Data point...

In going through stuff here at the house, I feel like what I think an archaeologist might feel like at a dig. Today, I found a folder containing, among other things, a letter I wrote home from Camp Pendleton, California, back when I was stationed there as a Marine and a letter I wrote home from Leningrad, back about 30 years ago, when I was working as a company representative in the USSR.

In the basement, I found a nice wooden box that at one time contained a bottle of Midleton Irish whiskey, which I bought in the duty-free shop at Shannon while the rest of the planeload of my countrymen - who had spent nearly two weeks in the Soviet Union away from such things as ketchup and Coca-Cola - were bellied up to the bar three and four deep in the hopes of wetting their whistles with a taste of home.

I seem to recall the bottle cost me around $100 (that's in 1976 dollars!), and that the old man and I drank it together, and enjoyed it.

I'm also noticing that the box from the basement (currently at my keyboard) carries a date of 1991, which doesn't fit into the timeline of my recollection. So maybe the bottle I bought wasn't Midleton - though knowing the old man, it probably was, as he rarely deviated from the tried and true - but the basic underlying story is real.

I miss them both.

Cheers...

A different kind of stupid...

It occurred to me, earlier today, that the nature of stupdity here in New York is different from other parts of the country.

Take the simple act of realizing that you've been ambling along at some glacially inspired gait down the middle of where cars normally pass in a shopping center parking lot. In Colorado and Texas, people who suddenly realize they've been hogging the asphalt (and flirting with death) generally make a show of getting out of the way. Normal citizens will wave or even call out "Sorry!" as you go by. Those wading in the shallow end of the gene pool will shoot you a dirty look, as if to indicate that you've somehow disturbed the equilibrium of the universe.

But at least they get out of the way.

After 3 weeks in New York, I have accumulated multiple data points to indicate that - absent honking one's horn and/or rolling down one's window for the purpose of hurling epithets - such ambulatory denizens of parking lots will, upon realizing they're blocking traffic, turn back around to face their direction of (slow) motion and continue on as if the universe is unfolding in its natural progression.

Now, it turns out that honking and/or shouting is not the kind of thing I like to do when I'm behind the wheel, but I have noticed that such tactics do get results when others use them. This raises a troubling question: Do local knuckle-dragging pedestrians interpret the lack of aggressive behavior on my part under such circumstances to be some kind of... blessing?

I suppose things could be worse. Feht tells me that in France, such people might, upon realizing the situation they're in, actually slow down, in hopes of being able to take you to court, apparently.

<sigh> It takes all kinds, I guess.

Cheers...

Rusty estimating skills...

Back in the day, learning to estimate word count was part of the basic skill set for folks who got printer's ink under their fingernails in the course of making a living. Heck, for the first half dozen years of my translation career, I got paid on the basis of source word count, which had to be calculated using precisely this skill.

The eye-killing item on the plate for Monday (it had been due today, but I was able to extend the deadline to Monday) cannot be OCRed, but I did estimate the word count for my own nefarious planning purposes.

Yesterday, when I was using OpenOffice for translation, I was finding my estimates to be not all that bad: after three pages, my estimate was starting to lag by a consistent 10%, which is no big deal. Today, after moving the job to MS Word, I find that there's a big, big difference in the way OpenOffice Writer and MS Word do a word count, and to be frank, I prefer Word's method (whatever it may be), because it turns out my estimate is pathetically low (30% at this point).

While this may spell good news for the bank account, it also means that instead of having 7,000 words left for Monday, I am looking at closer to 10,000 words.

This is not going to be one of those loads-of-free-time kinds of weekend. I just hope my eyes don't decide to pop out of my head and choke me.

Cheers...