Virus of the mind? That reminds me of a condition I often suffer, which I call "debugging fever" (or sometimes just "coding fever"). I know I have the fever when I can't stop thinking about the program and keep tracing through it in my head. Or when I'm convinced that in "just five more minutes" I'll manage to fix the bug or finish whatever I was doing, and in the end it takes hours.
How one reacts when suffering the coding fever depends on one's personality. Some people may take it personally and get angry. I prefer to see it as a challenge, a puzzle to solve, and try to remain calm.
The best cure is to go to sleep. I'll probably keep tracing through the code in my dreams, because usually when I wake up everything seems clearer and I know how to fix the problem.
