Time flies...

...with a stopwatch!

Just kidding (although sentences like that generally hoist machine translation programs on their own petard).

(I wonder when MT publishers will catch onto what programming language compiler-writers have been doing for years: embedding code in their products to "recognize" specific benchmark input and thus generate "super-optimized" output?)

Anyway, what I meant to say was: "Time flies when you sleep for most of the day."

The ham breakfast this morning was nice, but I felt a bit sleepy after only 6 hours of shuteye. Fred H. and Doug H. (no relation) are apparently getting ready to go on road trips, and Jack M. will be out of town, too, so it looks like it'll be a pretty small group next Friday.

I got out of the store fairly early and went home, where I immediately felt an urge to lie down and rest. I don't know if my meds are doing this, or whether this is just one of those things. In any event, I got up and did a few pages of the Monday assignment, but then felt like taking a nap, which I did.

If this continues throught the weekend, I think I'll be talking to the doctor on Monday. On the other hand, who knows? Maybe my system was shocked into somnolescence by the fact that I got home before 11 am?

* * *For some reason, I'd concluded that I would have to do 7 pages today, tomorrrow, and Sunday to get the assignment done, but in actuality, the whole job is 21 pages long, and as of a few moments ago, there are only 8 pages left to translate.

I took a break about half an hour ago to hit the ATA web site and send in a proposal for a presentation at the next conference this November in Phoenix. I couldn't come up with any language-related topics for discussion, so I settled on a discussion of integrating Linux and Open Source software into a freelance translation shop. My proposed abstract:

The popularity of the Linux operating system and Open Source software has grown over the past few years, and many powerful applications (e.g., the Apache web server, the MySQL database system, and the OpenOffice application suite) are now available for little or no cost to a broad audience.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of both Linux and Open Source, provide an expert assessment of hardware requirements, and describe the pros and cons of incorporating this software into a freelance office.

Subjects to be touched upon will include e-mail management with spam blocking, time and project management, and network firewalls.

We'll see what the conference steering committee thinks.

Cheers...