Mentally drained

Mentally drained

Just a quick note to everyone. Since my last post, I’ve been very busy, mostly with family and friends. However, I’m now back, at least in spirit. My body is straining to keep up with my desires. That is, writing and keeping up with my friends and followers, all the stuff that makes my life worthwhile.

That said, since my return to work yesterday, I am mentally drained. Yes, that’s right, I’ve been off since last Thursday afternoon. At my job, I am responsible for various applications that are widely used within my client base. After testing several weeks ago an upgrade to this platform, I figured updating it yesterday would be a no-brainer. Over and done with, easy. Right? How wrong I was.

Instead of taking a total of three hours to implement and then another three hours to test, two days later, I’m still working on it. I figure I will complete the project tomorrow but one thing I do know, I will be calling the vendor once again. Yep, before I left today, I discovered something wrong that needs to be fixed before I can put the ‘DONE’ stamp on the project.

Yes, I know you probably don’t care about my concerns at work. However, it is affecting my ability to write and chat with you, my followers. When I got home yesterday, I felt so drained that it took a couple of scotches, dinner, and time in the hot tub before I felt a bit more relaxed. Early to bed and I slept the entire night, right through to the morning alarm. Great, as normally I’m up once or twice a night, and not for a trip to the head.

So why did I feel unrested as I got ready for work? And now after my shift and I’m home, I feel almost as bad as yesterday. I am once again, mentally drained, which makes me feel physically wiped out. “Hey, where’s that glass of scotch?” Or should I open a bottle of wine? Either way, something smooth will soon be passing across my tongue to chill out.

What does this all mean to my writing? Well, as it so happens, I’ve done little, and I’m stressing over it. Yet, I’m so mentally drained, I can’t seem to pick up where I left off. Sorry, everyone. I’m working hard, and I appreciate your patience.

Thank you for your supportSo, I’m off to find a bit of downtime. I appreciate all that every one of you has done for me. A new exciting book will soon be released, and I’ve got another nearly ready to turn over to the editors. With notes on several story lines in the works, I need to get going.

Have a great day and a better tomorrow.
Rich

Holy Missing Feed Batman!

Holy Missing Feed Batman
Source: keyword-suggestions.com

Holy Missing Feed Batman!

Before I lose it again, I want to send everyone an update. For more than two weeks, my posts have not been going out to my email subscribers. Holy missing feed batman. I do not know why, it is working at this moment, but it is. So while it is, I am sending out this update to let you know what is going on.

My social media sites received the updates but my email subscribers have not. If I had hair, I would have pulled it all out by now.

To my email subscribers, I apologize. I will strive hard to make sure that you continue to receive my updates on a timely basis. In the meantime, if you like, you can go to my blog site and catch up. They are all there. https://richardverry.com/blog.

For the past two weeks, I’ve worked extensively with my host provider and the plug-in author to try and figure it all out. Yes, there are two vendors involved with this issue, and both pointed to the other as the responsible party.

Me? I believe it was the plug-in that broke the feeds. Why? The first question I ask myself is, what’s changed? That’s easy. The plug-in changed. In fact, the publishers updated the plug-in several times over the past two months. They released a brand new version just before I noticed my posts were not distributed properly. They claimed my SSL certificate configuration was not correct. Of course, this was debunked pretty quickly by the hosting company as well as my research.

Patience and persistence

So, what did it come down too? Persistence and I don’t know what else. I can say, that I used Google to research all sorts of ideas. (Don’t you just love the Google search engine for looking up answers to problems?) I also did a thorough review of my site, I found broken links, carried over from a year ago when I migrated my site to a hosted solution, which I fixed. I also figured out a way to leverage server-side caching that was on my to-do list. But that is about the size of it.

I believe it is the plug-in server side programming as well as aspects of the plug-in client-side programming that are the root cause of the issue. But, could I get them to acknowledge it? Nope. Even now, they still haven’t. Yet, yesterday morning, my posts failed to distribute to my email subscribers, and today they do. What did I do? Nothing.

Find out how the human race survives 3DTo my email subscribers, I apologize. If you have read this far, thank you. In acknowledgment of your patience, I would like to offer you a free copy of my book ‘The Taste of Honey‘. Just click the book title to connect you to the free download page.

In the meantime, I will do everything I can to keep this feed up and working for you.

Until the next time, have a great day and a better tomorrow. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Regards,
Rich