Normally I don’t work Mondays, but on this exception to the rule, I was greeted by a comment from one of our readers that instantly sent me into full-alert panic. Thankfully I didn’t pull anything in the process.

Chuck’s comment reads:

Question. When I clicked on an icon on the Colusa Casino ad yesterday on your website I got an immediate notification of a virus or trojan being present. It all happened so fast I wasn’t able to capture the description but it happened two out of two tries.
Any ideas?

Now when I saw it involved an ad on the site, my mind instantly went to a worst case scenario. A few weeks ago the New York Times Web site was serving an ad on its homepage which was infected with malware. That was because of the way the Times sold its ads though and wouldn’t affect someone clicking on a casino ad on our Web site.

While trying to verify it wasn’t something on our end something popped in my brain. Thankfully it wasn’t a blood vessel, just an idea. I noticed Chuck’s e-mail address was from Comcast.

Last week Comcast introduced a new system to notify users of any malware or viruses that might be present. You know, just like those companies that try to sell you malware by saying your machine is infected with malware already. But kudos to Comcast for at least trying to solve a problem, even if it’s only because they don’t like the way botnets clog up their networks. It might not be altruistic, but it’s a start.

So now the bad news that I’ve already had to deliver today. If you get one of these genuine ones that look like the image with this story, congratulations, you’ve got some work to do.

Now if you’ve been backing up regularly, you can restore your system from an known good backup. But as I felt when I told Chuck, this might not get the job done. If this is the first you know about the infection, there’s no telling when it actually started so you could either start from scratch by deleting everything and starting with a fresh Windows install, or you could take your chances with Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool. It’s a great piece of software, but me being the paranoid security person I am, I’d still be worried about some piece of malware lingering after running the tool. But if you don’t want to delete everything you have on your computer, MSRT may be your best bet.

I just got off the phone with one of our readers trying to submit a photo for our Your Turn page and was reminded of the one thing I can’t stand. No, it’s not talking to readers on the phone.

It’s stock photo programs. I can’t stand them. Especially Kodak EasyShare.

As I mentioned on the phone earlier, “EasyShare” is only accurate if you’re sending one photo with one e-mail. Beyond that it just becomes a giant cluster—mess. It’s a bloated piece of garbage designed to get you to buy prints and products through Kodak.

I’m going to make an official recommendation to those of you using Windows that have a digital camera and use Kodak EasyShare. Stop it already. You’re only hurting yourself.

Instead use this free software from Google called Picasa. It is significantly easier to use and will help you organize your photos much easier.

It’s free. You can find it at http://picasa.google.com

Worried that your photos won’t show up or will be too hard to find? Picasa will ask to load them all itself when you first start it up.

Again, it’s free. You can find it at http://picasa.google.com

Adding onto the empire of amazing ways to find stuff through Pen & Links, we’re on Facebook too. How do you find me? Click on the badge below, or on the other one I added on the right side of the page under the ads. It’s a work in progress at the moment.

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Man difficult choices abound for me.

With both Sony’s PlayStation 3 hitting the $299 mark and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 joining the party I’m conflicted about getting a second console. The sad thing? The tipping point might be the fact Sony has a DVD player and my TV is currently lacking one. And Sony doesn’t have the Xbox Live service I have to pay for just to play games online. And Sony has FFVII, which I have yet to play and would like to enjoy in it’s somewhat original incarnation. Oh the difficult decisions to be made.

Of course Nintendo did just release the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the same price as the third title when it released on the Wii. I’m debating on whether or not to get this since I never really picked up the Prime series. But this is three on one disc so who knows?

By the way, speaking of DVD players, how about Wal-Mart unleashing fiery hell in the form of a $30 DVD player?

I’m adding in this Kevin Mitnick story partly because of the fact AT&T didn’t have stringent enough security to protect him and partly because in photo with this story, he bears a striking resemblance to our own Harold Kruger. Granted the photo of Harold is a glamour shot without his specs on, but I can see it.

