Catching up with students at WNCC

I've been incommunicado for most of this week, and so I didn't really get out to see too many people.

However, on Friday I went up to Western Nevada Community College, and instantly ran into two of my students.

Carson City resident Cory Pine, whose 6-year-old son, Bradley, appeared on the front page of Friday's Nevada Appeal, said hi. She is working on her degree in graphic design and took the first class I taught three semesters ago.

I was running for the elevator and there, delivering food to the second floor of the Cedar Building, was Gardnerville's Dahleen Kendler, who took desktop publishing from me last year. I wrote about Dahleen's dad, '60s Chicago DJ Art Roberts, last spring. He was one of the first rock DJs and worked for Chicago's famous WLS, The Loop.

She told me Friday she won enough money at Keno to buy a new computer for her business. Now that's a business plan.

I ate lunch at Java Joe's Friday. When I got into line I thought I recognized the woman just ahead of me. It turns out it was my wife's cousin Mianne, who lives in Portland.

Mianne grew up in Genoa and Carson City and is the daughter of John and Peg Deruntz. She is down visiting her aunt, Jean Marshal, who was also in line for coffee. Jean lives in Reno now but used to live in Jacks Valley. Jean's son, Randy, has just gone back home to Australia after visiting his mom. Daughter Maggie lives in Sacramento.

I received an e-mail from Nevada Appeal editor emeritus Sue Morrow pointing out that I misspelled JC Penney in my last column. Sue's got a good eye, and I should have caught that before I sent it in to the paper.

Sue also thinks that in the case of future car-driving dog Beauregard, his nick-name should be Beau and not Bo. I've seen it both ways. When I asked owner Bill Williamson how he spelled the dog's name, he told me to do what I thought best. I think I'll extend that to the diminutive as well.

There are a lot of hazards out there in the cyber world and I ran bang up against one last week.

I was logging onto my America Online account when I it locked me out and made me sign up under the root directory.

It turns out I'd opened an e-mail called Instakiss, which said it had a cyber kiss from an admirer.

Assuming it was the wife, I clicked the hyperlink and typed in my screen name and password automatically.

That was bad. I immediately felt the same sinking feeling I get when I lock the keys in the car.

It turns out the e-mail and Web page, which looks just like something America Online would put up, is phony and whoever put it up used my identity to start sending out advertisements.

I will never cluck disapprovingly again on hearing one of these stories.

My mom sent me an e-mail, which listed a procedure for preventing computer virus worms from using my address book to spread.

However, the method she recommended is just another hoax that spreads across the Internet now and again.

Putting the user name aaaa and the e-mail address wormalert@somewhere.com does not stop a worm virus in its tracks. The virus doesn't care if the addresses are good, it just keeps sending the stuff until it's done.

P.S. somewhere.com is a real domain name and every time people use it as a worm buster it overloads their system.

Kurt Hildebrand is former managing editor of the Nevada Appeal. Reach him at 887-2430, ext. 402 or e-mail him at kurt@tahoe.com