ClutterFreePC and the Case of the Overworked Blogger

It was about 2:45 a.m. when I got the call from our publicist. Another 23-year–old starlet became a mother in a hush-hush clinic in West Hollywood. We needed a story immediately and as soon as I put the phone down, I realized my laptop was at my office. I quickly got dressed and ran downstairs to our family computer. I hit the power button and ran to the kitchen to get coffee going. I went back to my seat a few moments later and to my surprise, the computer was still booting up. In fact, it was showing the start-up screen while the tower made very strange noises. Finally it came up and without hesitation, I opened the browser to get the specs from my work email. Nothing happened. Then finally a window popped open, but not the web browser. It was a warning box telling me that there were fatal computer errors and without warning, the screen went blank. The story was going to be late and heads were going to roll at the office.

I became a “mommy blogger” kind of late in the game. I never imagined that the sex advice website where I was a staff writer would branch off into this particular category. It came as an even greater surprise when I was announced to be the managing editor of this new site. I was a bit hesitant when my editor-in-chief offered me the position. I had written about both my pregnancies back when the magazine was still just print media. But my kids were in their early teens and I didn’t feel terribly relevant to new Moms. Despite my trepidation, I took the job and started a few months later.

What was interesting about this particular variety of mommy blog not only offered advice to new moms, it also reported the lives of celebrity moms. Since Hollywood is still considered to be in a “baby boom”, we tend to more heavily focus on these stories. Getting stories about young Hollywood noticed is primarily based on getting the word out before anyone else. I never missed a story’s timing until that night the computer wouldn’t boot up. It was practically a new machine and was hardly ever used. The kids only used it to check their Facebook pages and emails and both my husband and I have our own laptops. I decided to bring the tower with me into work to have IT check it out.

After two days, one of the IT guys came into my office carrying the tower. It turned out that a virus had swept through the computer and corrupted the hard drive. He then explained that the browser was full of junk from spam-filled sites and it probably went un-noticed since there was no software protecting the computer. He proceeded to lecture me about Internet safety and how malware was everywhere. How all someone needed to do was click a bad link on Facebook and your hard drive becomes a time bomb.  Once he left, I started doing some research. I found an article about ClutterFreePC software by Ascentive, LLC.

After some further reading on their website, I decided that this software was worth giving a shot. I purchased ClutterFreePC and and installed it on all my computers. A few weeks later I noticed that the family computer was beginning to act funny so I scanned the hard drive. Sure enough, it had quarantined some troubling files. I couldn’t believe this happened again, however, I was glad I caught it in time. I decided now would be a good time to see if the monitoring software was doing its job.

When the list of sites that had been visited on the computer came up, I was taken aback. It seemed that someone was frequenting adult sites that offered free movies and free downloads every other day. I was ready to write the whole thing off as mere spam that makes its way into all our inboxes. The other day I deleted six emails offering discounted male enhancement drugs.  Then it occurred to me that I was the mother of two teenage boys and my stomach began to sink. One very awkward family talk later, we covered what was and was not to be viewed on our family computer. The following morning my lead story was titled, “Help! My Kids Are Watching Internet Porn.”