What a difference some sleep makes!

Unlike previous nights, where staying awake was a constant struggle, tonight (with the exception of a couple of yawns made just as I was thinking about how yawn-free the night/morning has been) has been struggle-free.

I've been putting a new TM program through its paces. It's called Wordfast and it operates much the same way as does TRADOS, but at about 1/4 the price. Then again, there are some operating quirks with the Wordfast product that prevent me from becoming a rabid fan, though in general, the software seems to work well enough.

One of my duries in my assignment here at the MSR is to translate a daily report from the Russian side. The report details the status of the Russian segment and repeats about 95% of the previous day's content. As such, it is an ideal candidate for a translation memory product. My primary gripe with Wordfast has to do with the way the package finds translated segments, at least in this document.

For example, there is an entry that reads "КОБ1", which should be translated as "SM Internal Thermal Loop 1 (КОБ1)." Despite having such a formulation in its translation memory database, Wordfast takes as its model for this segment an earlier segment ("H20", which renders as "H2O", resulting in a rendering of "КОБ1" for "КОБ1"). I have yet to figure out how to whip Wordfast into shape in this regard. There is a feature (or, rather, a set of features) called "Pandora's Box" by the developer, which enables and disables various advanced features of the software, and I'm really going to have to get down and study how they work. What I need may be hiding in the corners.

Olga F. is being certified over at the space-to-ground area as I write this, and I'm on the hook officially to be here until 9 am. I haven't checked my assignment, but I believe I have one more night of this (from 11 pm today until 9 am Saturday), after which my next work time will start at 12:01 am on Monday, doing space-to-ground.

This raises an interesting issue: Now that I seem to have (finally!) gotten into the proper sleep cycle to be working these crazy hours, just what the heck am I going to do (literally) on Saturday night? And Sunday morning? I'm thinking I should pull an all-nighter just for the heck of it (and to stay in the cycle), but that's simply unnatural.

We'll see.

Cheers...

Better-Late-Than-Never Dep't.

I got off the phone an hour or so ago with the end client (ILS) for the Baikonur gig, and was told that both the U.S. and Russian teams working on the campaign were suitably impressed with my professionalism, etc.

(Blush.)

I mean, I knew I did a good job, but still... it's nice to hear it from the client.

Here, by the way, is the photo of me sitting in the left-hand seat of the Antonov, up on the flight deck:



I've been assigned to work cubicles that were smaller than the work stations on that flight deck.

Cheers...