When I was part of the residential networking team back in college, I always cringed at how people let their computers deteriorate.  “You have how many icons on your desktop? 2000? How is that possible?” Then you have the perennial file-sharers who have 3-4 different file sharing apps running at the same time while connected to 237 other computers. No wonder your computer is slow. I, on the other hand, have always maintained a well-tuned system until today.

I always wanted to improve my Mandarin. I speak at the level of a 6-year-old, and I can read about 20 characters now, down from maybe around 500 back in college. I read about this new project that language program that Google had been working on with a Chinese software company, Kingsoft or something like that. They had this product called “PowerWord”, which is apparently widely popular in China. It works as a built-in translating dictionary that pops up every time your mouse moved over a foreign character on the computer screen.  I was excited. Super-translator! Made by Google! You can’t go wrong with that. I promptly installed it.  The program was amazing. No matter what I was doing–web-surfing, reading a word document, clicking on menus–it translated everything.

Two hours later, my computer tanked.

Blue screen of death, blocked networked connections (except for Google’s websites), 16K suspicious program whirring happily in the background, impervious to termination, what have you. I’m embarassed to say, I think a worm infected my computer.

Five hours later, I’m still reinstalling my software. So much for trying to learn. Looks like it’s back to watching Korean soap operas dubbed with Mandarin for me.

If you want to learn some Chinese, by all means. Search for “PowerWord 2008″. Get the new copy that’s made by Google and Kingsoft.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you though.

computing rant, tech