Q: MBP Running Slowly - Help Me I'm Poor! (& technologically challenged)

A software problem? In october my MBP was running slow so I took it to the Apple store where I literally backed up my computer before my genius appointment onto my external hard drive. It turned out my software was corrupted and we had to wipe it clean and reinstall the OS. He asked me if I had backed up, which i did so we cleared it, and when we went to upload my backup back onto my computer my latest one wasn't showing up because I had backed up a friend's computer too and it was seeing her back up as the main one and mine as a secondary or something. At the time I didn't know you had to partition a drive (or even what that was) if you wanted to back up two computers. I almost had a breakdown because of the pictures I would have lost for the past 25 years, but thankfully he was able to find my files somewhere in there somehow and I manually added each of them back (4 hour genius appointment) just losing my applications.

Lex, its been running slow since before we wiped the computer and reinstalled the OS. Then it was better, not amazing, but better. It has been a slow progression of slowing down so I don't have a pinpointed action that might have caused it. 

1. Condition says normal, Cycle Count is 571
(If you don't mind, for the sake of learning, explaining what a cycle count is?)
2. I uninstalled the samsung application. I have/had it installed because I switched from an iphone to a galaxy s4 in December and was planning on transferring everything from one to the other. There is an app for it and also one for backing up your samsung phone. I ended up transfering nothing and deciding on a fresh start and I've never backed up my samsung because everything backs up to my gmail I found out later.
3. My adobe software is a trial. I can uninstall it. It's a 30 day one. That's probably why its weird in there because I don't have permission to keep it.
4.

Anyone have an opinion on my software corruption and all that that happened in october and what is happening now? I had originally thought my hard drive was crashing. That's what it sounded like.

Thank you so so so very much for well responding at all and responding quickly!

1.] Ahhh, okay. Yes, I'm not especially fantastic at battery care, it definitely doesn't last as long as it used to. I just keep it plugged in 90% of the time now that I'm not lugging it to class anymore.

2.] I ran another EtreCheck and I have no more Kernel Extensions so I was successful.

3.]
a)I just downloaded the adobe stuff yesterday evening and my computer was running slow as molasses before that, so that can't be my main issue. Do I need Adobe content viewer?
b) I saved some icon pictures from online. They are .icns files and I customized my application icons. I was bored and tired of looking at the same pictures for my applications. It's not a hack or anything, you just open up the file in preview press ⌘A, ⌘C, ⌘W
then go to applications -> Whatever App icon you want to change (e.g. iTunes)
Press ⌘I
Click on the tiny icon in the top left of (iTunes) info window so that there it has a glowing outline
⌘V and VOILÀ you have your own personalized icons to spice up your everyday dock!

-------I originally did it so that I could change my folders on my desktop to tell them apart more easily than just adding a colored dot (really Apple? yes, that did so much for the differentiation of my folders, thanks a million)

4.] I did the verify disk this morning while posting this (no idea how i knew to do that) and it said both disks were okay. I did have permission issues on my Macintosh HD but I repaired those this morning. Running another now.

verify for FUJITSU MJA2250BH was okay and so was the repair. Macintosh HD is Ok

I just ran another EtreCheck and I have more pageouts than I had previously. i uninstalled 3 out of the 5 adobe programs. I guess I'll try the other 2 and see if that helps. Here are my results:

EtreCheck version: 1.9.11 (43) - report generated May 27, 2014 at 2:10:19 PM CDT

Hardware Information:

          MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009)

          MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro5,5

          1 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2 cores

          4 GB RAM

Video Information:

          NVIDIA GeForce 9400M - VRAM: 256 MB

System Software:

          OS X 10.9.3 (13D65) - Uptime: 1 day 8:29:42

Disk Information:

          FUJITSU MJA2250BH FFS G1 disk0 : (250.06 GB)

                    EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

                    Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 249.07 GB (69.9 GB free)

                    Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

          HL-DT-ST DVDRW  GS23N 

USB Information:

          Apple Inc. Built-in iSight

          Western Digital My Passport 0746 500.07 GB

                    disk7s1 (disk7s1) <not mounted>: 32 KB

                    TK'S MacBook Pro Back-ups (disk7s3) /Volumes/TK'S MacBook Pro Back-ups: 499.94 GB (304.93 GB free)

          Apple Internal Memory Card Reader

          Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

          Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

          Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub

                    Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Gatekeeper:

          Mac App Store and identified developers

Launch Daemons:

          [loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support

          [loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist Support

Launch Agents:

          [not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist Support

User Launch Agents:

          [loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist Support

          [loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist Support

          [running] com.spotify.webhelper.plist Support

User Login Items:

          None

Internet Plug-ins:

          SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.4.1 - SDK 10.6 Support

          FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 13.0.0.214 - SDK 10.6 Support

          Flash Player: Version: 13.0.0.214 - SDK 10.6 Support

          iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0 - SDK 10.8

          QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

          Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9

Audio Plug-ins:

          BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9

          AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9

          AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9

          iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9

iTunes Plug-ins:

          Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.9

User Internet Plug-ins:

          Picasa: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.6 Support

3rd Party Preference Panes:

          Flash Player  Support

Time Machine:

          Auto backup: YES

          Volumes being backed up:

                    Macintosh HD: Disk size: 231.96 GB Disk used: 166.86 GB

          Destinations:

                    TK'S MacBook Pro Back-ups [Local] (Last used)

                    Total size: 465.61 GB

                    Total number of backups: 7

                    Oldest backup: 2013-12-12 17:42:02 +0000

                    Last backup: 2014-05-27 12:28:56 +0000

                    Size of backup disk: Too small

                              Backup size 465.61 GB < (Disk used 166.86 GB X 3)

          Time Machine details may not be accurate.

          All volumes being backed up may not be listed.

Top Processes by CPU:

              45%          repair_packages

               5%          WindowServer

               1%          Disk Utility

               1%          Finder

               0%          hidd

Top Processes by Memory:

          668 MB          repair_packages

          98 MB          Finder

          82 MB          opendirectoryd

          78 MB          mtmd

          70 MB          Safari

Virtual Memory Information:

          67 MB          Free RAM

          1.32 GB          Active RAM

          1.27 GB          Inactive RAM

          577 MB          Wired RAM

          7.23 GB          Page-ins

          2.73 GB          Page-outs