Measure twice, cut once...

That video document I worked on yesterday had a hidden catch...

The original was delivered to me in PDF format. While I have Acrobat 5 and could probably have extracted the text using the program's features, I also received what was purported to be the same document in Word format.

So, I worked with the Word format, finishing the translation yesterday evening... or so I thought.

I know this is hard to believe, but it turns out that the Word file does not have the same content as the PDF, which is about 11 pages longer, and filled with marketing slime about this really cool video surveillance system that someone is obviously trying to sell to someone.

The good news is that my other active client sent two more files with "new" material in the revisions for me to translate. It took me about 15 minutes to process the documents (including sending them back), since the volume of new material was about 25 words.

Nonetheless, I have another 5 pages left of the video document, and it's a slog. All of the text is pretty predictable, but then again, the translation has to match the original, so I have to exercise due care.

In other news, I'm in the home stretch with Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and things are getting interesting. All of the seemingly disjoint action that takes place across and among generations is coming to a boil, but I only have limited time to sit down and try to take it all in.

Life is tough, I guess.

Back to work...

Cheers...

Winding down...

The video translation took longer than expected, mostly because of the strange formatting employed by the Russian originator of the source document. Table footnotes were entered as real footnotes, which caused all sorts of interesting effects.

Nevertheless, the file is being sent via e-mail as I type this, so that's one more rock off my plate.

This makes three jobs that I have to sit down and write invoices for... and invoices are things that do not tolerate a high level of delay, if you know what I mean.

I took a "break" in the middle of the afternoon and went to the store to help pack a 100-pound box for shipment. The process was a challenge, and I have the thing boxed up, but I wonder if the job is good enough in case a UPS inspector cares to break it open and take a look. The contents are rugged enough, I think, to withstand a small-yield thermonuclear device, but there is no accounting for the taste of UPS inspectors, particularly if an item is insured for more than $1000.

(Case in point: A customer brought in a bicycle one day, packed in the same box that it came in. As the customer wanted to insure the bike for something like $1200, the package came under the scrutiny of the UPS inspector in Durango, who rejected the packaging as inadequate. Go figure.)

I've not run the VAIO long enough to let it heat up, but I've noticed that it appears to run cooler now that I've sprayed about half a can of compressed gas in through the opening closest to the fan. I can't hear the fan running, which doesn't mean that it isn't. At any rate, I've been keeping the uptime on the unit to around 10 minutes maximum, in order to retrieve necessary files.

Tomorrow, I sit down with another large table and crank it out. It should not take too long, although I've been promised some text that will have much the same terminology, and I am to endeavor to make sure my translation is consistent with it. We'll see.

Cheers...