Today’s Another Day

Yesterday was rather frustrating for me. Oh, who am I kidding? Let me correct that; yesterday was darned frustrating for me!

I had planned to work on my new John Lee Quarrels book, but my computer didn’t like that idea and chose not to cooperate. For a while now it’s been running slow, not opening files when I want it to unless I click on them two or three times, and when typing in Word or using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software, characters appear on the screen one at a time with a pause between each one, instead of as words or a string of words. Opening anything on the Internet is painfully slow, no matter what browser I am using. Then, sometime in mid-afternoon I got a big red pop-up on the screen saying that my computer had been compromised and I needed to let a tech from Windows take control of it to fix the problems.

I knew that was an attempt to stick it to me, so I shut the computer down completely and called my buddy Greg White, who knows more about computers and everything else in the world than I will ever hope to.

Greg confirmed that the pop-up was just a scam making an attempt to rip me off, which I already knew. Then we addressed the problems the computer has been having lately. I always run AVG Antivirus in the background, but just to be sure I did a whole computer scan, which showed nothing wrong in terms of viruses and things like that.

Then Greg had me run CCleaner a couple of times, and then Glary Utilities. They both found a lot of junk files, temporary Internet files, and things like that. Following Greg’s advice, I ran both CCleaner and Glary twice, rebooting the computer after each one. I also ran Super AntiSpyware.

It took several hours to do all of it, but it was worth it. All of those programs found and repaired different problems, and the computer seems to be working much better. It is about four years old, and sooner or later I know it will be time to replace it, but hopefully by cleaning it out and running these programs on a regular basis, and rebooting it every day or so, I can keep it functioning for a while longer.

The long and short of it was that I didn’t get much writing done. Wednesday, when I started the new book, I cranked out about 4,100 words. But yesterday I only managed to get 350 words in, which is not enough to even say I accomplished anything. Oh well, today’s another day.

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So far over 40 people have entered our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook on CD of The Ghost of Marlow House, the first book in my pal Bobbi Holmes’ excellent Haunting Danielle mystery series about a woman who inherits a house on the Oregon Coast that she intends to turn into a bed and breakfast, only to discover that one of the house’s previous owners is still in residence, even though he’s been dead for almost ninety years. Bobbi is a great storyteller, and you won’t get past the first chapter without knowing why her series has so many fans. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – Santa saw your Instagram pictures. You’re getting clothes and a Bible for Christmas!