This official schedule should not be used for planning purposes...

Yesterday's gig was supposed to let out at 2:30 pm, which I figured would give me plenty of time to get the HIV test for the visa application, take care of some personal business, have dinner, and put a dent in an outstanding translation assignment,

As it turned out, I put in an 11-1/2 hour day and got nothing else accomplished. The meeting dispersed after the testing office had closed for the day, so upon returning to the room, I partook of some of the goodies Natalie had brought over yesterday, and promptly fell asleep.

The new schedule calls for a more-or-less normal 8-to-4 workday. We'll see.

Cheers...

By the skin of my teeth...

It looked as if today's meeting was on schedule to break up at 4 pm, all the way until about 4;15, when it became clear that there was about a half hour of work left to do to keep to the rather ambitious schedule.

Normally, that merely brings a smile to the interpreter's face, as the pay is by the hour, but I really needed to do the HIV test, so I finagled alternative transportation for my people and managed to hie myself to the medical office I needed to be at, with only minutes to spare as the address I had written down was faulty, and I had been kicking my BlackBerry into and out of "locked keyboard" mode so often that I was unable to dial a number without actually recycling power to the unit via the expedient of removing the battery for a few seconds.

The young woman who drew the blood was either skillful, as she managed to miss all the nerves in my arm, and I felt precisely nothing during the procedure.

Dinner was sushi at the Ichibon near NASA Road One and El Camino. I noticed, as I made the turn, that the Half-Price Bookstore, which had been on the corner for ever since I can remember, was gone. Perhaps it was the vicissitudes of the times, or perhaps it was the loss of traffic due to the construction in the area, I don't know.

So here I am, and it's time to fire up webster and get some translation done.

I love these leisurely assignments.

Cheers...

A nice explanation...

Cory Doctorow, writing on innumeracy and the threat to freedom (at the Guardian):

Our innumeracy means that our fight against these super-rarities is likewise ineffective. Statisticians speak of something called the Paradox of the False Positive. Here's how that works: imagine that you've got a disease that strikes one in a million people, and a test for the disease that's 99% accurate. You administer the test to a million people, and it will be positive for around 10,000 of them – because for every hundred people, it will be wrong once (that's what 99% accurate means). Yet, statistically, we know that there's only one infected person in the entire sample. That means that your "99% accurate" test is wrong 9,999 times out of 10,000!

Nicely presented.

And now, I really must hit the sack.

Cheers...