{"id":8581,"date":"2025-07-30T22:16:47","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T05:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/?p=8581"},"modified":"2025-07-30T22:16:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T05:16:48","slug":"viiictory-forty-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/30\/viiictory-forty-two\/","title":{"rendered":"viiictory … forty-two!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whew! What a few months it’s been. I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had time to publicize some of the stuff that I’d naturally use this blog for (like the Embodied AI Workshop). But, we’re through most of that now. And the most important thing is completing my 42nd successful Nanowrimo challenge!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Nanowrimo organization imploded this year, but the challenges roll on – and for me, this year, it was working out the complicated plot of JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE WATCHTOWER OF DESTINY. Finding out what the Watchtower really was and what the bad guys were up to was hard enough, but weaving into the plot all the threads of inspiration that led to the story was … quite the challenge. But I got there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Still, it led to another blood-in-the-water month, which felt pretty bad, but which (after I fixed a bug in my tracking system) doesn’t appear to have been too much worse than other bad months: other than a few blips around the 22nd to the 24th, it seems to have been slow but within the envelope:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And, oh great, images are doing something weird again. Joy. Okay, that seems to be fixed. But I will say, this month felt like the research required on this novel was much greater than normal. No matter! I finished! Oh yes, the traditional excerpt. Sometimes we’re our own worst critic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWhat an untapped well of self-loathing I have discovered,\u201d Jeremiah wondered. \u201cYes, I\u2019m a thirty-two year old three-star general and award-winning athlete, and that\u2019s exceptional. But I\u2019ve cracked my skull, broken my arm, even broken my back through my own carelessness\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, the hard life,\u201d Firamiah scoffed, \u201cof the decorated veteran\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2014and, also, I\u2019ve been exiled, dismissed, even temporarily blinded, because I\u2019m such a whiny Cassandra,\u201d Jeremiah said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand how I rub people so the wrong way that they\u2019d rather stand on their heads than help me fight a monster standing in the very room\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEver consider,\u201d Firamiah barked, \u201cit\u2019s because that smug, annoying smirk of yours annoys people so much that they want to punch you straight in your smug, punchable face?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firamiah got nose to nose with Jeremiah in a roaring display of righteous flame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re quite<\/em> done browbeating me,\u201d Jeremiah said stiffly, \u201cplease get on with delivering your nodes of the directed acyclic graph, so I can connect the dots and get your self-righteous, unfortunately not-punchable face out of my suitably-chastened, yet still-punchable one.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, no celebratory dinner yet: time to move on to the two scientific papers I need to finish editing, one due tomorrow, one due in a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Onward!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whew! What a few months it’s been. I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had time to publicize some of the stuff that I’d naturally use this blog for (like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204,197,199,202],"tags":[4,91,66],"class_list":["post-8581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challenges","category-fiction","category-steampunk","category-writing","tag-dragon-writers","tag-nanowrimo","tag-the-clockwork-time-machine","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8590,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8581\/revisions\/8590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}