Understanding Myself and my Computer

This is not quite a navel-gazer, but its in that vicinity.

I was at the dinner table (comfort food, tonight: meat loaf, macaroni salad, and regular salad). The offspring had sprinted downstairs to do some reading, and we were sitting there, leafing through the remains of the Sunday paper. I mentioned casually to my wife that I occasionally ask myself a question, the nature of which doesn't change, and to which I've never found an answer. The question - Why is it that I can be sitting quietly, reading, or looking out the window, whatever, and suddenly feel a sense of gloom? Not suicidal gloom, not even close, but 'You've screwed up, boy, and now its time to pay the piper' gloom -- usually tied in to thoughts of my teeth, or my health. And then, usually, after about ten or twenty minutes -- sooner if I'm interrupted by having to do something -- the mood lifts, and though I may still be concerned, I'm not actively gloomy. Why is that?

You will not be surprised to learn that we didn't come up with an answer. No luck on a technique for avoidance, mitigation, or elimination, either.

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Different subject: If you want to know what your computer runs automatically, check this, mentioned in a computer column in today's Washington Post: SysInternal's AutoRun (free). Microsoft's Windows Defender (also free) has a somewhat slicker interface (though it insists you have pass the Windows Genuine Advantage (gak) hurdle before it will download), but, personally, I prefer Autorun. Now, what I'd really like is one that showed me all that good stuff and let me vary the startup software by user (I did find one shareware that did that, but its operation was a tad flakey). If you're really into understanding how the computer is running, SysInternals has got some powerful tools that they'll sell you, too, but AutoRun is a great free start.