I also had a case of kidney stones myself and a resulting weakened immune system, in December 2008. Very painful. You definitely have empathy from me! The best remedies I know of for boosting the immune system include WATER, EXERCISE, stress reduction, meditation, and getting adequate sleep (neither too much nor too little). And there are also some herbs and dietary changes that help. Regular aerobic and weight bearing exercise (but not too much exercise) is vital to keep an immune system healthy and strong! We need about one hour of walking every single day to keep an immune system healthy. Go at whatever pace your energy level allows- if you are in pain and tired from all the recent illness it'll be necessary to walk slowly. In addition to the walking, 30 minutes of weight bearing exercise every 2 to 3 days will strengthen the body and this will also strengthen the immune system. Drink 3 gallons a day of reverse osmosis water. Reverse osmosis is best if at all possible. Filtered tap water from a Brita or Pur filter, etc. *still* contains the dissolved ions that your body has been turning into stones. And most spring water also has dissolved ions in it. Not kidding about the amount. At least 3 gallons of reverse osmosis water per day. 3 gallons seems like an awful lot of water and I know personally that it is difficult to drink this much. Nonetheless it's VERY important to drink this much despite the difficulty. The only way to drink this much each day is to CONSTANTLY drink. If you do something that makes you sweat, drink more after you sweat. Each time you go to the bathroom you lose some water, so drink then too. And anytime you are bored or on a work/study break or stuck in traffic, drink. If you ever *actually* feel thirsty it means you haven't been drinking often enough. No matter where you go, you gotta bring a liter of reverse osmosis water- churches, parks, libraries, school, offices, jobs or interviews, amusement parks, restaurants, movies, sports events, bars (if you go to those), malls, and inside your car. Even to places that try to disallow people bringing in water or 'beverages' so they can sell you their drinks. They will have to be shown a doctors note telling them they HAVE to let you bring in your own water. And if these places still don't let you bring water in, don't go inside. Boycott them and tell others not to do business with them because those places are disrespectful of public health. Go somewhere else instead, your health has to come first. It's a hassle to drink this much AND it is necessary to do so anyway. To boost the body's ability to fight infections and to heal damaged kidney tissue, the body needs LOTS of water. Also water is vital to strengthen the immunity overall, and it also will really help pass the stones faster so you spend less time suffering as they are trying to come out. In my experience, I agree that there really is no herbal remedy that can 'dissolve' kidney stones. I have practiced herbalism for over 20 years as an unpaid volunteer. It goes against my spirituality and culture to accept payment for helping others with my herbalism. There are, however, herbal remedies and dietary modifications that can make it faster and less painful to pass kidney stones by reducing inflammation. Good herbs to reduce pain and inflammation from kidney stones include uva ursi, joe pye weed, sugar free cranberries, polygonum persicaria, and some others. There are also remedies and dietary modifications that can reduce the likelihood of kidney stone formation- especially if the stones are calcium oxalate. Stage_rat Annette has already provided a link to some of that info. :) Unfortunately since your stones were formed during a time when you drank a lot of soda and also drank insufficient water, odds are high that your stones are calcium phosphate which are much harder to treat than the common calcium oxalate kidney stones. IMHO your stones are likely to be calcium phosphate because sodas have a lot of excess phosphates in them (in the form of phosphoric acid). Take a good B-complex vitamin supplement daily, which contains pyridoxine (vitamin B-6). B-6 deficiency produces kidney stones in experimental animals. In high doses, B6 is used medically to treat kidney stones. Remember- B-6 deficiency is very common in humans. Yogurt and other probiotics are a good idea too, and in addition to that I also really recommend Dr. Berger's Immune Power Diet for you.

Bob is correct. The issue you are expressing concern about is keyloggers. They piggyback unto a user's system normally on some trite item for example free smiley faces or free fonts. Once embedded they can note and transmit any key stroke a user makes. As far as credit card safety: I have had my Chase Visas hijacked three times. This will be old news to longtime members, I have two Chase Visa accounts, not cards but rather accounts. I carry one account in my wallet, and the other is used only on the Internet and never leaves the house. Three years ago both were hijacked within 10 days. Fortunately everything was cleaned up in ten days. Just several months ago the one in my wallet was hijacked. I hadn't used it in months. This time Chase contacted me and the issue was resolved in four days. Based on the both circumstances and the readiness of Chase to resolve in a timely manner without question, I believe Chase got cracked by hackers both times. So if I am correct, if card issuers can't protect themselves how are we suppose to? Finally, it is my regular recommendation never to store specific financial information on a user's system. No account numbers, user names or passwords. The little time it takes to type this information in pays off in much added security. DA

Hi everyone, I was unable to post because I couldn't log in. Apparently the cookie that it takes to get here was not there, so I emailed the forum and when I got back home walla I was able to log in and here I am. "Smiles" To answer the question is Auslogics an antivirus or a defrag program. It is a defrag program and is not an antivirus. I didn't know they had an antivirus. "LOL" I listened to the same thing you did about Norton and it definately has something in it which appears to be a firewall because it blocks things out and protects you like a firewall. I think the reason they made sure that the Windows firewall is on is because they aren't sure themselves. When I access a program Norton pops up and tells me it is safe to run. It happened earlier today but I can't remember what it was I was doing. I was in a hurry to do some things on this computer that I know they didn't do. I am a little nervous about CCleaner and I called them and one of the guys told me to take the check marks out of advanced so I did. I have never used CCleaner and it would be nice if I had more information on it. Can you all explain this program to me and what to look for, so that I won't delete something and my computer won't go boom? "LOL" Owbist you said this: I am amazed that someone as knowledgeable as yourself and willing to learn about computers would actually pay to have the computer cleaned or replace the CD player. If cleaning means removing dust a $3 can of compressed air fixes that pronto. If cleaning means removing programs (including those you wanted kept) then the simple Add/Remove feature does that for you. Replacing a CD player is a simple task also, even for those who have not tried before. You simply remove the old and reverse the sequence to install the new. The only reason that I took the computer in was because I have my grandchildren around 3 days a week and sometimes a little more because they love us. Ha! It is difficult for me to have the time to play by trying to install something and little ones that are 3 and 8 years of age want to play on the computer not watch me fix it. "LOL" Now when I got this computer back, it was running slow again and instead of calling them I did a scan disk and used Auslogics Defrag and walla it is running like a charm. I think they got lazy and didn't do it. I really like the Auslogics Defrag it is so fast and puts things back where they belong. They did check the hard drive to see if it was Ok and it is. This computer is going on 6 years old and I guess I haven't done to bad after all my very first computer I crashed several times but, that was ages ago. Remember the first packard bell computers? I had the 3.1 and then they sent me the CD for Windows 95. Well I learned fast that you can't put old on top of new because then it would crash. I still have that old computer and I need to get rid of it, I never get on it at all, it is just sitting there collecting dust. Ha! If there is someone here who has CCleaner I would appreciate a lesson on how to use it correctly. Thank You damccoy, zep516 and owbist, for your help and for your info. thirdfrt!!!

I STRONGLY recommend that you use a program called Spybot Search and Destroy, from safer-networking.org AdAware is not bad, but it misses a lot of spyware programs and has no way of protecting you before the junk installs on your computer. Spybot has a feature they call "immunization" which blocks over 50,000 (and counting) programs from ever getting through Internet Explorer in the first place (sorry, Firefox users). I clean PCs for a living, and use Spybot regularly. Read their tutorial after you download the program to be sure you're using it correctly. Here is a link that might be useful: Download Spybot