I hate sending email like this...

My most recent missive to my project manager:

I got up early again today to work on the files, but only got as far as slide 40. I plan to send what I have from a Kinko's that's about 20 minutes away from here, which will kill more than an hour overall, as much of my work thus far is in PowerPoint, which ought to be good news for the (poor) editor.

Whoever/whatever created the file ought not be allowed near a computer. There are slides that contain sentences where each individual word is in its own text box. It's inhuman.

The bad news is I can only work until about noon on this assignment, then I have to go on to what I'm here in New York for, and then I can only continue to work for an hour or two in the late evening.

I plan to work exclusively in Word today, in whatever time I have left (it's 9:18 am, and I can't start for the Kinko's until about 9:30, which mean's the earliest I'll be back is 10:30, which leaves little time for work... you get the picture). I estimate that I'll be lucky to get to slide 60 by tomorrow morning, and when and if I do get to slide 81, I'm sure it'll be after your COB tomorrow (and I think I'm being wildly optimistic).

One idea I am playing with is to not do anything at all with the slides and translate only what can be seen on a fully developed animated slide (I have been taking the slides apart to look at the layers beneath and translate the text there... I mean, that's the right thing to do if the client wants a useful translation). There's a part of me that says it serves 'em right for foisting such a rotten file on us, but another that keeps taking the slides apart.

In any event, please be informed that I believe it is not possible for me to meet your deadline, given the changed nature of the assignment.

You read that right: There are sentences where every word - every quotation mark and hyphen - is somehow in its own text box. No normal person would ever do that, methinks.

Cheers...

It's turning out to be one of those weeks...

I gave my dad the idea of using an air ambulance to transport my mom to Colorado, and it stuck. Despite the expense, he seems to think it's the best way to move her, and although I think the cost is exhorbitant, the flight will do the trick. Too, it's their money.

To carry this off successfully, I'll have to get a briefing on what all is required to take care of my mom at the nursing home today, and then once we get to Pagosa, I'll have to figure on hiring someone to take care of her, assuming my dad doesn't go with the idea of placing her in a nursing home that's not far from our place.

Theoretically, I'm supposed to find out about an assignment in Houston this morning, but if I'm going to be dealing with my mom, I won't be able to travel quite so immediately.

I'm at the Kinko's again, and if I was complaining before about the slowness of the download speed the other day, I should really rail about the upload speed, which peaks at 8 KB/s from time to time, but stays pretty steady around 5-6. I am about a quarter through a 36-MB upload as I write these words. I should probably finish the post and see about trying to get some more work done while FileZilla finishes the job in the background.

I just hope PowerPoint doesn't bring my system to its knees.

Cheers...