The GHAWG Diaries, Part 66

What's happening behind the scenes to bring new GHAWG content? The GHAWG Diaries is my recap of what I've been doing.

^{Cover image designed by @magnacarta using emojis and Excel 2007 for text. Minor edits made using MS Paint.}

Introduction

There's more to #GHAWG than just daily zapfic entries and the spreadsheet I use to track them. There's research. There's review. There's also thought and inspiration. Then there are the tools involved in doing any of those tasks.

Just to keep things from getting scrambled in my head, and also to document for myself what I've been considering, I began keeping a diary of my activities as they concern #GHAWG. For that reason, I decided to share these diary entries with everyone on Hive blockchain (including the LeoFinance community at InLeo).

On Mondays which don't feature a GHAWG, Uninterrupted post (GHAWG-U)-- eventually replaced by GHAWG, Remastered (GHAWG-R)-- I'll post diary entries from the previous 7 days or between GHAWG-U/R posts if the time between them is short. TGD66 will have enough entries for 1 week. The first entry starts on 2025-March-31.

Before anyone scratches their heads at a few terms, here are 3 I began using many posts ago: | Term | Meaning | | --- | --- | | ►Rat Bike◄¹ | Code name for #GHAWG (the first and current zapfic serial) | | ►Blue Lion◄² | Code name for the middle zapfic serial in the GHAWG Universe | | ►The Bronze◄³ | Code name for the final zapfic serial in the GHAWG Universe |

Monday, 2025-March-31

📓 The zapfic queue goes to 2025-May-06 (E06). I added one entry showing how ►The Kids◄⁴ were enjoying their fleeting celebrity status as much as they could. I also added an entry showing ►David Guardia◄⁵ getting his left hand treated at the campus hospital.

📓 I did more work on porting Rat Bike from zapfic format to long form. At the moment I'm working on the scene where David Guardia and ►Rhonda Bella◄⁶ formally meet each other. I had to set up the scene so that details from this moment take on a different meaning when David ends his ►Epic Ride◄⁷. Let's just say he won't believe how naive he was the day he and the future ►Rhonda Bella Guardia◄⁸ met each other.

Tuesday, 2025-April-01

📓 Today I published the zapfic entry where Lionel Odunsi is rechristened "Finn" by ►Templar◄⁹ (David Guardia). ►Finn◄¹⁰ will be Lionel's final ►Felix Legion◄¹¹ name, but it will not be his second Felix Legion name.

When Felix Legion gets formed in the novelization of Rat Bike, neither Lionel nor David will have any idea how Lionel will contribute Felix Legion during what has been transformed into his Epic Ride. Since the ride from ►STURGIS◄¹² to ►San Diego, California◄¹³, US will be done together with ►The Mongols◄¹⁴, there's no reason for Lionel to look for lodging.

So at this point, the name ►Quartermaster◄¹⁵ doesn't register with David. In theory, David could make "Lionel" the Felix Legion name for Lionel, but the Nigerian student hasn't achieved enough status for this level of identity. So while Felix Legion rides with The Mongols to San Diego, Lionel's Felix Legion name will default to a version of the brand name for the motorcycle he rides. As David had named Sanjay Rampersad ►Triumph◄¹⁶ due to the Triumph Trident motorcycle he rides, David will first name Lionel "Enfield" since he rides a motorcycle made by Royal Enfield. It will be in San Diego, when Felix Legion begins its ride east along what they believe to be ►Route 66◄¹⁷, where Templar will rechristen Enfield with the more familiar name (thanks to the zapfic serial) Quartermaster.

Now that I think about it for the novelization, when ►Lindsay Etxeberria◄¹⁸ joins Felix Legion, David can name her "Midway" because it was near ►Midway, Iowa◄¹⁹, US when he and Rhonda Bella find her left for dead by the side of the road near that town. It's either "Midway," or some less-flattering name such as "Lumpy" or "Heap" or "Hot Mess". The ►daring display of theatricality◄²⁰ will still take place in ►Santa Fe, New Mexico◄²¹, US, so she still earns the name "Fonzie" from Templar. In between being called "Midway" and "Fonzie" she will acquire another name, and that one will be more important for everyone near the end of Rat Bike and through Blue Lion and The Bronze.

Wednesday, 2025-April-02

📓 Today I was considering adding one more scene at ►UNC◄²² before ►The Iowans◄²³ (the four natives from Iowa plus David Guardia) left The Kids on there own.

