These are the times we live in…
quarantine
Day 23 – sleep deprived
Is there anything worse than being awake at 3am and wishing you were asleep? Wishing you’d been asleep for hours already, because the alarm is going to go off at 6:30, and 3 hours just doesn’t cut it?
That was last night for me. At some point, I realized that trying to get up at 6:30 and make it for an online gym class at 7 wasn’t going to happen, so I set the alarm for much, much later, and after tossing and turning, finishing the book I was reading, and googling book themed tattoos, I FINALLY fell asleep.
Speaking of tattoos, I think I have a general idea of what I want. Now it’s just a question of finding the right person to design it and do it. Know anyone good in the Bay Area?
Day 22 – a case of the Mondays
Today was definitely Monday. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed in all this — Mondays still suck.
On a brighter note, my technical issues with my blog are resolved. Tech support from my hosting company tried to help, but their solution was to suggest using a plugin to bypass uploading images using WP and instead upload them using FTP, and then use the plugin to import them. Ugh. That’s almost as bad as the suggestion to screenshot the photos.
After doing more research of my own, it turns out that a recent update to WordPress introduced a limit on large images. Way to go WordPress. Thankfully, there’s a plugin to bypass that. And another plugin to optimize and auto re-size images. Now everything should work and be faster!
In other news — it’s April! It doesn’t feel like April with all the rain we’ve been having here. I’m excited that the sun should be back out tomorrow. It’s my birthday month, and with everything that’s been going on, I’ve forgotten to celebrate each day. So that’s gotta change.
To start, I’ve been decorating my new home desk. Anyone who’s seen my office at work knows that I have a lot of cute stuff in my office, including way too many stuffed animals and even a TARDIS!
Also, has it really been over three weeks??!
Update — as of today, I officially have more views for 2020 so far than all of last year. I’m also posting a lot more so I’d be disappointed if it the views stayed the same since I hardly posted at all last year. Thanks for reading! Drop me a comment if you like the blog or you have a suggestion for a topic.
Day 21 – technical issues
This week is topping the charts re: technical issues. First was figuring out how to transfer everything from my old laptop to my new one. I really wanted to get this done ASAP, as I’m giving my old laptop to a friend for her son to use for school. Then, it was uploading images for my blog post on Friday night, and last night, it was Disney+.
I did finally get the laptop situation worked out. My airport / time capsule hadn’t been turned on in about 4 or 5 years, so once I got that reset and running it was just a matter of waiting (and waiting and waiting) first for the backup, and then for the restore onto the new machine.
Disney+ on the other hand, those are technical issues on their side, so not much I can do about it. I get Disney+ for free, so maybe I shouldn’t complain, but it’s annoying when it tells me I have an internet issue when Netflix and Hulu work just fine. And then when it stopped complaining about my internet, it played the movie, but with no sound. Ugh. I almost gave up and then it decided to work.
Today, I am back to the blog issue. The support tech who helped me Friday night couldn’t figure it out, so he escalated my ticket for me. The suggested solution — take a screenshot of my photos and post that instead. Um… no.
So, I’ve been poking around and seeing if I could figure it out on my own. First step — debug mode. This clearly indicates an issue —
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-image-editor-imagick.php on line 355.
I tried turning off all the plugins, changed the theme, nothing helped. I finally found an article on the WP forums — “This usually means your host is taking too long to process the derivative images (thumbnails, etc.) when you upload your files.” I emailed the tech guy back, asked him to look into that and also to see if we can update PHP (I have a shared hosting solution, so I can’t just go update that myself). We’ll see what he says! If they can’t figure this out, I may have to consider switching hosting providers. Anyone using something they like? I had GoDaddy for awhile, but I really really don’t want to go back there, so any other suggestions?