Checkpoint...

Just short of midnight, I came to a convenient stopping point, with 4000 source words left in the main document. I believe finishing the document tomorrow is eminently possible, so I can hit the sack with a peaceful mind.

A couple of nights ago, I decided to do what I should've done initially with regard to the S video question: check the wiring.

Bingo!

It turned out that, in mating the connector to the plug on Natalie's television, I bent several pins (which must have taken some talent, as there are only four of them!). Fortunately, these are not the delicate pins that one finds, say, in a PCMCIA connector, so I was able to coax them back into position with a set of needle-nosed pliers.

I was able to get the VAIO to display on the television, though at a degraded resolution (800 x 600), and even managed to get the NVIDIA card on Natalie's old Dell to do the same, although in trying to redefine the resolution for the LCD display, I somehow ended up specifying an improper setting, and Windows apparently is happy with the situation (i.e., it doesn't revert back after 15 seconds, as is the case with the VAIO).

I've since moved the LCD screen to my office, to act as a second monitor with my VAIO, by which I mean a second monitor with an "extended" Windows desktop on it. (Said another way, we're not talking about cloning my notebook's LCD display on an external monitor.) This is actually pretty cool, though it pains me to think that one of the earnest young salesmen at Fry's told me some time ago that this kind of hookup was patently impossible, and I believed him.

To be frank, so far I can't say that having my Word file open on my notebook and my dictionary and glossary files open on the monitor that sits to the left of my notebook has made any significant dent in the way I work, but if nothing else, at least it's a change of pace!

I wonder if it'll work with Ubuntu?

Cheers...

Late, but achieved...

Shiloh woke me somewhere in front of 7 am, which was the time my cell phone was set to go off anyway, and after performing our morning ceremonies, I ended up zonking out on the recliner until nearly 10:30 am. I did a little shopping, looking to see if there was any eye wash - the kind of thing that you'd use for a minor case of pink eye - available in the pharmacy section of the local supermarket.

When I mentioned to Natalie - whose eye is irritated - of my grandmother's use of a mild boric acid solution to rinse the eyes, well... her eyes sort of glazed over. Putting acid deliberately in one's eye? Hmmm. In any event, the eye care area was full to nearly overflowing with all sorts of stuff for wearers of contact lenses, and I was about to give up the search when I found what I was looking for. (The principal ingredient? Boric acid!)

I also picked up something called Gas-X, which seems to do a pretty good job of suppressing the kind of gas that has made me uncomfortable in the immediate past.

Natalie did a really good job of putting the new vacuum to work, while I lay down and fell asleep with the blood-pressure cuff still wrapped around my bicep. I woke at a little after 6 pm, with not a single word translated yet for the day.

Though I did not finish the document, I did get to within 800 words or so of the end, which represents a fairly good day's work. I should be able to finish the document tomorrow and send it off with no problems.

In the meantime, it's nearly 11 pm, and despite the fact that my earlier sleep session ought to have been enough to keep me awake for the next few hours, I'll still gamely try to fall asleep within half an hour, so as to be fully rested for tomorrow's sim.

Cheers...