S.M.A.R.T virus or data recovering virus

Last Saturday, I suffered from a computer virus, S.M.A.R.T virus. When I surfed internet web sites to look for documentaries in Japan, something happened to my computer. It turned out later that something bad software was installed on the background when I watched some videos. I did not care about virus on these web sites because I had enjoyed these site for more than two years. Let me describe here what I experienced and how I recover. I would be grad if I could help someone who suffers from same situation.

1. Situation

When I watched a embedded streaming, every software windows suddenly got closed. After that some, small many windows warning hard disc error showed up and they overlapped slightly. In addition to those windows, a big window opened and seemed to start to checking the hard disk condition. It showed that my computer seemed to have many serious matter as shown in the above figure finally. Additionally, a window popped up to encourage to buy some software to fix problems. Another symptom was that many files looked gone including my document, etc. It turned out later that ever files still existed but just made invisible.

2. What I did at first

At first, I did not consider this seriously, because I was thinking optimistically that the widows function of restore of system in accessory would be able to recover everything, but it was not able to work out. After I realized this, I got serious. I investigated S.M.A.R.T virus in the internet, and as I expected, many people suffered from same thing and many recovering solutions are already available there.

3. What I did to recover 

Firstly I had to kill virus software because it stayed at start up and it always interrupted what I was trying to do. So I opened the command window, and typed msconfig and opened it. If I looked at start up software tab, I could see unfamiliar software which was installed at the time when I felts something wrong. When I unchecked the software, then it stopped to work.

Secondly, I had to find where the software was installed. So I went to the folder options in the controlled panel and checked "show hidden folders" in order to show everything. In my case, if I look the desktop, there was a short cut of the virus software, and I found the path by looking property.

Thirdly, What I had to do was to remove the software completely, so I installed a software which can remove any installed software by over writing it somehow.

Forth, many folders still remained hidden. If I show hidden folders by unchecking something, it still remain half transparent. So I had to installed a software which can show folders which were hidden intentionally.

These four actions were what I did so far. Honestly, it looks that everything comes back to normal but I do not know whether these are enough or not. If I look back the past, I had been lazy for security since I had used Window 7 because it looked like robust against computer virus.

When I talked to my friend about this, I was suggested to install security softwares immediately to protect my computer. These are free, so I`m thinking to install them soon. I will tell you what I install after I do it.

Initial D

Unfortunately, sport car is getting less popular in Japan. Regardless to say, motorcycle is getting much less popular, the industry is at stake. There are many reasons for this. One of them is obviously internet. I do not mean to say that internet is bad. I want to say that we got a lot of things in good meaning since internet came out. Young peoples do not have to enjoy motor sport. Second reason is surely long recession in Japan. Because of this, young people can not expect increase of salary and try to save money for future. Possession of car generally needs much money like tax, parking and maintenace. For example, one of my friend tried to find monthly parking in the center of Tokyo, monthly fee was $400 at that time. He gave up to buy a car. Yong people can not afford this unless he/she is really wealthy or he/she spent much % of salary on it.


However, there is still young peoples who like to drive sports car. Generally, these peoples are influenced by a manga and an anime, "Initial D". Initial D is about one guy who drives a car to help his father`s busiess for Tohu delivery and gets great technique without realizing it. He happens to race with some guy and beats him. So he gets interested in driving gradually and improves his drift technique as the story goes. The interesting point about this is that it is not impossible to do similar thing in Japanese load, especially in local mountain loads. So that`s a point. Young peoples try to do same thing. In the story, many existing car show up, and it drive peoples buy own favorite one. Cars which shows up in the story are old cars. So if you look at used car shops in Japan, there are many old sport cars with high price even though they are old. 


If you want to watch Initial D, it is available in Hulu for free at the moment. The earlier you can watch, the better it is. Hulu never guarantee that it is for free forever. I put the link below.




