An evening at Feht's...

Yesterday went well, despite some residual morning depression about Sasha. I found myself going out to her resting place, and starting to think about what I should have or could have done to have prevented her early demise. But in the end, it all comes down to the old saw: "If frogs had wings, they wouldn't bust their bottoms when they hop." Despite the fact that - who knows? - I might have been able to do something, I know enough not to beat myself up about it. Life is tough enough as it is.

In any event, I got a reasonable chunk of work done yesterday, and then got ready to go to Feht's. While Galina went by to pick up Olga from where she's staying in Vista, I got a bottle of Colorado port and a watermelon ready for the trek. Ultimately, we got to Feht's about five minutes shy of the appointed hour, which is not bad by Pagosa standards.

The food, drink, and fellowship were - as usual - great, although I'm afraid that between me and Galina and Feht and his wife Maria, we probably offered way too much advice to Olga with regard to her career plans to become a translator/interpreter. After dinner, we talked about everything and anything (to the accompaniment of the aforementioned port), and we finally tore ourselves away at about 10:30 pm.

So far today, I've sent off the item due to the editor today. Next on the list, I've got more translation, as well finalizing the articles that I look upon as the "front end" of the 60K job.

Cheers...

A test...

I was working with my Wiki site the other day, and experienced the following strangeness: I'd enter text in Russian (actually, I'd paste it in an HTML field), and then, upon saving the result, I'd get a set of mostly vowels with diacritical marks (character values 129 and up, ISO-8859-1, if memory serves).

(Recall I have had the same problem with LJ when posting Cyrillic using Semagic 1.2.1.1.)

I tried to document what I did, and in doing so, I pasted some ISO-8859-1 characters (obtained by running ClipConvert, which does things to your Windows clipboard to change Unicode to single-byte chars) into the page.

Suddenly, the Cyrillic Unicode started displaying properly, as did the ISO-8859-1 characters.

I just tried the same trick in Semagic, but it doesn't work. It turns out the text I input/paste already consists of 8-bit characters. Go figure.

Ah, well, it's still a puzzle.

Cheers...

Where has the day gone?

Well, work pretty much grabbed the lion's share of time today, though I did take some time off this morning to do some shopping (there was not a proverbial crust of bread in the house, so I snuck out at 7 am to visit the City Market... which is an unfortunate name, if you think about it).

Moreover, I took the time to cook some borshch, and this batch was pronounced good by Galina (I think it's pretty good, myself, considering I've had three bowls today).

I upgraded TRADOS on the VAIO and am getting the same problem that I had when I installed the previous version. I've forgotten what I did to make the software work the first time, so I've got a support request in already. I'm finding it more convenient to use the VAIO for work and the desktop machine for reference, mostly because of the sharpness of the VAIO's screen. The larger monitor for my desktop is not helping much, as the unit is old and the sharpness just isn't there (of course, I suppose I could ask around about adjusting it...).

Among the items I bought this morning was chocolate-raspberry creamer (it was on sale, so I got the French vanilla for Galina and this stuff for me). It's really nice, but it completely overpowers the tast of whatever it is you're drinking (Postum, in my case, which usually has a distinctive flavor, but not when mixed with this creamer).

There was an all-too-brief rain shower this afternoon... I smelled it through the open window rather than heard or saw it. It took me a little while to place the sensation... it was odd, but not alarming, and I actually had to look out a window to confirm my suspicions.

What do I have on my translation plate for the week?

If I boogie, I can finish the last part of 60K and then check the whole thing in 3-4 days. I also have a short item that'll probably take less than a day that's due Wednesday. I'll be sending off three of the five short articles that belong to 60K either later tonight or tomorrow (I'm looking out at the fading light and thinking of going for a walk before it gets dark), and I need to send the other two sometime during the week.

And then there is that magic word: invoices.

So, let me see if I can get a short walk in before it gets well and truly dark.

Cheers...