In Windows 10, where will I find a place to schedule pushes to maintain some control over such things? Next, is there any way I can test / assure that the next pushes will not break my PC? In the least, is it possible I can delay the install of the latest push until said push is tried and true? Can I ever really be sure?
The power switch. In the sense that the only way to prevent a Windows 10 update from occurring is by leaving the computer off. (You can schedule a time period where Windows 10 will very politely avoid arbitrarily rebooting the machine whenever it damn well feels like it. Use the “Active Hours” configuration to tell Windows 10 when you’d prefer not to have the machine yanked out from under you. However, it can only be 12 hours of the day, because Windows 10 has to be in charge for at least half the day.)
In other words, you have no control of Windows 10 update, and only partial control of when Windows 10 update will reboot your machine without your consent.
No, you can’t be sure. Windows 10 is a life of adventure, lived balls-to-the-walls. YOLO!
Make sure you configure to do restore-point saves before updates, so that you have a working configuration to fall back to if the update botches something.
With respect to defanging Windows Update, there is a crockish hacky work-around which is almost as nuclear-option as not powering up the computer. Google “Windows 10 update metered connection” to find instructions to “lie” to Windows 10, telling it that all your network connections are metered (like a limited 4g data connection is). Windows 10 won’t download updates through that, because not even Microsoft wants the heat of getting blamed for using up user’s precious 6 gigabytes a month. But it’s not something you can do for Ethernet or WiFi in the usual configuration user interfaces. You have to do some registry jiggery-pokery. Once you do that, you can’t get any updates while that’s set. You’d have to undo the registry jiggery-pokery to allow Windows to do its update. But you also won’t get automatic installation of drivers for new hardware you plug in, either. No gain without some loss.