Two sleep sessions per day again...

I got home this morning -- or yesterday morning to be excruciatingly nitpicky about it -- and soon fell asleep. I probably would have stayed that way, except people kept calling my cell phone. Perhaps the most intriguing call came from a potential client located south of the border, concerning a medium-sized translation that, as it turns out, is still up in the air (nobody knew that at the time). Then I got a call from someone I'd worked with before, asking if I could help out with any part of a 13,000-word rush monster that had to be done and out the door by midnight last night.

Files via e-mail were promised in both cases, but when I rose around 2 pm, I found that the DSL service to the house had degraded very nearly completely, allowing me short windows every few minutes to try to get at my mail and download files. After about 40 minutes of such foolishness, I left the house and drove up and down what I think of "Main Street" around here (518) looking for a place that did wireless, to no avail. Eventually, I managed to get what I needed through the connection in the house, but by that time, my heavy eyelids were telling me I needed more sleep. I lay down again and managed almost 2-1/2 hours of shuteye. I've operated in this mode before, and it would appear to work over the short term, but I notice that I'm falling more deeply asleep today than yesterday, for reasons that still confound me.

It's been a fairly quiet night (most of them are here in the MSR). Whatever it was that was going to expire about one of my accounts here at JSC went and did so, leaving me locked out of the MCC web site. Fortunately, I can still access the network drive I need for translation purposes, but I have a bad feeling about this.

Cheers...

From Starbucks, next to Highway 288...

I slept a solid 3 hours this morning, until Galina popped her head in to say she was going out for a while and that I'd gotten a couple of calls that went unanswered. I don't know if I would have normally gone back to sleep after such an interruption, but the unanswered calls bugged me.

I checked voice mail and found out the job outlined yesterday was on. I got a third call while I was figuring out how to actually get at the files (DSL is out and the quality of the voice line is so bad, the best my 56K modem can do -- when it actually connects -- is not much better than the throughput I got from my first modem, which had an acoustic interface to my Osborne 1).

So here I am at the Starbucks on FM 518 over near Highway 288, jacked in (albeit wirelessly) into the T-Moble network at their usual usurious rate ($0.10 minute, with a one-hour minimum per connection). I've downloaded the files and am trying to deal with email.

Blyech!

* * *While on the ever-fascinating subject of translations, I'll mention that I deferred working on the item due last night at midnight until after I got to the MCC for my shift, arriving about 90 minutes early. This enabled me to knock off the 800 source words for the rush client, gave me some kind of access to the Internet while doing so, and permitted me to avoid the storms that were all but certain to go through the area. (Lines of bad weather have been sweeping past Pearland the past few days, but the angry, twisting red and yellow mass of weather shown on the tube last night clearly indicated that Pearland would not be spared a severe soaking, or worse. Indeed, when the Russians showed up at their appointed time, they were pretty much soaked.)

Break's over... back to taming the email monster!

Cheers...

There's "on" and then there's ON!...

Looking at my previous post from Starbucks, I am amazed at the extent of how easily the mind wanders when fatigued.

Having described the medium-sized job as "on," I neglected to note that the client had indicated a need to wait until we got one last, final okay from the end client's upper management, and that he'd be back to me in a couple of hours.

Now, in my experience, when a potential client spends time talking about a job with you and then, sometime soon after discussing your rate, adds that a final okay is required somewhere, that usually means you've priced yourself out of a job. I didn't get that feeling in speaking with my new potential client, partly because I like the way the fellow sounds on the phone and partly because there was an excellent opportunity to break off discussions earlier.

Well, the final word as of late this afternoon was: "Stand by." So it looks as though I may actually not have to put in a bunch of long hours "tomorrow" (i.e., after finishing the shift) and can focus on my good fortune thus far in life.

* * *A cute bumper sticker seen on the way to work this evening:

Where are we all going?
(And why are we in this handbasket?)

Usually, people like to hit you over the head with bumper sticker wisdom. What I like about this particular one is that it requires a modicum of thought to get the point.

The daily report is ready for translation, so I'm off to do it.

Cheers...