Whacked schedule...

I stopped by the AMC theater on the way home yesterday and picked up my wallet. Everything but the cash was in there, but considering I only had about $10 to lose, I'm not complaining all that much.

I eventually arrived home at a little after 10. Lee and Dwayne had gone off somewhere to play D&D. I sat down with a couple of beers and watched L.A. Confidential, and got to sleep fairly late (around 1:30 am).

* * *My Magellan 310 GPS unit seems to be on the fritz. It cannot seem to lock onto more than 1 or 2 birds at a time. I don't know if this is a consequence of being indoors (it never made a difference before), or whether something has actually happened to the unit. Heck of a thing to have happen right after buying a $30 interface cable for it.

* * *I got a really confusing e-mail from my client about today's sim activities (or lack thereof). It seems that the sim schedule is heavily dependent upon both Endeavour's landing and where it lands. The bottom line today is this: today's sim (and thus, today's work) is cancelled. The client is trying to schedule something for me for the afternoon, so the day is not a complete waste.

Ah, well. It's not as if I couldn't use a day off and go do a bunch of stuff that needs doing. OTOH, the e-mail also indicates a possibility of scrubbing tomorrow's sims as well.

(I just heard that a landing today has been definitely cancelled. According to the e-mail I got, that means the sim is back on for today. A call to the client reveals that the e-mail is obsolete; the sim is still off. They'll call me on my cell if any status changes, or if a work opportunity crops up. Ye gods.)

In any event, it might make sense for me to start on a document I had received last Friday (60+ pages, 20,000 or so words), the deadline for which is a cool three weeks away.

Gotta run and get ready for the day. Although I've been up since roughly 8 am, I've not done a thing in the "morning ablutions" department, preferring instead to catch up on mail and Web stuff. My bad.

Cheers...

In the Beginning, there was the Word...

...and then the Word was changed.

The sim, which had been cancelled because of the possibility of a Shuttle landing today, and which was back on because of today's wave-off, but then cancelled nonetheless, is now un-cancelled, so it's back on.

I better get dressed and show up to work before they change their minds again.

Cheers...

The Muse strikes when she strikes...

In my particular case, the blow fell while I was listening to U.S. flight controllers natter on and on about GNC MDMs, as I sat ready to interpret for Sergei G. in his communications with the capcom.

Things got a little slow, so I started reading some files on my laptop. Among them is a collection of poems by Lermontov, and this was the result:

* * *

Расстались мы, но твой портрет
Я на груди моей храню:
Как бледный призрак лучших лет,
Он душу радует мою.

И новым преданный страстям,
Я разлюбить его не мог:
Так храм оставленный - все храм,
Кумир поверженный - все бог!

(М.Ю. Лермонтов, 1827)

We parted ways. Your portrait, though,
I keep close by, upon my breast,
A pallid ghost of better years,
It fills my soul with joy confess'd.

Despite new passions in my life,
My love for it I could not kill:
Forsaken temples yet are temples,
And idols fallen, deities still!

(AlexPGP, 2002)

Cheers...

UPDATE OF 12/22/2011 (!):

I posted the translation elsewhere nine years ago, on 12/22/02. Three days later, the following comment appeared:

Just few of us have read your work...
I hope you hold no grudge.
Yet it would take a crazy dork
To think one's good enough to judge
A pen that keen, a skill that fine...
So I would better toe the line.

FWIW.