I do not need this right now...

Microsoft Word just informed me that my disk is full. This is the first time I've seen that message in years.

Unfortunately, strange as it is to say, I have about 10 GB of free space on the disk, according to Explorer. I also have nearly a gig of free space on my thumb drive, which Word also says is full. (The file I'm working with, BTW, weighs in at about a half-megabyte.)

I had no choice but to exit the file "without saving it."

I think I will reboot the machine.

Cheers...

UPDATE: Whatever was the problem is no longer around. Upon reopening the file, I note that I apparently made quite a bit of progress since my previous save, based on where my work stops in the "most previously recent" version of the file! I cannot describe how thrilled I am to have lost that effort (well, not all of it... just the formatting part, which is what took most of the time in the first place). Ye gods. It is important to keep in mind that I wouldn't be so sensitive to such incidents if Word wasn't, in the end, so confoundedly useful!

Va-roooooommm!

My current big project weighs in at over 12,000 source words. I had planned to do them all between today and tomorrow, for delivery tomorrow night. That would allow me a day and a fraction to work a smaller project, comprising 4,000 source words, which is due to a new client on Tuesday. With the deks thus cleared, I'd be ready to fly to New York to visit my dad on Wednesday.

The translation memory I worked on developing from old source and target files at odd times over the past couple of weeks paid off today, allowing me to translate over 10,000 source words today. (I might well have finished the job, but for the incident of the file that could not be saved, but that's spilt milk and best forgotten.)

I think I will take the rest of the evening "off."

* * *A few days ago, LJ friend daphnis pointed out that, besides initiatives to regulate iPod use while crossing streets and to outlaw the spanking of young children, politicians in one jurisdiction (and I'm aware now of several) want to mandate having 11- and 12-year old girls innoculated with the HPV anti-viral Gardasil as a condition of being allowed to enter middle school.

It just so happens I caught an ad televised earlier this evening about Gardasil, and if someone tried to tell me that I had to get my daughter injected with that stuff, I'd have a fairly rude response, especially given the fact that most of the ad seemed to consist of lawyer-inspired weasel words that, in addition to exacerbating the misery of listening to advertising, didn't quite inspire high levels of confidence in the efficacy of the substance.

It seems the only opposition to such plans - or at least the only opposition that gets any news coverage - comes from a certain segment of the right wing that is aghast at the prospect of any measure that could be interpreted as encouraging - horror of horrors! - premarital sex among teens.

Presumably, if the drug prevented cervical cancer but somehow encouraged young girls to be abstinent, the roles of proponent and opponent would be reversed. In the end, however, aside from some small smattering of libertarian types, nobody today is much interested in arguing whether or not it's right to force medicine down people's throats. The issue at hand is: what medicine shall we force?

One of these days, of course, the plot line of several science fiction stories will come to pass: Some incredibly compelling drug is going to have side effects that, unlike Thalidomide (which resulted in deformed babies in fairly short order), will turn out to have serious consequences years down the line, at which point everyone involved will turn out to be pure of heart, if not of pocketbook.

Such ideas should be opposed on principle, or if adopted, then adopted on the basis of overwhelming and proven benefit, and not the vagaries of the next election.

Cheers...