Начните теперь!

Via a colleague who has a sharp eye for sites that have drunk the machine-translation Kool Aid comes a link (NSFW) from, of all places, Playboy. The copy on the linked page - where there is a "Start Now!" button (from which I nicked the subject line of this post) - boggles the mind, at least if you translate to or from the language or your native tongue is Russian.

The machine-translated Russian text has not undergone the slightest bit of polishing - not that it would help, as nothing short of a complete rewrite will salvage it.

The Playboy organization must be experiencing bad times, indeed, if they can't afford to pay someone who can find their way around a keyboard to translate their advertising copy. (Not that I'm bucking for the job, but even I - with my deplorable skills in composing Russian text - would come up with much better copy!)

Cheers...

Cranking up the pressure...

I am doubtless not the sharpest tack in the box, but eventually even I became aware that there had been some severe weather up toward where my dad lives, so I decided to give him a call a couple of days ago.

There was no answer to my call.

I didn't think much of it at the time, since it was the middle of the afternoon and it was likely he was out shopping.

I called yesterday, at about the same time.

There was no answer.

I chided myself for my goof, because you can set your clock by what my dad is doing on any given day. If he was out yesterday at 3 pm, he'll almost certainly be out today at the same time.

So today, I made sure I called in the morning, at 9:30 am.

No answer.

I called again at 10 am and 10:30 am.

And got the same result both times.

By the second call, I was starting to worry in earnest. What made it worse was not having the phone numbers of my folks' few friends. What made it better was Google's residential phone lookup capability.

It turns out my dad is in the hospital; something about his kidneys. I spoke to his doctor, who filled me in on the details and said my dad's going to be there for a while, past my current planning horizon.

I have some serious thinking to do, but even now, I think my course is clear.

Meanwhile, I need to get ready to go to work, which starts in just over an hour.

Cheers...