Category: Output

Stuff I’m creating

Plugging Away at the Novel

I’ve returned to writing again. I have some simple maps together. I have at least enough to get me through the first bit. I hope to flesh them out later, but for now I need to get more writing done. My word count is about 5% of my goal and I’m about 4.5% through my outline.

Stalled

Work on my novel has been progressing slowly but surely. I got about 6500 words in without too much issue, but I now find myself in need of a map. I hate to take a break from the writing itself at this point, but I feel that if I don’t have a map I’ll keep floundering around the same few hundred words I’ve been stuck on today.

The real decision is to use the computer, or dig out some graph paper.

Phase Outline: 50%

After this mornings fun, and a family lunch I’ve managed to get the phase outline to 50% (the glass is half full). This puts me halfway to where I had planned to be Sunday (the glass is half empty).

I’m going to do my best to get the thing done by the end of the week at the very latest (time for a new glass).

At least this get’s me past the stickiest part of my outline. There are three very vauge phases that will prorably slow the writing one I hit them, but I needed to move past them for now.

I will not be defeated

I feel I haven’t gotten anything productive done in days.

My laptop fan went insane, so it’s out for repair. This cuts my writing time down to only that time I can closet myself in my office. That pretty much means after 11pm most days.

I had set time aside for writting on Sunday. Every time I went to start something came up and I agreed to do it later. Later didn’t come until midnight, and I was too tired to start by then.

Yesterday I got up early to get started because I knew it was a busy day. I reviewed everything, got all set to start moving and time was up. I did have a great day though.

That brings us to this morning. I got up at 6:30am. I wandered in to the office, turned on the computer, waited for the memory check to… start? Great! Dead computer! No surprise there. Why did I get up again? I rebooted, went into the BIOS changed the memory settings slightly, hit "Save & Exit".

Apparently that was a mistake. "Save & Exit" on my board’s BIOS apparently means "Slowly corrupt the CMOS". It seems that this option has problems, and over time will make the system unbootable. I had just hit that limit. Now it didn’t post, didn’t beep, didn’t do anything. There are no good suggestions online for how to fix this (besides RMA the board).

After doing everything I could think of I managed to get the board to at least beep a failure code. Progress! I put one stick of memory, the CPU and the video card back in, powered on, and it posted! I went into the bios and hit F10 to save (rather than the "Save & Corrupt" option) and it rebooted. I reinstalled all the hardware and booted up. Windows started, and the steam stopped pouring out of my ears.

So here I am after getting all the hardware reinstalled. Two and a half hours later and I’ve accomplished nothing I set out to do. Maybe I can manage to get back to the office after breakfast.

To the surprise of noone, my server crashed while posting this story. It’s better now. I don’t want to talk about it.

Now for that breakfast…