When a Company Does Too Much For You

Some of you might remember my joyous experiences of installing a new hard drive in my work computer last month.

In the process of reinstalling Windows 11 and MS Office, Microsoft decided to update with the latest versions instead of the ones I purchased.

Okay. Fine. Wasn't expecting it, but hey, I didn't have to purchase new copies, right?

OH MY FUCKING GODDESS!!

In their efforts to help me, they tried to shove everything through OneDrive and forced through the IMAP email protocol.

It's taken a lot of extra time to root out the OneDrive by hard links. I'm still working on it.

But even worse was IMAP. It wants to download all of my email folders and files back to the original email servers so I have copies available to all my devices. Sounds like a good idea.

In theory.

In reality, IMAP copied THOUSANDS of emails I need to keep for business reasons. The worst was my main author email address. When I got the domain email address years ago, I didn't need too much space. I still don't. And it's really not worth upgrading to the next largest package offered because I clean out that address's server on a regular basis.

But when fourteen years of business communications get copied back the email server, it maxed out my allocated space in very quick order.

I think I've finally got everything fixed. *fingers crossed*

However this is the same email address where your contacts from my websites' contact page sends your notes. So if you've tried to send me any communication through the websites' contact page, your message is in the ether and unretrievable.

Please contact me again, unless your question is about A Cup of Conflict. I swear I'm working on it!

Kitties and Possums and Squirrels--OH MY!!

The first week of the new year is under my belt. Taking off the last two weeks of the year did me a world of good. I thought I could hit the keyboard hard after a break.

Except the universe and my Muse had other ideas. Too many ideas as it were. I've got future projects lined up, but Muse wants to work on all of them at the same time!

I also need to upgrade both my main computer and my travel laptop. On the former, I didn't get a chance to swap out the 512G with 2T drives. My anticipated quiet holiday was not as quiet as I'd planned. However, that task needs to wait until I get back from a writing class in Las Vegas next week.

Which leads to my latter problem. My travel laptop Baby Blue doesn't have the room to do any upgrades, especially virus protection. It is essentially only useful as a word processor. And I need the upgrades because I need to access the internet during the Vegas class. *sigh*

Both DH and I did a great deal of research and testing based on such research, but Baby Blue simply won't let us boot from a flash drive or an SD card even after cloning Baby Blue's drive. Since I was running out of time, DH found a reasonable facsimile of Baby Blue with a larger hard drive. Now, it's a question of installing the operating system and MS Office so I can do my assignments during the class.

I'm lucky DH has stayed up on tech over the last thirty years. I know just enough to be dangerous.

What does this all mean?

I won't update word counts on the blog until I get back. I'm skipping a release for January because I've already got a homework assignment for this class that needs to be finished before I leave for the class. Next Wednesday, I'll post the first chapter of War of the Witches, so you have an idea of what's coming next year. And I can buckle down on writing this year's releases during my flights.

And if I get delayed at an airport because of snow, well, that'll be more writing time, right?

Why! Why! For the Love of All That's Holy, WHY!

Isabella, my beloved work laptop, passed from this world at 5:34 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. I'm heartbroken. She was a good laptop. A gentle laptop. But old age caught up with her. She was seven years and five months, positively ancient for a computer, but she was my constant companion and she will be missed.

While I have full backups, and my second stringer, Ivan, has jumped into the game, I've lost two days of productivity for both writing and packing. So no writing, no editing, no blogging because I still have a hell of a lot to do before the moving truck arrives on Monday.

My sincere apologies to all of you waiting for the next chapter of Blood Sacrifice. I'll post it as soon as I can.