Link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_D
Hulu
http://www.hulu.com/initial-d

Skyline GT-R and Nissan GT-R in United States

Last time I wrote about RX 7, but let me write about GT-R as well. I have never seen skyline GT-R since I came to U.S. With the same reason in the case of RX 7, I was thinking that this car is really popular here, but it is not actually. In the movie. "The first ant the furious", Paul walker was mainly driving this car. If I say specifically, it is R34 GT-R. I was so surprised not to see this car, so I checked if this is available in U.S. According to Wikipedia, Nissan sold this car in Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and UK. Because of some reasons, this car is not available in U.S market. One of them is opposite steering. In U.S, it is left side but it is right side in Japan. Second is that position of tank is too close to rear seat in terms of U.S regulation. I easily imagine that many American people would be surprised to see the movie at first time. Nissan have stopped to manufacture this car in 2002, but it is still popular in Japan, and price of used car never goes down now. This car already got premium image. This is still my favorite car because this car performance is as good as Porsche 911 but price is affordable for anyone if people can spent much % of income on the car unlike other high performance cars.

Nissan started to manufacture GT-R again since 2007. This time, this car is called Nissan GT-R against previous Skyline GT-R. These two GT-R look different, and engine systems are also different. Nissan GT-R employed inline 6 engine like BMW, on the other hand, Nissan GT-R employs V6  engine. Unlike the previous one, Nissan sells this car in U.S market, so I sometimes see this car in the bay area. Incidentally, Paul walker also drove this new GT-R in the last scene of the movie "Fast five". When I looked this concept car in the Tokyo motor show, I was shocked honestly because I would have never said that this looked good. I can say same thing for any high performance sport car, they all are over spec in Japan. As for this GT-R, maximum speed limit is regulated to be 180km/h even though it can get over 300km/h practically. However, if you go to the circuit with the GT-R, the car automatically turns off speed limit by using GPS.

Link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Skyline_GT-R

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_GT-R

Mazda RX 7 FD in Unated States

A few weeks ago, I saw RX 7 FD in Sunnyvale at first time and in Cupertino at second time. I was really surprised to see this and got excited a little bit at the same time because I had not seen this car and I was thinking this car was not available in U.S. According to Wikipedia, this car had been sold until 2002 here, but Mazda have already stopped to make this car all over the world. A new car is not available any more in the market, but this car is still popular especially for young peoples who like sporty drive in Japan. Although RX 8 is available here, it is different car. When I watched a movie, Tokyo drift, many Japanese car including RX 7 showed up in the movie, so I was expecting to see RX 7 many times before I came to U.S. A problem which I come up with is that RX 7 was fully modified in the movie so almost all people could not recognize that it was originally RX 7. A picture shown below is the modified one. It does not look like RX 7, it is almost a different car. If you do not know background, you could not recognize this.

Regarding the reason why old cars are still popular, I will tell my opinion later.

Link(first picture, second picture)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_RX-7
http://driftjapan.com/blog/mazda/mazda-rx-7/
 

He can relate to Japanese movies

One of my friend, an American Taiwanese, said to me that there are many Japanese movies which he can related to. When I asked what it means, then he explained that stories of Japanese movies are typical daily life but with some special things which is likely happen in reality somehow. On the other hand, stories of American movies are not likely happen in reality.


For example, there is a movie which tiles is  "Shall we dance". The story is about a typical man. He happens to find an advertisement of a ballroom dance group on way his home and start to learn the dancing. At first, his motivation is to get close to ladies, but he gradually gets passion for the dancing. After all, he decides to attend a contest for the dancing...

The Hollywood remade this movie with the same name, but I do not know how it got popular.

Honestly, I have not watched both movies actually, I just know a little bit about. So I am going to have to watch this. When I searched this title in Netflix, then the Japanese version comes out. It sounds kind of funny.


 

Unstable idling with my mini cooper 2007

Last week, I was troubled by unstable idling issue about my mini cooper. If I say from the conclusion, it was just because engine oil was low level. However, I did not know it until I went to dealer and I felt a little bit depressed mentally while thinking many bad results. So, I want to list up symptoms about my situation in order to help peoples who are troubled by same thing.

 1. Unstable idling occurred especially after brake to stop. If I look at tachometer, RPM goes down from high to low, and it was unstable around 700rpm by going back and forth during idling. Additionally, during unstable situation, I could feel stumbling of the car. Engine was stalled once after strong brake. At this time, RPM went down to zero smoothly. Fortunately, I was able to restart engine. In my case, this symptom did not happen every time. That might indicate that situation was still early stage, and not too late to be fixed.

