Cav's Place

After the odd BOINC and SETI@home issues from a week before, which were at least most likely caused by my system messing with the time in a way that it seems to do each year around that date, this week something far more serious is wrong with my computer, and it happened three times so far, at least that I’m aware of, and I still have no idea what’s causing it. I’m referring to the fact that the surf protection and behavior blocker modules of Emsisoft Anti-Malware seem to simply stop working invisibly, as in they appear to be enabled but no longer do anything. The file guard still seems to work, at least in the sense that it detects the EICAR test file, but those, and possibly also other things I’m not yet aware of, no longer protect anything until I disable protection and enable it again. Shutting down the program completely and starting it again seems to have no effect, nor does disabling and enabling individual modules.
As far as I’m aware, this first happened Monday night, likely just after 1:30 AM, but some 30 more minutes passed before I noticed that something wasn’t being blocked and about as much again before I actually realized what was going on. Even tried to create rules to block sites and then visit them, and there were no blocks, so the surf protection module was obviously not working at all, and later, when I thought of it after the issue reappeared, around 4 AM, I also removed two behavior blocker rules and there were no prompts about those programs either, so that wasn’t working either. Also, when I first shut down the program completely, Windows didn’t detect that I was unprotected and there was no entry in event logs. After starting it again and disabling protection, Windows did detect it, and when I shut down the program after that, there was an entry in event logs, and when I started it again and enabled protection, the problem seemed to have fixed itself. But it was already after 3 AM and, like I said, it happened again not long after that. Then, after I rebooted that night and it didn’t happen again until after I installed the Windows updates last evening and rebooted in order to do that, it happened again around midnight last night. Disabling protection and enabling it again, without shutting down the program, fixed it again, but something very serious is obviously going on.
I obviously sent a support message Monday night and kept discussing the matter since then, but so far there’s no hint of a possible cause, much less of a solution. Good and helpful attitude, talking to a real person who does actually care, yes, that’s what I expect and receive from Emsisoft support, but actual solutions to problems, or for that matter any influence on the direction of development, those tend to have to do with the developers and the guy at the top, so the support people can’t actually do much of anything, through no fault of their own. But I also enabled debug logging, even though the information collected there, in plain text, spells out pretty much everything you do on the computer and I’d therefore be very wary of sending it, so let’s see if they will get to the bottom of this after all, because it’s a critical issue, leaving me pretty much unprotected with no warning like this.
What’s stranger is that it didn’t start immediately after it updated to a new version either, as that happened I believe some five or so days earlier; can’t be more specific because ever since they made the program instead of the user decide the size of logs, I barely get two days of logging displayed. Also didn’t start after applying Windows updates, as I said I did that last evening, nor did it start after the updates were released, which was Tuesday evening, to say that maybe somebody had figured out a way to exploit one of the patched vulnerabilities immediately and I happened to be a victim of it, and applying the patches after the fact doesn’t stop an existing and undetectable infection. And it didn’t start around the same time as the previous week’s issues either, so no reason to believe it may be connected to what caused that. It may, or may not, be something that has to do with the version it updated to, but there clearly is another trigger involved.

With all of that in mind, or at least with the part of it that took place Monday night, I ran on Tuesday. Pushed as hard as I could, trying to clear my mind a little, and I got back to ten kilometers, but I obviously still haven’t recovered my speed, as the time was 49:44, with sector times of 4:18, 5:07, 6:04, 4:30, 5:11, 6:04, 4:40, 5:26, 6:24 and 2:00, making for lap times of 15:29, 15:45 and 16:30. Started very fast, knowing I’ll tire and get slower later but just wanting to push as much as I could every step of the way, and the first lap was good enough, but the second was already slower than what would be needed to stay under 49 minutes and it only got worse after that. And I also somehow got a bruise under one of my toenails, so let’s see how that will go…
Admittedly, there were plenty of people in the park, I had to find my way through, slow down, at times even briefly stop, including a moment right at the start of the final sector when, after not managing to decide which side to pass each other on, I let a cyclist coming from the opposite direction pass in front of me before the stairs and then found myself almost running into a woman holding hands with a child on each side and sort of danced in front of them for a couple of seconds before she let the hand of one of the children go and I could pass between them. On top of that, I also had a slight cramp in my left calf pretty much from the start and I stopped for a couple of seconds at the start of the first lap’s second sector to feel that muscle a bit, just pushing through after that. Yet this really was all I had and I managed a time that was exactly a minute faster on January 1, when there were even more people in the park and I had slept a fair bit less as well, so that’s no excuse. The fact that I had rather stuffed myself the night before and then ate things one shouldn’t eat before running after waking up that day as well likely also had an effect, but not sure whether it all added up to those 45 seconds needed to at least get back under 49 minutes, and it definitely didn’t add up to the difference to my best times, when I also pushed as hard as I could every step of the way.

Other than that, finished the tenth “Divine Empire” scenario in Disciples Monday, after starting it the day before, and yesterday I had a look through the usual three hypermarkets and those two farmers’ markets again. Just had a little money left, and found a 0.50 RON coin on the street and took another after connecting a cart someone left at the free bus stop at Auchan, when the bus came, to the others left next to the stop. But just wanted some vegetables anyway, and got them all from the bigger farmers’ market in the area, which was the last place I went to, actually finding some more cheap cabbage from one person and unusually cheap radishes from another. That first person gave me one torn 1 RON bill, with that part held by tape, among the change though, and when I tried to pay for some green garlic with it, the guy there rejected it. But I then held the bill from the torn bit when I handed it to the person I got some lettuce from and she didn’t say anything, though I also left right away after paying. Did just go to the next person selling something though, for the last couple of things, so she could have shouted after me if she’d have really wanted to.
A somewhat embarrassing thing that happened was at the start of this “circuit”, when I was passing through the area around the stadium and some guys on one of the fields there kicked a ball over the tall fence surrounding it. The ball landed right next to me and bounced away, and I just ran after it, meaning to give it back to them without really wondering how. Probably made a bit of a fool of myself even then, actually, because when I caught up with it I tried to grab it and missed, so kept going as it bounced again over my head and landed behind me. Then I missed again, letting it slip between my hands, when I tried to grab it again after turning, only managing to do so on the third attempt. And then, after getting back with it to the fence, I realized how tall it was and that I likely won’t be able to throw it over it. Did make an attempt, taking a few steps back and running a bit before throwing, but trying to put enough height on the throw meant it didn’t even reach the fence, going pretty much straight up, barely reaching what would have been the top of it even so, and then coming back down next to me. The guys suggested kicking it, but there was no way I could have managed that, so they then suggested throwing it in another way and that actually did work, barely. Then I found myself just running away from there, too embarrassed by the whole thing. Can’t even say that I just wanted to help because I didn’t even think about it, running after that ball to give it back was almost a reflex, but what happened after that sure made me feel like shit.