up next to him. We chatted for a minute at a stop sign and pulled into a parking lot to take a picture. His has about 60,000 miles on mine (his is an '04 and mine an '07) but he gave me some good advice on the belt clamps that I'll bring to my mechanic's attention.

Once I got over the excitement that is my life, I made it home to finish cleaning off my parent's computer. It was infected with malware that makes it look like the FBI has locked your computer for illegal activity. Of course it's a scam and because they lock the OS the only way to shut it down is to do a hard reboot. I eventually found a good explanation of what the scam is and how to fix it (hint: you need to go into the registry and some other stuff). But my folks were concerned and even though they talked to me and I told them it was a scam, they went home and called the FBI to check. Cute right? I ended up cleaning it up for them and reinstalling the Anti-Virus software but they also called the Geek Squad at Best Buy who wanted $200 to clean up the damage. Damn...maybe thats where I need to be looking for work.