2. Irregular acceleration after 2000rpm. This occurred since same day with issue 1, so this might be related to issue 1. After 2000rpm, engine behavior sounded irregular response a little bit. Additionally, when I controlled the mar with back gear, irregular response was awful and uncomfortable sometimes.

3. Warning of low pressure engine oil was displayed on the front panel in special situation. When I curved the corner with a little bit high speed as much as I felt transverse G, this warning came out for a few seconds and disappeared soon. If I look back, this was a sign for the cause.

When I arrived at the dealer, and showed my car, and explained symptoms, then a person in charge, Peter, realized the cause soon after starting the engine and looking at the behavior of tachometer. I was really relieved and felt that I bought reliability at dealer because labor fee is generally expensive at dears.

I brought my car at early morning on Friday, and it took a few hours to fix my car, so I used a shuttle service to go to the office. This service was fee of charge and I really appreciate this service because I have only one car. In mini cooper dealer in San Jose, they outsource this to peoples who already retired, so drivers are old guys. My driver was old gentle man, he is over 80 years old, and moved to this are from Canada more than 40 years ago. His father and mother moved to Canada from England. So he looks like British guy. On the way to the office, we could not communicate well because he did not seem to understand my Japanese accent English. Before 3 pm, I got a phone call from Peter about completion of my car repair. The old gentle man also picked me up at this time, however we could communicate each other on the way to the dealer. It was easy solution. I just spoke loudly. That`s it. I was just because it was hard for him to hear. It was short time from the office to the dealer office, but I could enjoy conversation very much about him and me.

At that morning, I was a little bit depressed, but at the evening I was feeling good even though I paid much money.

Raw beef liver will be gone in Japanese restaurants

As of July 1, Japanese government will ban restaurants from serving raw beef liver officially. If restaurants break the law, they will be fine or responsible peoples will go to jail. According to the announcement, the motivation of having to do this is that raw beef has bacterias no matter how fresh it is, and such bacterias can cause not only heavy stomachache but also health problems, and it is difficult to eliminate or kill bacteria completely before serving it. Actually children and old peoples can die due to these bacterias. However, wait a second ! The fact is not turned out recently, but the fact has been well known for long time from experiences. Japanese peoples eat raw beef liver while realizing this fact, and eating raw meet is up to peoples. Peoples understand, what is called, self-responsibility. Japanese Health ministry has warned that it is better not to eat raw meet, but it has not been prohibited by law. So this underlies in gray zone.  

So why does the government do this now ? 

I have one clue about this. Although some peoples die throughout one year, there was mass food poisoning due to raw beef in a restaurant in Japan. In this incident, some old peoples died and some children suffered from health problems. Moreover, many TV news took this incident seriously, and many peoples realized how risky eating raw meet is. This was because hygiene management in the restaurant was terrible. Raw beef was not fresh and they did not trim the surface of beef which is commonly done to eliminate bacteria as much as possible. So I guess that the health ministry keeps eyes close so far but they can not do that now. I am really sorry about restaurants which care about freshness of meet and properly do this process. Because of bad restaurants, good restaurants are damaged somehow.

What is happening in Japan is that many peoples rush into restaurants to enjoy last chance of raw beef liver and remember how tasty it is. If I were in Japan now, I would do same thing because I like it. However, please do not get wrong idea about Japanese people, not every people eats raw meet. I am sure that beer lovers tend to like to eat it because beer and raw beef liver is perfect match combination.

When I was in Japan, I used to eat some raw parts of chicken, beef, pork, fish, horse, deer. 

But since I came to U.S, I have never tried those except raw fish because peoples do not have a habit of eating something without heating.

To tell the truth, I have suffered from food poisoning of chicken due to raw chicken, although I do not remember what part of chicken it was. At this time, I was suffering from fever, stomachache, and diarrhea for a few days. But I would not give up to eat those when I go back to Japan.

Link 

http://jp.wsj.com/japanrealtime/blog/archives/11841/