November blues

In early October, my traction on Apple disappeared for no apparent reason.  I had a nice steady drip of sales and downloads going for about eighteen months.  Now it's gone.  I have no idea why.  Some algorithm thing, I guess.  I hoped it was a temporary thing, but it's been over a month now, so I guess it's not.  I'd like to get that momentum back some day, obviously, and the sooner the better, but right now, I'm pretty discouraged about it.

It's tough trying to find decent manufactured products at reasonable prices these days.  If you want quality, you have to pay a fortune for it, otherwise you're stuck with disposable crap.  The "happy medium" is almost nonexistent.

I'm trying to find stuff to give the niece and nephew for Christmas, and it's tough.  It also doesn't help that today's kids are all glued to their screens.  What do you give a kid who only wants to stare at a screen?

I've developed a patch of rough, itchy skin on my lower back.  I have no idea why.  Add it to the list of health-related annoyances that have been popping up like weeds throughout my forties.

Well, that's enough whining for now, I guess.  Thanks for bearing with me.

Got cold fast

Unseasonably cold here this week.  In a previous post, I mentioned how some people think you can predict the severity of the upcoming winter by observing nature's little signals.  Trees producing more acorns than usual, for example, is a signal for a cold winter.  That's the theory, anyway.  I don't know if there's any truth to it or not.

The signals for this year, though, point to a cold winter, and if this week is any indication, those signals are correct.

On the plus side, cold weather kills off more bugs, and that's always a good thing.

In other news, I heard that a dog was killed by coyotes just a short way down the road.  This area is not part of the coyote's traditional range.  They're an invasive species, and they eat people's pets on a regular basis.  It sucks, but there's not much to be done about it that's not already being done.  Like kudzu and the snakehead fish, it's just another invasive species to add to the list of annoyances.

In remembrance

My great-grandfather registered for the World War I draft in 1918.  He was in his forties at the time and was not drafted.  His final child, my grandfather, would be conceived shortly after the war ended. 

I sometimes wonder what might have been had things gone a little differently.  If my great-grandfather had possessed a skill the military needed, then they might have taken him despite his age.  And he might have died in those horrible trenches.  And my grandfather and all his descendants never would have existed.  What if, what if...

All of our lives hang perilously from threads, barely avoiding being snipped away by the whims of chance long before we're scheduled to be born.  It's a sobering thought.

But today isn't for what-ifs.  It's not about us at all.

Today is for the honored dead.

Maybe I've fixed it

I've been having trouble with Firefox freezing on forums.  Today I received a notification from my computer that Firefox was blocked from accessing the graphics hardware.  I googled this to see what could be done.

The first remedy I found didn't help.  It suggested turning off a setting that was already off.

The second remedy involved installing a new (actually older) driver for the graphics card.  I really don't like screwing around with drivers, so I'm reserving this option as a last resort.

The third remedy was to uncheck the box for Firefox's hardware acceleration.  This is the remedy I went with.  I've now got it set on "Use recommended performance settings."  Hopefully this will do the trick.

The next few days should tell the tale.

Miscellaneous stuff

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since my last blog post, so I'm sorry for sort of disappearing like that.  I blame Halloween.  And Guy Fawkes Day.  And the weather.  It's not my fault!

The good news is that I got a few chores done in the interim, both authorly and otherwise.

I'm working on the second draft of book 4 of Wheel of Fire, and I can still finish this draft before Thanksgiving.  I'd like to do all my Christmas shopping within the next week or so.  That would get one major thing off my mind and enable me to charge through to the end of the year.  Now if only my family would actually tell me what they want...

The game show Jeopardy! is having its Tournament of Champions this week and next.  James Holzhauer will be back.  If you don't know who he is, then I encourage you to watch the show and see for yourself.  He's the most dominant player I've ever seen.  He holds a number of the show's records, and he's famous for making huge bets, usually going "all in" on the Daily Doubles.  He's a professional gambler, and it shows.

His Wikipedia page

I recently tried Canada Dry's flavored Ginger Ales--cranberry and blackberry--for the first time, and they're pretty awesome drinks.  Recommended.

This month is November 2019, the time when the movie Blade Runner was supposed to take place.  Interesting coincidence: Rutger Hauer died the same year that his character in the movie died.  R.I.P., Mr. Hauer.

Every now and then, particularly while I've got a forum site in the main tab, my browser will freeze for a moment and then unfreeze with some of the page elements broken.  Reloading the page works to set things aright, but it's still a nuisance.  It's been doing this since the latest Firefox update, so I can only assume it's due to something they broke.  Whatever it is, I hope it goes away with the next update.

For Freshtovia!

I recently discovered the new Wendy's tabletop RPG.  It's called Feast of Legends.

Yes, that's Wendy's as in the hamburger restaurant.

I browsed through the pdf, and I must admit that it looks kind of awesome.  The art is great.  The skills and other technical stuff are clever and creative.  I'm not a tabletop gamer--I don't even own the necessary dice--but I sort of want to play this game.

Check it out for yourself:

https://www.feastoflegends.com/

And a big kudos to Wendy's for investing the time, money, and effort into this.  It's a really cool achievement.

Update

Had another migraine today.  I'm currently in the "hangover" stage, so I'm not back to normal yet, but I can somewhat function so long as I don't exert myself too much.

All I've had to eat was a bowl of cereal which I promptly vomited up later.  I'm currently drinking a Sprite in the hopes of putting a little sugar and calories into my body.

My head still hurts a little, though not too bad.  I took some pills about an hour ago when I was certain I was finished with the vomiting.

Naturally, I've been completely useless today.  No words written or edited or anything of that sort.  Maybe I can produce a little after I publish this blog post.

I will say this, though: the word count for book 4 is currently at 82,253.  That's a few thousand more than the first draft, so I'm making progress.  I've been incorporating my notes, so this part of the revision is more of the "fixing inconsistencies and plot holes and whatnot" than actually fleshing out what's already there.  That part comes next.  When I write a first draft, I tend to focus on action and dialog, and the result is kind of a choppy manuscript.  I have to go back later and add stuff to smooth it all out.  Once I'm done adding in my notes, then I'll proceed to the smoothing stage, and that should see the word count increase at a faster rate.

I've said before that my target was for a finished product of 100k-110k words, and I'm still on track for that.

Also, I just had an idea occur to me for how to work through an important plot point in later books, so I'm calling that a breakthrough.  Yay for me, right?  :D

Silver linings, folks.  Silver linings.