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A long, tiring day...
Nov. 27th, 2006 09:11 pmI only wish I had more to show for it.
I got off on the wrong foot by forgetting the USB cable that connects my VAIO to my BlackBerry, which made it impossible to check email during the day, which in and of itself was no big deal. The morning went by slowly, with some familiar faces stopping by to pop their heads in and surprised - pleasantly, I hope - to find me there.
One person who was pleasantly surprised was Evgeny Zhuk, who was head of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center for most of the time that I worked as a full-time employee at JSC. He came in, shook my hand, and we chatted for a bit. He mentioned that he had wondered what had ever happened to the "Lexicon," which was a project that I was heavily involved in, aimed at getting the technical side of the house on both US and Russian sides to sit at a table and iron out the most essential terminology for the benefit of us poor translators. Zhuk said it was the best glossary he'd ever seen, to which I could only reply that I was a free-lancer now, and that I was sure most (if not virtually all) of the terms had survived and become part of later glossary files.
There was a formal briefing given in the afternoon to go over the upcoming Shuttle flight, which technically is probably the most complex in terms of what it's supposed to accomplish of any ISS assembly flight (though the funny thing is, the work has to do mostly with configuration, and not with physically installing additional hardware). I'm not at all sure I was supposed to attend, but everyone in the office I'm supporting went, and since it wasn't clear whether my support would be needed (as it turned out - it wasn't), I went too.
The briefing was quite informative, in the way that only NASA briefings can be. The one word that comes to mind is: overkill. At one point, the speaker asked the Russians whether they wanted to get into the details of some aspect of the mission before or after taking a break, and the Russians - who are normally not inclined to joke much - replied, "How about 'instead of'?"
Lev sent me a rework to do after hours and a fairly sizeable job that's due shortly after Galina and I are scheduled to go on vacation, which in and of itself is no big deal. In fact, it's a blessing, as otherwise that week might remain unproductive. I've finished the after-hours item, but will wait until tomorrow morning to send it in, to let it settle a bit (there was quite a bit of work to do in revisions mode, interspersed with correcting what I felt were poor choices made in the original translation, done with revision marking turned off).
I had a small sandwich this morning with coffee, and then another cup of coffee and a bottle of Sprite 'Zero' during the day, and was on my way to calling it a fast day until I got home and could not help myself. I had quite a bit of low-calorie food - salad and veggies - but the whole idea had been to fast, so I'm a little disappointed in myself. I should not have entered the kitchen.
Anyway, it's time to get off the computer and let Galina have a crack at surfing for a while.
Cheers...
I got off on the wrong foot by forgetting the USB cable that connects my VAIO to my BlackBerry, which made it impossible to check email during the day, which in and of itself was no big deal. The morning went by slowly, with some familiar faces stopping by to pop their heads in and surprised - pleasantly, I hope - to find me there.
One person who was pleasantly surprised was Evgeny Zhuk, who was head of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center for most of the time that I worked as a full-time employee at JSC. He came in, shook my hand, and we chatted for a bit. He mentioned that he had wondered what had ever happened to the "Lexicon," which was a project that I was heavily involved in, aimed at getting the technical side of the house on both US and Russian sides to sit at a table and iron out the most essential terminology for the benefit of us poor translators. Zhuk said it was the best glossary he'd ever seen, to which I could only reply that I was a free-lancer now, and that I was sure most (if not virtually all) of the terms had survived and become part of later glossary files.
There was a formal briefing given in the afternoon to go over the upcoming Shuttle flight, which technically is probably the most complex in terms of what it's supposed to accomplish of any ISS assembly flight (though the funny thing is, the work has to do mostly with configuration, and not with physically installing additional hardware). I'm not at all sure I was supposed to attend, but everyone in the office I'm supporting went, and since it wasn't clear whether my support would be needed (as it turned out - it wasn't), I went too.
The briefing was quite informative, in the way that only NASA briefings can be. The one word that comes to mind is: overkill. At one point, the speaker asked the Russians whether they wanted to get into the details of some aspect of the mission before or after taking a break, and the Russians - who are normally not inclined to joke much - replied, "How about 'instead of'?"
Lev sent me a rework to do after hours and a fairly sizeable job that's due shortly after Galina and I are scheduled to go on vacation, which in and of itself is no big deal. In fact, it's a blessing, as otherwise that week might remain unproductive. I've finished the after-hours item, but will wait until tomorrow morning to send it in, to let it settle a bit (there was quite a bit of work to do in revisions mode, interspersed with correcting what I felt were poor choices made in the original translation, done with revision marking turned off).
I had a small sandwich this morning with coffee, and then another cup of coffee and a bottle of Sprite 'Zero' during the day, and was on my way to calling it a fast day until I got home and could not help myself. I had quite a bit of low-calorie food - salad and veggies - but the whole idea had been to fast, so I'm a little disappointed in myself. I should not have entered the kitchen.
Anyway, it's time to get off the computer and let Galina have a crack at surfing for a while.
Cheers...
