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On birthdays...
Dec. 13th, 2001 04:45 pmAs birthdays go, yesterday was no big deal. Then again, nothing will ever beat the scheme that Galina dreamed up in... was it 1988? It must have been... I never suspected a thing, and have never been able to repay the, um, favor.
The best thing I got for my birthday yesterday, faithful reader, was a bunch of good wishes from a number of LJers, outdone only by the wishes I got from my family and RL friends. There is a rumor that Feht left something for me at the store on his way out of town, headed for Guadeloupe. I suspect it might be a book by his current rave, Jack Vance.
* * * I'm going crazy these days doing the postal report. It seems that not a day can go by without someone doing Something Bad. Normally, I have a very forgiving attitude toward mistakes, but the people I report to (the gummint, no matter what anyone says about the USPS being private), well, ain't.
Nothing I can do about it, though, in retrospect. OTOH, I refuse to sit and supervise every little thing everyone does. That's not what I expect from people who work at the store.
* * * It turned out my efforts to deliver files on time were thwarted by the network gremlins. Yesterday morning's file never made it to my client's mail server because of some virus, and this morning's attempt to send files never made it (at least, not until after 8:30 am) because the machines that are supposed to provide Domain Name Service were off contemplating the square root of Seattle, or something, but not resolving names into IP addresses.
* * * Yesterday's efforts with the Toshiba were for naught, as the poor thing only has 16 MB of RAM, and the DSL software needs Much More Than That. So, I'm currently doodling with an old Dell (Pentium-133 system, 48 MB memory) to see if that machine will work.
In the meantime, I managed to hit eBay just in time to find a LinkSys 4-port DSL router that was going, going, gone within 30 minutes. I've since won the auction and paid for the thing, and since it's coming here from Maine, I expect the UPS guy will deliver it sometime late next week.
* * * I accepted the 170-page nuclear job that's due January 4. It turns out there are a lot of graphics on the pages (which might be a pain to deal with, translation-wise), but it should be pretty doable. I also just got a call from a New Mexico client who has a few short items that I think I can squeeze in.
If things were like this all the time, I'd seriously give some thought to taking on a translation employee. As it is, I'm playing around with the idea of offering an internship this coming summer, except I can't guarantee much past room, board, and a realistic glimpse of the freelancer's life to the lucky intern. I can't imagine any newcomer to the field just busting a gut for a chance to hang out with a veteran like me... then again...
* * * It must have been 1998 that I picked up a VideoCD version of "The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin," a 1994 movie filmed in then-Czechoslovakia on the basis of Vladimir Voinovich's story of the same title (in Russian: Жизнь и необычайные приключения солдата Ивана Чонкина).
I remember reading the story (in translation, I'm sure), but have forgotten much of it in the meantime. In any event, it turns out our DVD player will (more or less) play VideoCDs as well. I watched the first part of the movie until my eyes began to hurt and I left Galina to finish watching the film.
In brief, the story concerns, as the title suggests, the fate of one Ivan Chonkin, a private in the Soviet Army in the days just prior to World War II. He is considered by all to be a pretty dumb fellow, and is assigned the task of guarding an airplane that had made an emergency landing in a field near a village called Krasnyi.
It's hard to tell, exactly, why the film is funny. I, frankly, understood little of the dialog because (a) the sound track was a bit flaky, and (b) there was a lot of jargon - I think - being spoken. Galina, too, could not understand all of it. Some parts are funny because of the way people speak:
"Do you have a phone?"
"Do you want to drink?"
"No. I want a phone!"
"Well, then. To speak on our phone, you need a couple of belts in you to be able to make out what's being said."
Other parts are "funny" in the sense of a political satire:
"The people gathered to hear the news."
"What do you mean they 'gathered'?"
"Well, when they heard the war had started, they came running..."
"People cannot be allowed to gather on their own... that shows a lack of Party leadership!"
Anyway... it's nearly 5 and I have done very little in terms of work for the day (unless you count that miserable postal report).
Cheers...
P.S. Sasha had a bad day...
The best thing I got for my birthday yesterday, faithful reader, was a bunch of good wishes from a number of LJers, outdone only by the wishes I got from my family and RL friends. There is a rumor that Feht left something for me at the store on his way out of town, headed for Guadeloupe. I suspect it might be a book by his current rave, Jack Vance.
Nothing I can do about it, though, in retrospect. OTOH, I refuse to sit and supervise every little thing everyone does. That's not what I expect from people who work at the store.
In the meantime, I managed to hit eBay just in time to find a LinkSys 4-port DSL router that was going, going, gone within 30 minutes. I've since won the auction and paid for the thing, and since it's coming here from Maine, I expect the UPS guy will deliver it sometime late next week.
If things were like this all the time, I'd seriously give some thought to taking on a translation employee. As it is, I'm playing around with the idea of offering an internship this coming summer, except I can't guarantee much past room, board, and a realistic glimpse of the freelancer's life to the lucky intern. I can't imagine any newcomer to the field just busting a gut for a chance to hang out with a veteran like me... then again...
I remember reading the story (in translation, I'm sure), but have forgotten much of it in the meantime. In any event, it turns out our DVD player will (more or less) play VideoCDs as well. I watched the first part of the movie until my eyes began to hurt and I left Galina to finish watching the film.
In brief, the story concerns, as the title suggests, the fate of one Ivan Chonkin, a private in the Soviet Army in the days just prior to World War II. He is considered by all to be a pretty dumb fellow, and is assigned the task of guarding an airplane that had made an emergency landing in a field near a village called Krasnyi.
It's hard to tell, exactly, why the film is funny. I, frankly, understood little of the dialog because (a) the sound track was a bit flaky, and (b) there was a lot of jargon - I think - being spoken. Galina, too, could not understand all of it. Some parts are funny because of the way people speak:
"Do you have a phone?"
"Do you want to drink?"
"No. I want a phone!"
"Well, then. To speak on our phone, you need a couple of belts in you to be able to make out what's being said."
Other parts are "funny" in the sense of a political satire:
"The people gathered to hear the news."
"What do you mean they 'gathered'?"
"Well, when they heard the war had started, they came running..."
"People cannot be allowed to gather on their own... that shows a lack of Party leadership!"
Anyway... it's nearly 5 and I have done very little in terms of work for the day (unless you count that miserable postal report).
Cheers...
P.S. Sasha had a bad day...
