Whenever I finish a major project like this, there's always this sensation of disbelief: "Wait--that's it! It's done!" It feels a bit anticlimactic. But it's also an enormous relief, because I quite literally feel a weight being lifted from my shoulders.
Incredibly liberating, those two little words: "the end". It's amazing.
Finishing the rough draft is really only about 33% of the work you do on a novel, but it's the part that takes the most effort. 33% is refinement--editing, deciding what to keep and what to toss, and what to change--and the latter 33% is selling the bitch. That last is the most difficult when you're unpublished.
There's a lot left to do here. I need titles for the three-four novels this thing will be split into; and I need a name for the saga itself. Apocalyptic Visions itself was really not meant to be anything other than a working title, and it still feels weak to me; but on the other hand, maybe it only seems weak to me because I came up with it. I don't know.
I'll worry about all that later. "There is a time for many words, and there is a time for sleep." I have passed through the "many words" and earned a respite.
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Finally got my f-ing truck parts last night, as mentioned, and put the new IAC valve in. MAP sensor wouldn't fit; the plug was wrong. But today I had to drive all over creation (including going to my offsites on urgent business) and the Jeep never skipped so much as a beat. Granted, it has gone as long as a week without acting up, but not from merely resetting the computer (pull the plugs, wait 30 seconds, put them back in). I had to let the computer go cold for over an hour to get that result. Otherwise it would come back in a day or so.
Tomorrow I'm supposed to take it to the garage to get the crank position sensor replaced. If Mrs. Fungus is not working from home tomorrow, though, I won't be able to do that. We'll see. I still want to get that sensor replaced, on general principals, but if replacing the IAC has cured the stalling, I might wait until I get my "hack-around" beater and put the Jeep in drydock for the summer to replace the floor pans and do other time-consuming repairs. Since it looks like I need to replace the rear main seal, that would be the time to replace the stupid sensor, with the transmission out of the way.
As for the IAC being the problem? The IAC valve is essentially a linear stepper motor. If it works the way I think it does, there are four contacts and each pair drives one phase. So to push the pintle in and close the idle port, it might be A-B-A-B, but to pull it out, B-A-B-A. Or maybe the computer reverses the current. Or both. Regardless of how, though, it's not like a regular motor where you apply power and it turns one way, reverse the terminals and it turns the other. It's linear.
I could see the IAC being adjusted on a constant basis to prevent backfiring and for other reasons; if the computer ran it in to close off the idle port when the engine was operating in one regime, but then when I let off the gas it tried to pull it back out again--only it didn't move, even though the computer thought it had.
That's the sticking point, pun intended: if the pintle got stuck "in" but the computer thought it was "out", that could account for the behavior I saw. And why did resetting the computer fix it? Why, because the first thing the computer did after I turned on the power was to run the pintle to a default setting...probably run it all the way out and then some--to make sure it was fully retracted--and then in a pre-specified number of steps to a value that would guarantee an engine start under pretty much any circumstances.
That makes sense. We'll see if it's right. Every other theory I've had has been totally wrong.
But this part is a moving part, and it gets exposed to heat and soot, and the thing has 204,000 miles on it....
We'll see, as I said.
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"There is simply no rational, science-based justification to keep the lockdowns in place anymore." The only reason it's still in effect is because the Democrats want Trump out of office.
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Itzhak Perlman is an amazing violinist, that's for certain.
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STFU, Meathead.
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Anyway, novel's done, I'm tired of writing; enjoy the rest of your day.