David... I'm sorry to hear about your misfortune... it's never easy to start from scratch.
I might advise you, though, to find some new 'tech guys'.
"Blaster" is non-destructive and pretty easy to remove. You should not have lost data and apps like that. Certainly, your data files could have been backed off with a simple procedure.
There might have been more than meets the eye here.
Also, Blaster was a "last-year" virus and should have been part of any AntiVirus program's defenses, as long as you kept up with the updates. If not, you can't blame the AV software.
If you did keep up... that's why I endorse Norton AV.
