Quiet Again

Been a bit silent around the old blog, but I have reasons I promise :) Cleaning off the hard drive, as I've been steadily losing disk space especially over the past year. WoW is slowly eating up space on this very old thing, I don't think it's going to take the next expansion very well. There'll be Cataclysm all right - in more ways than one. I'm going to miss vanilla Warcraft though. The only issue I have with the next expansion is that it's going to permanently change the landscape, so there's no going back to the old version if you ever wanted to reminisce. The changes have their perks - new quests, high-level zones brought down to low level zones (and vice versa), the ability to use flying mounts anywhere, previously ignored zones getting new life, and even a heroic Deadmines. Though, you kind of have to be a longtime Alliance player to sort of get why a heroic Deadmines is funny. But anyone who says Blizzard doesn't pay attention to its players needs to go have a look at the Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeroy Jenkins! achievement and the story behind that. One player's stupidity becomes a popular achievement. Go figure. Though I learned that Baron Rivendere, the last boss in Stratholme (undead side) is going to be removed permanently from the game upon Cataclysm's release. Probably because something is finally going to happen with that city (I heard that there's a possibility the Plaguelands is going to end up restored to its original state before the plague, which would include Stratholme). On the downside this means his mount will no longer be ingame, and it's hard enough to get as it is. I've killed him 3 times, still haven't seen it in the loot table. Hopefully there's still time. Blizzard's established a sort of tradition of releasing expansions in November, but considering this is now August and Cata is still in beta, a release this November sounds like a bit of a rush. I guess we'll see, and it'll depend on how many issues (if any) show up in the beta.

My daily writing momentum is picking up. I'm getting closer to maintaining 1k a day, which isn't bad. Isn't where I'd like to be, but it's a start. I have to keep that balance of pushing myself, but not pressuring myself. Is that even possible? I don't like pressuring myself because I have a hard time maintaining myself when I stumble while trying to be where I want to be. I have to kind of 'trick' myself psychologically, like I did with my 'resolutions'. I hate using that word, I don't know anyone who's ever kept their New Year's Resolutions all the way through. It's funny how a simple change of words can affect you, and I'm proud to say I'm nearly halfway through my goals/resolutions list. You do what works.

Ah, the culling continues. Maybe I should rename my computer to Stratholme :) A lesson from college, renaming the computer and the admin account. It makes it a little more difficult for hackers to find your system and hack into it, as most count on a generic name and the standard Administrator name to access your system. It isn't 100% foolproof, but it was a layer of security added to many layers. That and good passwords. I always make sure mine are extra-lengthy, anywhere between 19-29 characters. Though I make sure to have a hard copy of all of my passwords near the computer in the event that I forget them (and I often do!)

Computer Glitches and Good Dreams

The adventure of exploring my computer files continues. Still trying to clean the harddrive, and bring some order to the mess. It's kind of like having a filing cabinet and some of the drawers are a complete mess. That and trying to salvage some space on my harddrive. I almost lost the info in LiquidBinder I had for one of my stories when the info wasn't saving! Scary moment, but luckily I still had the duplicate folder. Now the only thing I need to try and figure out is how to delete an error-ridden folder. It's empty, but everytime I try and delete it I get an error telling me it either can't find it or can't read it. Error on the harddrive I guess, or maybe there's a way to remove it that I've forgotten. My computer knowledge has faded some. I think this year I'll try and save up for a new computer. This one's served me well, but it's an old girl now and not worth repairing or replacing parts. I'm still on the fence about Windows 7, a lot of what I read about Windows Vista I didn't like and thus never upgraded to (not that this comp could have handled it! lol), but I wonder if Windows 7 panned out better or worse. Or maybe I should just get a Mac. Seems like in movies people are always using Mac laptops, I don't recall ever seeing an Acer or HP laptop in a movie before so there must be a reason why it's always a Mac. Any suggestions are most welcomed :)

Lately the dreams I've been having have been really kind to the writing department. I don't usually get inspired by dreams, I either don't remember too much or any of them or they're too weird and unpleasant. I did have one in June which gave birth to Chasing Dreams, and many nights of having a notepad near the bed paid off finally with that one. I don't think I would have made it to the computer and still remember it. Anyway, I just figured it was a lightning-strikes-once type of thing since it was so unusual and didn't think much on it again. Then once December rolled around I started having them a few times a week, though most were just small ideas I was able to use to advance stories I already had in progress. A few have spawned full-out stories, as if I needed more ;) My roster is rather full as it is, but I can't turn down a good storyline, especially when it's something that seems different and unique. Last night I had a nap (yes I think I'm one of the few people on earth who'll nap at 7 or 8 pm in the evening) and had this really great story idea play out while I slept. I don't know if I'll get to writing it out for awhile, but I will say this, it's nice to have another dragon story :)

Time to dive back into the filing cabinet.

New Year, New Start - Again

Well November and even December didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. I suffer from depression, panic & anxiety disorder and agoraphobia and have for a few years now, and I suppose this year it just got beyond my control. I had a lot of bad nights, a lot of panic attacks in short periods of time which was really unusual. It's scary and really makes you feel very isolated sometimes, but I have a really good doctor who's helping me through it and now I start the road to getting better. It's not fun living this way - especially when it affects my writing :) That's beginning to come back though, slowly but it's coming. I decided one of my goals for this year was to write 1 million words by January 8th, 2011. Ambitious? Sure. But it may help to motivate me to keep writing. Sometimes you have to push yourself through the lulls to get to the good stretches. I like goals as opposed to resolutions. New Year's Resolutions has such a stigma attached to it now, and very few people ever seem to see their resolutions all the way through. Goals has a different sort of ring to it, there's a certain drive to accomplish a goal that just doesn't seem to be there with resolutions. So goals it is. Whatever works I say ;)

Now I must set about to giving the computer its yearly clean up. Toss some files, organize others, try and get some room so it's not so sluggish. And backups. If you're an artist of any kind and you have your stuff on the computer, back it up. I use Syncplicity to back up my story files, but I also plan to get an external harddrive to back up the entire computer and some memory sticks to back up my fiction. Seriously, it's better to have multiple backups than losing even some of your hard work. So if there's no other goal you have for this year, make a good backup one of them!

Music of the Moment: As - Chachamaru