Another reason not to trust Facebook apps: Phishing schemes that Mark Zuckerburg and Co. can’t keep up with. And if I misspelled his name, I’ll just say it’s out of spite because we’re about the same age and he’s worth a few billion dollars more than me.

The City of Los Angeles will soon be destroyed. Not by raging wildfires, but by it’s embracing of Google Apps and the cloud environment. Sure, it’s a great idea on paper…until Google goes down for a couple of hours like it did this week.

By the way, Google outage didn’t make this CNET list of 10 ways to break your laptop.

The Department of Agriculture of all people is jumping on the rural broadband bandwagon, promoting the benefits of faster Internet to farmers. I’m not sure which chart worries me more: The one that shows the percentage of farms converting to broadband and doesn’t reach 25 percent in the scale, or the one further down pointing out how few broadband providers there are in the West.

Bendable transparent LED screens? Yeah, I’m a sucker for flexibility.

What am I not a sucker for? Companies accused of wrongdoing who turn around and blame the accuser. In this case, a company accused of engaging in software piracy wants to go after an anonymous accuser and could set a precedent on when an anonymous poster can be unmasked.

And if you like Windows 7 and want to use it for 120 days legally, here’s a way to do it.

The whole announcement of MMS finally coming to the iPhone wasn’t worth a post by itself. But Seth the blogger guy and his limp neck was worth it.

I’m posting this story by itself mainly because of the combination of a high concentration of Republicans and a relative lack of tech savviness. I read the comments on our stories and get to read the letters to the editor that confirm all of this.

If you get a piece of e-mail promising to add your computer to a botnet to launch a denial of service attack against President Barack Obama’s Web site, don’t click anything. It’s fake. Then again, it’s not entirely fake. I’m sure it’ll add you to a botnet you’ll have no control over.

I thought the blackouts of Raider games were horrible – not that I’m a Raiders fan, I just hate the blackout policy as a whole – but the NFL has a new form of blackout for Twitter. Players, coaches, media, representatives of media, ball boys, the parking lot guys probably – none can use Twitter before, during or after a game.

Trying to get your head around the improvements in Snow Leopard? Grand Central, Open CL and other goodies are hit in this CNET piece. By the way, Chrome’s been updated for the new OS too. And computer clone maker Psystar is mad that it can’t install Snow Leopard on its machines.

By the way, just like everyone else, I called the Sept. 9 Apple event. Music, Steve Jobs, and and maybe an Apple TV update are on the menu are on the prognostication menu.

Speaking of music, Guitar Hero 5 has hit stores and brought the Stones to your consoles and the visage of Kurt Cobain.

Now if your name was Kurt Cobain and you were enraged that some dead guy was ahead of you in Yahoo or Google results, don’t sue.

If you’re worried about your getting your telegraph messages properly, make sure to read this piece on a massive magnetic storm 150 years ago.

If it’s a storm of spam you’re worried about, shutting down an entire ISP doesn’t seem to stop the issue, especially in Latvia.

Speaking of ISPs, Comcast doesn’t want real life speed to be the definition of the services it reports to the FCC, rather the magical speed that’s promised in the commercials and never actually happens.

Big kudos go out to Flickr to the point that I might actually use them at some point again after their decision on how they’ll handle copyright notices. As I’ve gone on about numerous times, I can’t stand the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I won’t bore you with another rant about how it stifles innovation instead of fostering it like it claims to. The important thing is Flickr’s decision. They stopped the pathetic practice of plucking photos at the whiff of a copyright claim.

The Department of Homeland Security doesn’t quite win the same degree of acclaim from me with their slight tightening of laptop border search rules.

Just like the summer is drawing closer to an end, this post is, but you can still keep in shape even without the sun or my words. Want to work out your brain? Try some Tetris. Want to work out your body? Well hey, at least the new Wii Fit Plus comes out comes out in October. And if you already have the balance board, the game is just $20.