Not profitable, but productive

So Wednesday, as I sat down to work on eHows, I discover the network is down. It turned out to be a statewide problem: Time-Warner says it fixed everything but 9 a.m., but our network, at least, took a lot longer to return.
Between that and the Monday holiday, my eHows were low again, but writing overall went well.
•I reached the point in Brain From Outer Space where I’ve been stuck for so long, and with my latest changes, didn’t feel the dread Warning! voice that says I’ve already screwed things up. More analytically, I think I’ve fixed a lot of the problems that were bugging me about previous drafts (of course, I’ve said that before). From this point on, it’s forward to the end before I go back to the beginning. Of course, after all the changes, I have only a vague idea what happens next …
•The opening chapter of my elves-in-Georgia story, Southern Comfort, really improved thanks to the changes I made last week. When I started thinking what comes next, however, I realized how bad the rest of my previous draft was—lots of talky scenes, arguments with cops, romantic banter and backstory on the town—and no action for three or four chapters. My protagonists need to take action, but I honestly have no idea—yet—how they’re going to do that (without going into detail, the villain isn’t exactly easy to find).
•I did a quick review of The Savage Years and Hi-Diddle-Diddle (the more-likely-to-keep-the-title version of Dum-Dum-Diddle). There’s definite improvement. Room for more improvement, of course, but I think I’m heading in the right direction. I still haven’t got the personalities of the leads in Savage Years quite as sharp as I want them, though.
•I impulsively started a new story, a P.G. Wodehouse-esque fantasy. The intro sounds funny (if I do say so) but I’m not sure where it goes from here. Time will tell.
And now, the eHows for the week:
•What Is a Maize Database?
•Dual HD Vs. Blu-ray DVD
•The Effects of Video Refresh Rate in Flight Simulators
•Are VLANS Routable Across a WAN?
•How to Connect Two Subnets With a Pix
•How to Handle Multiple Projects in Parallel
•Intelligent Network Application Protocols
•Working in Python: Permission Denied
•How to Troubleshoot ColdFusion
•How LinkedIn Uses Memcached
•What Is Disk Spacing?
•Sharing Computers & Lawsuit Risks
•How to Make Calls Through a Cisco TSP
•HLA Syntax Types
•Headend Network Evaluation & Testing
•What Is a Parse Error?