Avast

I've been sick since Sunday, when the insane local weather rose to the 40s, then the high 50s.  Dizzy, problems sleeping, etc., etc.  Yesterday, I was violently ill with the worst kind of stomach flu symptoms--the worst I can ever remember.  Today, my wrists are numb from the strain of clutching the side of the sink as my body discharged every last morsel of food in my stomach.  This happened six or seven times, and more violently than ever in my 61 earth-sun rotations.

I think (read: hope) it's over.  I came very close to calling the squad last am, because I'm not up to driving and have no one nearby who can give me a ride.  But I braved it out.  Took two Benadryls, plus my 24-hour Zyrtec, and puffed Symbicort, took Tylenol.  (My recent VA blood test had great results, save for a slightly wrong kidney reading.  My doctor says there's nothing to worry about at present, but said no Ibuprofen or caffeine.  I don't remember if she said to cut down on the caffeine, or to quit.  At any rate, caffeine dehydrates, so it's not a friend to our kidneys.)

I don't remember ever being quite this sick, at least not in the flu department.  Lots of reasons why the sudden, insane temperature surge could have been the cause of yesterday's nightmare--it's the old chain reaction deal.  My sinuses reacted badly to the 50 degree jump in temps, headaches resulted, sinus drainage, anxiety, and all this plays hell with the immune system, opening doors to virus entry.  My pastor feels that sudden bursts of warm weather reactivate sleeping viruses, and she may be right.  The medical community loves to be skeptical regarding such claims, but, at the same time, it can't explain the weather/illness relationship, which is clearly real.  Yet it maintains the chant of "Cold doesn't make people sick," when obviously it freaking does.  Or, in my case, a sudden, totally unseasonable rise in temperature following major cold.  If the medical community is without an explanation for a phenomenon,  then its knee-jerk rejection of any and all conventional, "uniformed" explanations is a tad arrogant and irrational.  And my pastor's theory doesn't sound unreasonable to me at all, given that temporary bouts of spring weather reactivate insects--I know, because stink bugs are showing up in epic numbers in this house.  No reason viruses might not respond in a similar way.  They are life forms.  Living things are confused by out-of-season temperatures.  "Hey, it's time to bud!"--Plant.

Anyway, last thing I need now is for my Avast software to act up.  But it is.  Have any of you had tremendous problems with Avast free antivirus, as I'm having?  I recently became so disgusted with the vile piece of garbage (I'm keeping this clean), I tried two other freebies--and they gave me worse problems!  One of them--the malware called Avira--turned off vital functions in my PC, and I had to go on line to discover how to revive them.  Utterly unacceptable.  I don't care that these are free downloads--software designed to protect a PC shouldn't cripple its operation.  I personally feel these companies should be sued.  But figure the odds--software makers are God, somehow.  I get tired of people responding to software failures by noting how amazing computer technology is, as a lame attempt to put things in some kind of context.  Yes, PCs are amazing inventions.  You won't hear any different from me--I'm astonished by the things (when they function, at least).  Also amazing is the failure of software makers to eliminate glitches prior to offering an update.  Also amazing is the stupidity of not putting a shut-off feature in programs that aren't working.  To wit, when a piece of software has tried x-thousands of times to update and can't, it should be designed to cease trying.  All it takes is one program looping endlessly to eventually slow down everything.  I've had that happen more than once.  It was funny--the computer tech Bev and I used to consult was unable to figure out why my MAGIX program was failing to complete its burns properly.  I, who know zilch about PCs, did a desperation measure and shut off everything in the Startup menu, figuring another program was doing it.  I was right--I fixed the problem.  Me, of all people.

Sometimes, I think techs fail to realize a dirt-basic fact of computers that nearly every PC owner figures out almost right away--namely, that the failure of a given process to complete itself eventually drags everything down, because all processes on our PCs are interdependent, their specific functions be damned.  Techs must be forbidden to even consider this possibility, and never mind that a tech-stupid person like me has been able to fix any number of program glitches using this knowledge.

Sometimes, professionals are biased against a given possibility, even when the evidence points to it.  Kind of like medical people trying to argue against something we all know to be true--that people are more likely to get sick when the temps are cold.  Well, they are.  There's likely a long chain of events, just as with my violent illness of yesterday (I came so close to calling the squad, I'm amazed I didn't).  It's anti-scientific to deny cause and effect just because we don't understand it.  Observation comes first--we observe that something is the case, and we accept it, even if we can't explain it.  This is why very smart people are total imbeciles sometimes--it's because they've shut their minds to certain possibilities.  Something can't be, therefore it isn't.  Anyway, I wonder and wonder at how people smart enough to design computers have yet to put a limit on a program's repeated efforts to do whatever (update, start, etc.).  As amazing as PCs are as technology, in that sense they're no more advanced than an electric alarm clock whose (bleeping) alarm would still be going five days later if you didn't shut off the switch.

I also wonder why so many PC techs think PC users are more interested to in messing around with settings and with digesting the great new features in a program (which are usually not remotely great) than USING their damn PCs.  We are users.  I've lost two hours of PC use so far because Avast is messing up.  I'm beginning to think that, what the hay, I'll just let the viruses come in.  What are they going to do, disable my PC?  Avast is already doing that.

Lee