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I have been having many problems with my sleep cycle. Basically that, if I do not have a regular imperative reason for being up early (such as school or, presumably, a job) it very quickly shifts to my sleeping +/- an hour of dawn and waking around 1400 - 1500. Which means I tend to sleep through and miss the intermittent classes I have now and other events, as well as being less able to spend time with my friends and family. Plus, I miss out on that early morning beauty.
I have been trying to shift my sleep cycle to a more conventional pattern but this is proving difficult - to sleep after being awake only ten hours or to stay up through daylight. Still persevering. Managed better than usual on Thursday.
Thursday was also a day with all my family home and I was experiencing a lot of stress with everyone around, feeling crowded and trying to avoid arguments although I still managed to be drawn into one (what did I want done with the milk-substitute cartons my sister had left out on the bench - she maintains they go bad after a week or two in the fridge while I have continued to use them with no difference noticed - but after having sat out on the bench all morning I was no longer so willing to trust them and got told to stop bitching).
It was a good day, mostly. I have been trying in little occasional steps to convert an old desktop pc with 250 GB hard drive (the largest in the house) into a media server. What I had done so far was move it from the floor of my bedroom onto the desk again, find and reconnect its cords, and finally located a power cord for the monitor.
That turned out not to work. The computer would switch on and start running but the monitor remained dark. I suspected it may no longer work, so Thursday after my sisters had left I brought it out and hooked it up to the main desktop in the lounge room. Still nothing, not even a power light, so I concluded it was dead and moved on to an alternate plan.
I brought out the pc itself and scavenged the working monitor from the main (well only one in use really) desktop to get it set up - the idea was hopefully to (learn how to) configure the server for remote access so I would not need a monitor so much to keep it running. At first it seemed this monitor had suddenly died too and I worried I had ruined it carelessly. Then I pushed the power cord more firmly in at the back and all was well again.
Unfortunately it would not load beyond the BIOS screen, saying there was a problem and Windows could not load. "Well," thinks I, "no problem. I was planning to put Windows in a little box anyway, so we will just skip that phase." I went and burned the Mythbuntu image I had downloaded a few weeks ago and put that in the tray.
No change in the situation. Right. Time for fiddling with the BIOS settings. Changed the boot order so DVD came before hard drive. No discernible effect. Noticed an inconsistency in the clock speed reported at startup with that in the BIOS settings, adjusted settings to match, set which drives are master and slave, and got a bit farther in startup.
Still however it is trying to start Windows and failing, claiming (as it had been all along) there had been some change in the settings or maybe the CPU was damaged. This was the nearest I had dipped my fingers to the heart of a computer so far and it did not seem to have worked. I decided this was probably beyond my ability and I would likely need some new hardware to proceed further.
I called it stalemate and resolved to poke further when I felt up to it again - what after all had I to lose? Because I was feeling so stressed that day I decided to take a break from writing to relax, but then I had to decide how.
Finally settled on trying my first game of Angband, with its startlingly detailed character creation screen (I am more used to NetHack and DoomRL). Eventually I got passed that with a dwarven priestess named First. Then I realised I did not know what the controls are.
Having been freed from my obligation to write for the night I found what I wanted to do was write. Between perusing the commands for Angband and watching Heroes I refined my own personal definition of 'planet' and related terms (yes, that was actually a practical and productive use of my time, even if it does not become relevant for a year or more). There was also some more background work on tSOW, which I would have liked to continue afterward but that phase of the evening was passed mostly laying on the floor crying from anxiety.
It has been a couple of days now and I have not been writing since. I am going to sleep now, and when I wake that day will see writing done. Epic Fantasy is just about finished now and there is really only one way the climax can go. Wrote out that sequence on Thursday too, I think.
I have been trying to shift my sleep cycle to a more conventional pattern but this is proving difficult - to sleep after being awake only ten hours or to stay up through daylight. Still persevering. Managed better than usual on Thursday.
Thursday was also a day with all my family home and I was experiencing a lot of stress with everyone around, feeling crowded and trying to avoid arguments although I still managed to be drawn into one (what did I want done with the milk-substitute cartons my sister had left out on the bench - she maintains they go bad after a week or two in the fridge while I have continued to use them with no difference noticed - but after having sat out on the bench all morning I was no longer so willing to trust them and got told to stop bitching).
It was a good day, mostly. I have been trying in little occasional steps to convert an old desktop pc with 250 GB hard drive (the largest in the house) into a media server. What I had done so far was move it from the floor of my bedroom onto the desk again, find and reconnect its cords, and finally located a power cord for the monitor.
That turned out not to work. The computer would switch on and start running but the monitor remained dark. I suspected it may no longer work, so Thursday after my sisters had left I brought it out and hooked it up to the main desktop in the lounge room. Still nothing, not even a power light, so I concluded it was dead and moved on to an alternate plan.
I brought out the pc itself and scavenged the working monitor from the main (well only one in use really) desktop to get it set up - the idea was hopefully to (learn how to) configure the server for remote access so I would not need a monitor so much to keep it running. At first it seemed this monitor had suddenly died too and I worried I had ruined it carelessly. Then I pushed the power cord more firmly in at the back and all was well again.
Unfortunately it would not load beyond the BIOS screen, saying there was a problem and Windows could not load. "Well," thinks I, "no problem. I was planning to put Windows in a little box anyway, so we will just skip that phase." I went and burned the Mythbuntu image I had downloaded a few weeks ago and put that in the tray.
No change in the situation. Right. Time for fiddling with the BIOS settings. Changed the boot order so DVD came before hard drive. No discernible effect. Noticed an inconsistency in the clock speed reported at startup with that in the BIOS settings, adjusted settings to match, set which drives are master and slave, and got a bit farther in startup.
Still however it is trying to start Windows and failing, claiming (as it had been all along) there had been some change in the settings or maybe the CPU was damaged. This was the nearest I had dipped my fingers to the heart of a computer so far and it did not seem to have worked. I decided this was probably beyond my ability and I would likely need some new hardware to proceed further.
I called it stalemate and resolved to poke further when I felt up to it again - what after all had I to lose? Because I was feeling so stressed that day I decided to take a break from writing to relax, but then I had to decide how.
Finally settled on trying my first game of Angband, with its startlingly detailed character creation screen (I am more used to NetHack and DoomRL). Eventually I got passed that with a dwarven priestess named First. Then I realised I did not know what the controls are.
Having been freed from my obligation to write for the night I found what I wanted to do was write. Between perusing the commands for Angband and watching Heroes I refined my own personal definition of 'planet' and related terms (yes, that was actually a practical and productive use of my time, even if it does not become relevant for a year or more). There was also some more background work on tSOW, which I would have liked to continue afterward but that phase of the evening was passed mostly laying on the floor crying from anxiety.
It has been a couple of days now and I have not been writing since. I am going to sleep now, and when I wake that day will see writing done. Epic Fantasy is just about finished now and there is really only one way the climax can go. Wrote out that sequence on Thursday too, I think.
