...can't trust that day!

I am just about halfway through a truly mind-numbing edit that's due tomorrow, and following some kind of self-destructive path, I've accepted and edited a short item for another client and revised a translation done over the weekend for a direct client; in short: done almost anything to avoid progressing too much further - I mean look at me... even resorting to a LiveJournal post!

Oh, it's pathetic! (Just kidding... sorta.)

Anyway, I do have until tomorrow afternoon to finish this item, and to be sure, the translation is not bad, but the document is one of those 10-MB Word files festooned with noneditable graphics, where booby traps lurk for the unwary editor. When I tried cutting and pasting one of the graphics, Word became non-responsive. When later I tried adjusting the indentation on this one paragraph, wham!... my page margins went straight to hell. When I later tried deleting excess space between paragraphs, the autonumbering in the paragraph below the cursor disappeared, only to reappear if I entered a space before the start of the text.

I am beginning to understand why the translator left so many formatting "uglies" in the text: I'm finding that, if you touch any of them, things get uglier.

* * *Getting that ThinkPad up and running is not as easy as I thought it would be. Having finished installing Windows 3.1 on the beast, I ended up with a machine that still booted Linux (solved by booting DOS and executing 'fdisk /mbr' to smooth out the master boot record), except that - as it turns out - there was no operating system to boot (i.e., DOS had not been installed when I installed Windows). And the other set of install disks I own (MS-DOS 5.0 + Windows 3.1) is an upgrade set that wants to see something already on the hard drive.

I eventually got to the point where things were looking up, except for DOS wanting to "max out" my disk size at 32 MB (16 cylinders on a 524-cylinder disk), at which point I'm thinking maybe I'll create a C: and D: drive (taking care of 32 cylinders) and then let some amall Linux distro get the rest. (Or maybe I'm trying to go back too far with Windows 3.1; perhaps I should install Windows 95?)

(Heck, this little episode probably took longer to explain than actually do.)

It's getting late, though there is still daylight coming in my window, and there really isn't anything to eat,... actually, yes, there is. When I stopped by the health food store today to replenish my supply of ubiquinone (aka coenzyme Q₁₀) I picked up some frozen elk steak medallions! Time for dinner!

Cheers...

Dinner and an episode...

Dinner was scrumptious, and as there was nobody around to share it with (except the cat, which got a portion), I took the meal into the bedroom and played a prerecorded episode (via BBC America) of The Avengers.

Few people are aware that The Avengers had been meant from the beginning as some kind of collossal joke, a bunch of stories that were being played for laughs. Instead, the show became immensely popular, and while a number of the plots were a little on the "far out" side, still, people took it as fairly serious storytelling, and the show survived for something like eight or nine seasons (and three female sidekicks to dapper John Wickham Gascone Berresford Steed, played by Patrick Macnee). Probably the most popular of these skilled, sexy, and subordinate ladies was Emma Peel (played by Diana Rigg), who succeeded a character that had departed the series because in real life, the actress (Honor Blackman) quit the show - as I understand it - to pursue bigger and better things as a Bond girl named, er, Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.

I only vaguely remember watching the program (as I was a young tad at the time), and only did so on the rare occasion when its telecast and my being in my grandmother's care at her apartment occurred at the same time.

Anyway, one of the things I've noticed these days while watching old BBC favorites such as The Prisoner, Secret Agent, and The Saint - not that I watch a lot of episodes - is the amazing job they did in those days of pulling off the "magic of moving pictures" on a really short shoestring. For example, in watching a couple of episodes of The Saint, one right after the other, I was struck by the fact that street scenes supposedly in different countries were shot on the same set (with some rearrangement, of course). The same kinds of low-budget tricks were pulled on Secret Agent as well.

Anyway, after dinner and the rest of an episode titled Death's Door (unlikely plot involving dart guns, hypnotism, and premonitions), I went back downstairs and struggled to within 30 pages of the end of the editing job. I should be able to finish that off tomorrow in good time.

Cheers...