It was a scene involving misguided activists giving Felix Legion a hard time just because of what they believed Felix Legion represented. The misguided activists would give Felix Legion a piece of their minds. Then Templar (David) would give them a piece of his.

He would demonstrate that they had no power over him or Felix Legion despite their hectoring and sloganeering and lack of self-awareness. He would merely list all the times he had been in danger or near death. He would show them his ►maimed left palm◄²⁴ from the ►mass shooting◄²⁵ at ►The Dogemart◄²⁶ in ►Bolivion, Virginia◄²⁷, US a few days earlier. He would demonstrate that their efforts to intimidate him and Felix Legion were for nothing.

To punctuate his point, his eyes would emit a flash of light as if the flash from an old-style camera was used. It wouldn't be the 🕸️laser eyes🕸️ used on memes featuring 🕸️President Nayib Bukele🕸️ of 🕸️El Salvador🕸️, but it would be noticeable from far away.

Templar himself won't know that his eyes flashed like a camera bulb. This particular moment will foreshadow something which will happen in Iowa as his Epic Ride winds down. It will also foreshadow something which will happen in the later parts of The Bronze.

Thursday, 2025-April-03

📓 Today I came up with a name for ►The Oaf◄²⁸, a character I mentioned in Zapfic Entry Number 3. Walter "Wally" Zloty is the name I chose for The Oaf. Except for maybe the very start of GHAWG when David first refers to The Oaf, we won't be seeing The Oaf anywhere else in The GHAWG Universe, although we will see at least one character related to him. This character will debut in Blue Lion. Next is to do some math to see how this character relates to David Guardia when they meet. They will have another connection besides knowing Wally Zloty, but that connection depends on the math I have to get done. The name will appear once or twice more, but only in the sequels to Rat Bike.

How did I settle on the family name Zloty? It's the main unit of legal tender currency units in Poland (the "złoty"). At the time I write this, 1 USD equals 3.8118276 PLN. (If you have access to a place which can exchange US dollars for zlotys or zlotys to US dollars, you may be able to make gains doing microforex {small-scale ForEx}.) As for the first name, the diminutive "Wally" just fit with the family name.

Other names I considered were either too hard for Westerners to pronounce (or spell), or they were too common among the Polish family names found in the United States. However, it was this consideration which pushed me to chose "Zloty" for The Oaf's family name: the character limits for a zapfic entry. If you've seen some Polish family names, you can understand my choice.

Friday, 2025-AApril-04

📓 Yesterday I discussed doing math to calculate when a future character in The GHAWG Universe will establish a connection to David Guardia. After a few calendar calculations, I determined that this character would establish the connection with David in 2006.

Recall that David had mentioned that he ►worked at investment bank Bear Stears◄²⁹ in the years before it went 🕸️bankrupt on 2008-March-11🕸️ prior to being acquired by JPMorgan Chase. Given this detail from David's past, it made sense for this connection to take place a bit earlier, so I chose 2006.

In 2006, David would be 38 years old. The future GHAWG character will be 26 years old then. What will this character be doing at 🕸️Bear Stearns🕸️? This character would be working in the investment bank's legal department. How this character goes from corporate law to criminal law will be explained in the second half of Blue Lion.

Saturday, 2025-April-05

📓 Since the beginning of GHAWG on 2023-March-05, I've been using datetimes as text labels for hyperlinks to each zapfic entry. The datetimes stamped for recorded to blockchain using UTC (formerly GMT). For my hyperlinks, I always adjusted the datetimes for local time; for me, local time is in the East Coast Atlantic (New York; Washington, DC; Miami; etc.). Sometimes the difference is -0400 hours off UTC. Sometimes the difference is -0500 hours. Changes in dates when Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time take effect account for the discrepancy.

Unfortunately, the dates when those time settings take effect has been varying wildly in recent years. This means that some datetimes I used differ by -0400 when they should differ by -0500. I'm also expecting the other situation where they should differ by -0500 instead of by -0400.

Rather than wrack my brain trying to figure out which time difference is correct, I'm going to use the UTC time as noted on blockchain. The Weekly Summary post for zapfic entries 770 through 776 is the first post where I use UTC time.

What I need to do is rewrite all previous datetimes to show UTC. I won't get this done immediately, but it will be finished before I finish the 6th and final segment of David Guardia's Epic Ride to close out Rat Bike. Then I will post non-zapfic content related to GHAWG. After that I will post daily zapfic entries for the sequel zapfic serial code-named Blue Lion.

Sunday, 2025-April-06

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