… is one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Jeesh!

Was it the alignment of the stars? Windows 10? (Both get lots of blame these days, so take your pick.)

I woke up feeling all warm and sunny. A cheerful woman with a plan, yep, that was me. The amount I was set to accomplish, well, efficiency experts step aside, LizAnn’s on the ball.

That was before I turned on the computer.

Now, Windows 10 and I have a certain issue. Mostly I love it, but there’s this BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) thing that happens randomly about once every four days. It’s caused by a DPC Watchdog Violation, which takes great exception to … well, to something. Then, whatever I’m in the middle of, kablooie, I’m facing the infamous blue screen. No fool I, I read up on the Watchdog. If you’re not tech savvy, I’d say don’t bother. Near as I can figure it’s something about a driver that isn’t completely compatible, and … well, whatever.

Anyway, about half an hour after I sat down to work, in the middle of trolling through my emails, there was that fatal thirty-second frozen screen, followed by my getting up to make a cup of coffee because I knew what was going to happen next. BSoD. Sigh.

Fortunately, nothing lost (this time).

So, coffee in hand, I get back into my email. I find a request from my ebook distribution service that I complete an “interview” to collect information for the IRS. This was fine until I entered my social security number. The machine told me with absolute certainty that I’d entered an invalid number. I assured the interview numerous times that it was wrong. After much frustration and chat back and forth with the nice man at the help desk, I gave up. Later (maybe the stars had realigned?) I tried again, and this time the system loved my social security number and cheerfully (no, that was me, the machine was dour) let me finish the tax interview.

In the meantime, I decided to gather up the Watchdog info and pack it off to Microsoft. I had an email telling me what they need to debug me. This involved figuring out how to find, then zip, system files, share a folder, and other minor challenges. All good, but the email didn’t tell me where to send the link to the shared files. (Clever of Microsoft, wouldn’t you say?) I tried hitting Reply – but so far no acknowledgment.

I’d signed up (I thought) for NaNoWriMo a couple of days before. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. You commit to pound out 50,000 words in November. Hey, what’s 50,000 words? No one said they had to be good. And this will put me near the finish line for my next Calter Creek novel.

But when I went to the NaNoWriMo website, no way was it letting me in. Nor was it willing to send me a password reset. It took creative poking around in yet another forum to find an email address for technical issues. I finally learned that my registration hadn’t gone through—AT ALL—(yes, I’m shouting), and my username had been registered two years ago (by me? No way to tell) and really all I could do was start over.

My plan was out the window, my efficiency was shot. Only one solution to this morning. I went to the store and bought cinnamon buns, a low-tech solution if ever there was one.

At last, all’s right with the world.