Father Gates, forgive me, for I have sinned. I surfed the Web unprotected and caught a worm meant for you. This creature brainwashed my computer into spreading clones of itself across the Internet -- and preparing to attack one of your Web sites on Saturday.

I hope that you dodge that assault, and those from thousands of other Windows zombies infected with the "Blaster" worm. And I pray that you find the wisdom to interpret this episode as a sign from above: It is time for simpler, safer machines.

The first clue that my home computer had caught Blaster, a malicious program known as a worm, came around 2 p.m. Monday when a window popped open on my screen and announced that my system was about to shut down. (I usually run firewall software to protect against intruders but had turned it off temporarily to run a conflicting application.)

The message was pure geek-speak: "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." Then a clock appeared and started counting down from 60 seconds.

With 10 to 15 work files open, I hardly knew where to start. I disconnected my Internet dial-up line and frantically saved as many files as I could until the timer reached nine seconds. Then I powered off my computer.

When I manually rebooted, my firewall reactivated and popped up an alert box warning that a program called "msblast.exe" was trying to access the Internet. The firewall rated the risk as "high" and recommended that I click to block Msblast from going online, which I did.

I went rooting around my hard drive in search of this thing and found a tiny, 6-kilobyte file by that name lurking deep in the Windows directory. Soon the countdown clock reappeared, and my system was forced to reboot several more times. A maddening two hours later, the anti-virus program on my computer displayed an alert box saying it had detected a virus called "W32.Blaster.Worm" that it was unable to repair.

Oh, great.

By now, multiple online news sources were reporting that the Blaster worm was wriggling its way onto thousand of computers running Windows, exploiting a hole Microsoft had left open in a Windows sub-system called "Remote Procedure Call." Starting Saturday, the worm would make infected computers launch an attack on Microsoft's Windows Update site -- Windows users' primary source for security patches, including one for the very hole Blaster had crawled through -- by sending bogus requests for information.

There was no evidence yet that the worm did anything else, but I knew enough about past break-ins to know that a program like Blaster could easily steal or erase my data.

I don't remember feeling this uneasy since I came home one morning last year to find someone had rammed a hole through my front door and stolen what few valuables I owned. Then as now, I kicked myself for not having installed a burglar alarm system or upgraded my insurance policy. Also then as now, I wound up getting mad.

Sure, Microsoft has been urging people running Windows to give their machines a regular security tuneup, either by activating Windows XP's auto-update feature so Microsoft can do it for them or by downloading every free security "patch" that Microsoft publishes online to fix Window's vulnerabilities.

I confess I had done neither. I didn't trust Microsoft enough to have its computers automatically communicating with mine, so I had never switched on auto-updating.

And as for getting patches myself, Microsoft releases dozens of them a year, almost all without consumer-friendly instructions as to what they do or in what order they should be downloaded and installed.

Fortunately, Blaster turned out to be relatively benign and simple to remove. Since I have multiple computers, I switched machines to download the necessary patches and fixes, then transferred them via disk to repair my hobbled computer.

It clearly could have been much worse, both for me and the thousands of other people and companies whose machines were attacked by Blaster this week. I spent four or five hours Monday researching and cleaning up the mess, while worrying that I might lose thousands of digital photos, interview transcripts and notes (which, I must also confess, I had only partially backed up).

How sad that I don't trust the world's largest software company enough to allow it to fix my own computer for me. And how pathetic that the creator of the operating system running more than 90 percent of the world's computers can't figure out how to protect its customers, 18 months after vowing to do so in its "Trustworthy Computing" initiative.

When is Microsoft going to realize that it can't count on computer users like me to clean up its mistakes every time?

On Tuesday, I whipped out my press pad and called Microsoft. Stephen Toulouse, the company's security program manager, patiently explained the complex challenges involved in automatically updating many millions of computers, whose owners have different needs and opinions about the level of protection they should have. Toulouse said he felt Microsoft has made great strides by publicizing its vulnerabilities and working with other developers to create fixes.

"The short answer is there is more we can do," he added. "For us it's a journey. We don't view the security aspect as being an endpoint."

Toulouse also said the company is boosting the Windows Update site's capacity and taking other precautions for the Blaster bomb. Should that site crash, Microsoft also offers Windows updates and patches at an alternate address: www.microsoft.com/downloads.

Search experts warned yesterday that new variants of the Blaster worm were emerging. Most appeared to be direct clones, which is good if they share the fairly inefficient code that has braked Blaster's rate of transmission.

A more cleverly crafted worm could use the same hole in Windows to reach many more computers and inflict far greater damage on the economy and personal productivity. It might even hit enough computers at Microsoft to give Bill Gates a real sense of what kind of pain his customers have been going through.

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