Back from work... back to work!

This morning's sim required me to report at 6:30 am, and it was probably about the quietest simulation I've ever done. I was interpreting for the Flight Director on the U.S. side and the smennyi rukovoditel' poleta (shift flight director, or "ess-err-peh," as he is known) on the Russian side.

I got home a little while ago, after dropping $62 and change into the pockets of the local K-Mart operators, primarily for stuff to chew on for me and Sasha as we go about our lives between bouts of sleep and work.

Between this and that, I managed to do the 1200-word job and send it off a few minutes ago. The actual word count is about 10% higher, but I'll likely not be able to retire on the difference.

Tomorrow's simulation starts at 2 pm and runs until 7 pm, which should give me adequate time to do the 30-file job between tonight and tomorrow (and, if necessary, tomorrow night). I've already done some part of the work, but I feel it's only a small part of what needs to be done.

The major huff with the job is doing what it takes to make sure everything gets done. I've already decided I need to print out all the original documents (yech) and highlight the changes, so I have something to work from when I process the files "for blood," as it were. This, by the way, has to be done by hand, as the changes to the files were apparently made by several people, some of whom knew how to use revision mode in Word, and some of whom... um... didn't. (May they find suitable employment elsewhere... perhaps in the minefield-clearing business, but I digress...)

It's also becoming clear that not all of the changes in the Russian text reflect actual changes to the English text; some merely correct poor original translations from English to Russian. Ah, well...

Time to eat and turn to the task of printing the documents. If I make enough progress in the next few hours, I might reward myself with a gander at my Seven Samurai DVD.

Cheers...

Time to go to sleep...

Reminder to self: given another opportunity to incorporate edits into 30 documents, skip it.

I've finished 19 of the 30 documents due, after having carefully looked at each one to see exactly what needs to be done. (What a concept!)

It turns out that two of these documents each have 4-5 pages of entirely new material. <sarcasm>This makes me inordinately happy, as I was concerned that I might have nothing to do tomorrow prior to the start of the sim.</sarcasm>

Dealing with so many files, it becomes really important to finalize translation decisions early in the game, and then to remember what decisions were made as you wade through the muck. The hazards here are two: you forget what terminology you used before and introduce inconsistency into the files, or you decide that what you wrote earlier is not quite exact, leaving you with the choice of leaving the previous rendering as is (the hands-down choice when you have no idea in what file the previous rendering lies) or changing it. In the former case, you are left with inconsistency and mediocre renderings; in the latter, you are left without sleep because you spent entirely too much time tracking stuff down to modify it.

Talking about sleep, it's time I hit the hay. If I get up around 7 am or so, I'll have about 5 hours or so to finish the bulk of the work before leaving for the sim. Hopefully, I shall have finished it all, as I'm sure I won't be very bright-eyed or bushy-tailed when I come crawling home after the sim.

* * *Stick-with-the-devil-you-know Dep't. Natalie P. came by today with a new employee who didn't seem very happy to be in the MCC, but that's another story. In the course of my conversation with Natalie, I nailed down my next assignment: a full week with the Russian Regional Control Group, on a midnight-to-8-am shift.

The only catch I can see so far is this: my first gig starts midnight Saturday, a scant 7 hours after I complete my Execute Package stint on Friday afternoon. Yech.

On the other hand, the work is fairly stress-free (if you don't count trying to keep awake), and the folks in the RRCG are a good bunch to work with.

And now... I really must go...

Cheers...