I can't be certain...

but the computer crashing all the damn time seems to have been related to Firefox after all.

I have uninstalled Firefox (using Chrome now), and it hasn't crashed since. Also, obviously, I am able to use Chrome, whereas earlier, it would just immediately crash.

Now, I knew there was a huge fucking memory leak in the 3.6.* build of Firefox, but I had been using it for months before this problem.

Bizarre.

Oh, also, I do not have the flu. The doctor suspects it is just a very bad cold.