Technology Hates Me

Everyday Adventures

Or, if not, it’s doing a pretty good impression of something capable of hate.

Last week I was making some steady progress on editing and uploading videos to the Crafty Branch’s YouTube channel. Or, well, I was making progress on the editing, I should say, but when it takes 11 hours for a 7 minute video to upload, progress isn’t exactly the word that comes to mind.

I used SpeedTest.net to check out the network, only I don’t know what we’re supposed to be getting, speed-wise, so I have no idea if we’re right or not. I’ll need to do some follow-up with the city on that. And I know that connecting through WiFi instead via Ethernet cables can cut upload speeds, sometimes as much as in half, but before this week I was not having this problem. A video under 10 minutes might have taken an hour to process, total, which makes more sense. Not 11.

One of the other YouTubers I watch, though, was having a similar issue with her daily vlogs–Bumble Bailey–and she was reporting the same activity: the progress bar would show a normal upload time estimate, then it would jump to a higher estimate, then it’d just give up on a time estimate altogether (and I’ve had that progress bar tell me it was going to take 5 hours, before, so I know it can count pretty high). She also said that she had better luck when using Firefox instead of Chrome, so I was going to give that a try last night.

Yeah, about last night.

So I’m watching the Tony’s (which was pretty awesome, I must say) and finishing up the edits for the last Gingerbread Diaries video (you know, the one before Todd’s birthday? In March? yeah, sorry about the delay on that one!) and I set it to export from Premiere Pro (which, for once, had not put up a fight when I tried to insert some simple titles, yay!). Exporting was going very slow, and I chalked that up to the fact that I was simultaneously streaming said awards show via CBS All Access.

After the show ended and I was still only at 14% exported, I figured it was just hung up and I restarted the export. I also set Firefox to install and went up to take a shower. My plan (ah, yes, the so-called plan… ) was to start the YouTube upload this morning but when I came downstairs the export was still only at 88%.

Dammit all!

So, yeah, that video update will be a bit late, and I think Paisley (that would be my laptop’s name) is due for a defrag, etc. I might also need to shift some files onto the external HD to free up space (videos take up so much room and I’ve been doing a lot of them, lately). Of course, this could also be a Win10 issue, as I was upgraded without consent a couple weeks ago, so who the hell knows?!

/rant

In other news, Duncan may not hate me, but he may be back to hating his crate. He’s still doing really well for meals and sleeping at night in there, but being home last week may have set us back a bit since I didn’t feel up to dealing with the barking (I even tried the cans Todd has for ear protection when he uses his power tools and they didn’t block the barking!) so, yeah. He was okay when we went to dinner on Thursday night (for an hour), but when we came home from the memorial service last night, ugh!

We’d been gone 4 hours. That’s a totally acceptable time for him to be crated, especially since we know he can hold it longer than that (as evidenced by his refusal to “go” in the rain that last all damn day the previous week). And he’d been doing so much better with the daily crating, more or less. So we were both disappointed and, frankly, disgusted with the smell that hit us as soon as we opened the back door.

And might I add we’d just given Duncan a bath the night before?

There’s no telling what we’re going to come home to, today. I really hope Todd doesn’t have to hose down the crate tray at lunch (and I even more hope that I don’t have to after work–it’s happened before).

Still, the 10 days off were productive–tech issues and puppy regression aside–so I’m not complaining too much. The job hunt continues (and there’s a story for another day in that), but I’m looking forward to being back in the office, today. I like my routine, after all, and even having those days to do whatever I wanted/needed, I still knew it was a temporary shift so it wasn’t the same as if/when I may work from home full-time in the not-too-distant future.

Here’s hoping for a good week!

~Jenn