...that I only now remembered how to fix.
I wrote my introductory post at the beginning of the month expecting to explode out the gate with new material but my reluctance to further engage the learning curve on Wix, plus a rare hot writing streak on the conclusion to my zombie series, plus other issues, got in the way. This post will concern itself with those other issues.
Readers of my old site will recall my numerous complaints about Windows 10 Update. Despite having two new fans put in earlier this year my rig would still overheat and shut down. On one occasion I’m sure it was either Google Chrome or Facebook that killed my machine sometime overnight. A program contacted the mothership and the update download alone likely knocked it out. Why software downloads are so hard on the processor is something that wasn’t covered in my MCSA training, but it’s happened often enough.
The solution was so easy I loathe myself for not thinking of it earlier. Disconnect. Do not allow automatic connections. As soon as I could hear that one fan up front struggling I pulled the virtual plug. Facebook runs a lot of scripts on its page and it was usually the last site I'd see before bugging out.
I figured I needed more memory sticks and that was that. Money’s tight because blah-blah, who cares, so I’d heroically endure my extra-page-per-day productivity in regards to my novel. (I could boast about it on the blog! Ha!) I was doing stuff I should have incorporated into my routine a long time ago, like writing blogposts offline in Word and pasting them as plain text in the blog. Yes, I used to just write online and leave it. Weird I had so little respect for my online writing.
Then came the other plot twist, the one in which I recalled my MCSA troubleshooting knowledge after a near-decade of putting it aside because the industry had been hollowed out by the Great Recession. I’d put it so far aside it never occurred to me to check the virtual memory usage in Windows 10 settings.
I did a search on how to do that, which I’m not ashamed to admit I had to do because my MCSA is 11 years old and I madly, truly, deeply hate Windows 10. Sure enough, you’ve got to monkey your way through a menu tree to get to where you need to go. It turned out my upper limit of virtual memory was 300 MB under the recommended bottom limit. I made the necessary adjustments, and whaddya know. I’m a computer tech hero, just for one day.
As in 2011, when I began Rockin’ Roy’s Rage ‘n’ Romance’s second iteration, I’m struggling to find things to write about. Unlike most writers, I don’t have a vast skull echoing with wisdom that I deign to proclaim to the plebs ex cathedra. I’m still learning and figuring things out every day. In this case, I had to remember something I’d put aside in the course of acquiring new knowledge for new pursuits.
I don’t know what to think about it. I’m just glad my computer doesn’t give itself a stroke while I browse Facebook or other script-heavy sites. Let’s get this post up A.S.A.P. and see if we can do another in less than three weeks.