#i wouldn't have to buy one if they were still built into laptops but unfortunately you can't get them like that before

[nameforthemain]

I used to assume engineers would have all the latest gadgets and up-to-date technology, and that my engineering grandad was just an outlier for choosing the least practical, more expensive solutions instead of just updating his methods.

And now I'm an engineer and just spent £16 on an external DVD/CD player for my laptop, I'm beginning to think there may be a theme.

#half my work in engineering is just keeping machines going as long as they can on the same parts #and that includes paying extra for parts that are so old they're no longer even being manufactured #like yes i could have just bought the films i wanted to watch digitally #and it would have been cheaper than the cd drive #but it's a matter of principle #i wouldn't have to buy one if they were still built into laptops but unfortunately you can't get them like that before #and i have such a large store of DVDs and CDs it feels wrong to buy a digital copy of something I already have #random talks

[winterburnwriting]

Hello There!

No, it isn't a dead blog until I let it die! Yes, it has been about 2 months since I last posted. And I wish I were coming back to tell you all that I was absent for so long because I was spending that time working very hard on the short novel. Unfortunately, that isn't really the case. Truth be told, I didn't have much going on that was preventing me from working, I just didn't feel like working on it and failed to summon the willpower to make it happen.

However, I did also have a computer problem in the last week. My primary computer several years ago was a decent enough (at the time) PC with a GTX 1070 and such. Nothing fancy, but it was fine. Then I went to college for one year and decided early into that I was going to buy a high-end laptop, since I had to buy one for classes anyway. I bought an Alienware m17 R4. It was a nice ugprade from my PC so I used it as my primary computer for the last couple of years. Since October 2021, I think. This is what I was writing my book on.

Unfortunately, it has been losing functions and components bit by bit for a very long time and seemed to be headed towards total lemon-ness. I was down to no wi-fi, no trackpad, no bluetooth (without a USB adapter), and no built-in screen (I used an external monitor). It was not looking great. Then it seemed to reject all video output whatsoever. Then it decided it didn't want to boot. I tried to open it up and diagnose and fix the issue to no avail. I sealed it back up, and it had the same issue plus a loud beeping! I mean, very loud. I kinda gave up at this point and decided to order some nice new parts for my now-old PC.

Once I had gotten some parts together I opened my laptop back up to take the SSDs out and put them into my Franken-PC. Then I saw something shocking. The battery ribbon cable.... was not plugged back in for the last test. I say "to hell with it!" and plug it back in, and I try to test the laptop again. And wouldn't you know it? It works fine. I am 850 dollars into the hole on a new emergency PC build. And the laptop works fine.

This was frustrating, but the laptop was going to die sometime soon anyway. So I go ahead with building the PC, I move the SSDs over, and I set everything back up the way it was before I got the laptop. Just with a nicer GPU and a worse CPU.

At least videogames look prettier now.

And I am now using my old mechanical Corsair keyboard, which I had bought towards the end of using my PC before switching to the Alienware. So that will take some getting used to for writing. But speaking of writing.... (drumroll please!)

I'm halfway done writing the first draft of my short novel!

This isn't as impressive as where I'd like to be by now, but it's still neat. I hit 23,291 words at the end of my writing session today, and I am aiming for around 45ish thousand words for the final product. Hopefully it won't take me so long to write the second half. I just need to stay productive, and maybe I can finish the draft by the end of June! I would really like to be (self) published in the Fall so I can start working on my first big proper novel in the last quarter of this year.

Anyway, since I haven't written very much since I last wrote here, I won't be leaving an excerpt. That, and it's 2:15 AM and I have work at 11 AM in the morning. So I should sleep. But I will be posting here again!

I hope this blogpost finds you well, and I wish you a lovely day.

#author #creative writing #novel writing #writing #books #fiction