Fuzzy Logic

Confused?  Puzzled?  Can't tell which?  Maybe you're confuzzled.

If that's not a word, it should be.  It totally fits the day I just had.

My mind was in a fog from the moment I woke this morning and all the events that followed conspired to turn all potential productivity into false starts and jarring stalls.

First, as I began to get engrossed in a project on my netbook something was causing every move I made to lag.  I thought to check if something was being downloaded--a podcast or update.  While checking on Avast! to see if virus definitions were downloading, I discovered it wasn't even on and had not been since February 14!  I am online nearly 24/7 and had been unprotected for nearly two weeks?!!!

Turned out I needed to re-register my free edition of Avast!  How had I missed the notice on that?  How had I not noticed it hadn't been on?

As soon as I had re-registered I turned on all of the protection.  And then I did a scan.  Which took nearly an hour.  Then while looking at the new status I learned there were more than a week's worth of new virus definitions to download and was about to click the button when I saw below it that there was a new update to the program itself to download which probably would be up to date on the definitions so I clicked that instead.

After the program was updated it required a restart of the computer.  Once back on the desktop I decided I might as well do the Windows updates before I started opening programs again as that would also require a restart.  So I got that download started just before it was time to start dinner.

Fixing dinner was another confuzzle.  One blooper after another.  Just to name a few:  While building my mom's chicken sub sandwich I was trying to sprinkle the lemon pepper seasoning on the chicken and instead of lifting the fliptop I unscrewed the lid.  I dumped at least a teaspoon of the mix into Mom's sandwich.  Then when I opened the Dijon mustard squirt bottle, having first turned it upside down and shaken it's contents towards the lid, it poured into my hand.  Apparently my sister had diluted it because it was so close to gone you couldn't get enough to move off the sides toward the opening.  So while messing with the seasoning and the mustard I left the chicken strips on the grill too long and they got dry.

So then.  Back to the computer.  

As soon as I finished eating my sandwich I headed back to the computer anticipating a quick restart followed by a couple of productive hours before Mom came to bed and limited my activities to what I could do quietly in a small pool of light.

But of course the computer was not done messing with me.

The shutdown process got stuck on the screen that says 'shutting down'.  I waited it out for half an hour.  After ten minutes I'd consulted my nephew who had never heard of such a thing but thought it was probably OK to force a poweroff.  But I had just done a major update and I remembered how the screen would always warn against shutting off the power in the middle of the shutdown so I hesitated.  Finally I decided to call my husband who is at home in Phoenix OR.

But I couldn't find the slip of paper my sister had written my phone number on after having to retrieve it from her cell phone for me three times.  Our number was less than a week old before I left town so I'd not memorized it yet.  I probably should have by now.  I'd also been meaning to record it in my contacts on my computer which is why I'd laid it on the base of the lamp beside my desk.  But it was gone.  So I had to go ask my sister to get it for me again.

Technology was still not done messing with me.

I had to call my house three times in the next fifteen minutes before Ed answered.  Our connection was bad and we spent the first ten minutes saying 'What"  "Hello?"  Calling each other's names and repeating ourselves three to five times.  My sister put the phone I was using on speaker for me and that seemed to solve it for some reason.

Ed too said to power off after I'd explained what was going on.  But he at least sounded confident when he said it.  So I did and then after a minute powered back up and was soon back on my desktop.  Once we had said our good-byes I had thirty minutes left before Mom would be coming to bed.

So much for a productive day.

It was another two hours before the fog started lifting off  my brain and I began to feel more focused and my IQ gained ten points.

So if you had a choice would you rather be puzzled or confused?

Taking into consideration that if one is puzzled one can at least puzzle one's way out of it but if one is confused it would not help one wit to confuse one's way further, I'd choose to be puzzled.