What do people think with?

So it turns out this PowerPoint presentation I'm working on is ginned up in some gawdawful Sunday-go-to-meeting formatting, which means we're talking about white letters on a black background (obviously at the instigation of the toner/ink cartridge lobby), with lots of graphics.

Actually, more graphics than I suspected. (Forty slides, 172 countable words.)

So, I decided not to print the thing out, seeing as how printing out even 20 pages of weak black (assuming I put 2 slides on a page and print in draft mode) is likely to put an unpleasant dent in the wheezingly low level of ink in my Epson's black cartridge.

When I got to slide three, the first "text intensive" slide, it turns out the text is a farblegargling graphic (meaning it's not really editable). In fact, it looks like most of the text in the presentation is embedded in farblegargling graphics (with a few text boxes mixed in), which takes my time estimate for completion and shoots it squarely between the eyes. It means any word lookups (and I do a lot of them, just to stay on the safe side) have to be typed instead of copied. It means having to type and format the text instead of just typing it. And finally, it means I pretty much have to print out the slides so I can see what I am working on.

Thank you Mr. Simonov, for creating such a hideous mess for the translator.

Time to get to it, I guess.

Cheers...

UPDATE (2:17 pm): The reference file helps save the day!

An evening at JJ's...

JJ's is an upscale sort of eatery on the other side of town. How I ended up there twice today is a story in itself.

Feht et ux. came by around 5 pm, stopping by to pick up his check for work done on a project a while back. He then suggested that we go grab a bite to eat; on the way, the venue selected was JJ's. I had a Greek salad while Feht held forth on something that I'd summarize as an effort to devise a science of History and Moral Philosophy, as hinted at in Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

Now, it turns out that Brady (the kids' roommate in their house and an employee at the store) had arranged for something along the lines of a surprise birthday get-together for Drew at JJ's around 7 pm, so there was a fair chance that I'd still be there when the Fehts and I finished dinner. That didn't happen, and rather than have Feht leave me there, I decided the polite thing to do would be to allow him to drive me back to my place. Once there, I ran a quick comb through my hair, changed my jacket, got in the car, and went back to JJ's.

It was a nice soireé, though I didn't know everyone at the table. Huntür was there in a bright yellow dress and exuberantly pretended to read through the menus. I kept things light and ordered a small appetizer, while the rest of the table ordered an interesting assortment of entreés, which looked very impressive when they were served. Friends continued to drop by and join us at the table.

When the evening was through and the check delivered, everyone took a crack at guessing the tab for the evening. Nobody was close and everyone was low. (I said the place was upscale, didn't I?)

Though I didn't have much to eat at either "dinner," the two little meals combined probably jinxed my effort to take it easy today, food-wise.

The PowerPoint presentation is done, leaving me only to check it tomorrow morning. The file was so translator-unfriendly, even the text boxes for the "yes" and "no" branches of decision nodes on the flowcharts were carefully sized to fit, so that after you translated "да" into "yes" you had to additionally resize the box to accommodate the extra character of the string.

I'm going to put that out of my mind right now and go upstairs and relax. According to my satellite tracker, tomorrow is another opportunity to see two ISS passes (the first at 4:55 am; the second at 9:21 pm), and seeing as how the skies finally cleared this afternoon, there's a chance one or both may be visible tomorrow.

Cheers...