Norman Whitfield Songs I Like

Norman Whitfield died on September 16, 2008. He was 68 and someone I would've liked for us to have interviewed. He actually wrote the famed rock critic Dave Marsh's number one song of all time. That would be Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

I hadn't really paid that much attention to the song, mostly I heard the Creedence Clearwater Revival version which I like a lot. Once I read how highly rated the song is, I heard it with different ears. I wanted to know if I was missing something. And I guess I was because it really is a wonderful song. In the LA Times obituary it says that Norman wrote some songs on a key so high, which gave Marvin Gaye so much trouble to sing, that they would practically come to blows.

As much as I now like Grapevine and turn it up every time it comes on the radio, I still like another Norman song even more. That would be Just My Imagination by the Temptations. Not just because of the song which is one of the most romantic songs I know but also because there's a girl involved. And as everyone knows, whenever there's a girl involved, things seem to change.

She was one one of my friend's sister. And it's not even something amazing. Not even close. It's just a pleasant reminder of my past. We were in my friend's garage at night. There were about five of us. Three guys and two girls. The radio was on. We were just horsing around with the girls, when my friend tried to give his sister a hickey. I thought that was pretty odd because I have a younger sister and I've never even remotely thought of giving her a hickey. And I've been told she's attractive. Anyway, so the girl screamed and got away from my friend's grasp and ran right into me. I held her briefly just so she wouldn't fall. She felt and smelled fantastic. Then she ran away from me too. I didn't know what to think. I mean, of all the people there, why would she run into me? Guys quickly start getting ideas. But you try not to think about your friend's sisters so nothing much could've happened anyway. I did think at the time, though, that if anyone should be giving her a hickey, it should be me.

Another great song from Norman Whitfield is Papa Was A Rolling Stone by The Temptations. It's a terrific song with a great bass line and violins. The song reminds me of my father. I love my father very much but he was, as they say, a rolling stone. He would leave the family behind to look for work elsewhere. My father was different from the song though, which says that "And Mama, some bad talk going around town saying that Papa had three outside children and another wife. And that ain't right." He just had the one wife. My mother. Unfortunately. You try spending time with my parents.

One time I remember vividly. It was Christmas time and my friends and I went to downtown El Paso, Texas, which is my hometown. We went to see the lights and the Christmas tree in the plaza. So we're walking down the plaza all bad ass, my friends and I, carrying a boombox that for some reason, was colored bright red. I'm certain that the redness must've diluted our badassness. But what are you going to do. Then Papa was a Rolling Stone came on and a raised the volume, just in case the people across the street couldn't hear it because of the drone of the Christmas songs. My friends and I walked in step to the song. We were bad.

There's not a lot I can say about Norman other than a sincere thank you. Your songs will live on for a very long time.

Getting a Back Door Virus

So I've been battling a computer virus. Nasty business if you ask me. I've had the free AVG anti-virus software for close to ten years. I've had viruses but AVG took care of them. This one was a tough one. Maybe it was me not keeping AVG up to date or maybe it was them. I don't know. All I know is that the virus couldn't be deleted. The computer would freeze and I'd have to do a restart. At one point I closed all the applications and all of a sudden a woman's voice came on. It was too soft to hear what she said. So I turned up the volume and rap music started blaring from my speakers. I have rap songs on my music catalog, but nothing like this. I hate to admit it, but I got the chills. Someone had taken over my computer.

I quickly turned it off, disconnected the online cable and restarted it. It froze. I restarted it again. It let me in so I did a scan with Spybot Search and Destroy and another with Lavasoft Adware. They all found and removed infected items.

So I went back online. Seemed ok. I tried to go to Microsoft updates and it froze. This went on every time I went on Microsoft. I must've restarted the computer about fifty times. At one point whenever I clicked on Microsoft updates it would redirect me to other sites . Finally the computer wouldn't let me do anything so I did a PC recovery. It was a good thing I had all my stuff backed up on Carbonite. I've lost files before so I've learned the hard way to do back ups.

Once I did the recovery, I could get into Microsoft. So I did all the updates. I also figured it was time to not be cheap and buy a good anti-virus. I went to sites that reviewed the software and found
Bit Defender. It was highly rated at a good price. So I bought it. I tried to download it but it told me it couldn't download because I had a virus. It suggested I do an online scan, which I did. Two hours later it found a back door virus it couldn't remove. That was odd. What was I supposed to do now?

My brother in law Joe told me to do an online scan using Kaspersky, which was another highly rated software. Two hours later it found the same virus and it could not remove it. So I copied the name of the virus and googled it. I found another website called Adware Alert, which found a ton of viruses. I started entering my personal data but on a hunch I did a review of the website. Turns out some reviews claim it gives out false positives on viruses. Who knows if this is true or not, I don't want to take any chances so I didn't buy it.

I finally found another site called Cyber Defender. It scanned and found viruses in five minutes. Cost fifty bucks though. But that's for 5 computers. We only have four but that's ok. The bad part is that now I'm concerned about identity theft. How much personal information, if any, did the intruders find from the computer? Should I cancel my credit cards? What about my bank account? I called my bank and they told me to send a fraud alert to the credit monitoring services and check my bank account regularly. It seemed too much work so I gave the work to
Lifelock. This is the one who gives out the CEO's social security number and dares people to use it. A couple of days later they sent me several emails notifying me that they've put out a fraud alert to the three services. They've opted me out of getting credit card applications through the mail and also not getting any more junk mail. Not bad for ten bucks. That's monthly, so I don't know how long I'll do it for. A few months maybe. It would've taken me a long time to do all that. I'm slow.

So what have I learned from this aside from the obvious don't be cheap. All I can think is, well, nothing. I already know everything I need to know about not getting viruses. Just whatever it is I did to get it, Don't Do It. It's the opposite of
Nike. I KNOW what I did to get it. I'm just not saying.