Dealing with money like it matters...

During our morning coffee, Mike brought up a deal that he had become involved with, involving a customer that wanted some pretty expensive flooring to be shipped to Sweden (talk about sending coals to Newcastle!).

The more he described the deal, the "itchier" I got, until finally I couldn't take it any more and Googled some of the salient points of the transaction, which revealed that the whole thing is... a scam.

In other news, I just sent an email response to a client who now says work originally assigned for noon Friday is due tomorrow morning (at the end client's insistence).

Heck, about half of today is gone, y'know?

So, basically, I withdrew from the assignment. Part of my email reads:

The deadline and range of materials to be handled (30 MB of reference documents, a 12K word source file, a file with "pretranslated segments," a second file with more translated segments) will not allow me, in my opinion, to provide a quality product in the time available.

Seeing as how I've been in a dry spell the past couple of weeks, the conventional wisdom would say "take any and all work," and I did actually make a concession in this job with regard to the percentage of "pretranslated" segments therein (I try to keep them to no more than 10% of the job).

However, if there's one thing chess has taught me, it has been to carefully consider the unconventional, which in this case translates into potentially losing a job if I feel uncomfortable doing it, no matter how much my wallet doth protest.

The client has called (which I sort of expected). Back to work.

Cheers...

UPDATE (10:41 am): The job has been canceled. In the end, I think this is for the best.

Seeking geology...

I stopped by the library again today to browse some more through the Hershey Collection, which comprises pretty much a wall of materials devoted to the Southwest, with emphasis on the Four Corners Region.

Recently, I checked out a book with the intriguing title Advances in San Juan Basin Paleontology (intriguing, because paleontology is not exactly a science in which I would expect advances, but I digress...). The tome goes into some detail about a chunk of real estate that - roughly speaking - subsumes the northwestern quadrant of New Mexico.

Curiously, I'm also finding it a pretty good source for terminology and the manner of its presentation that I often encounter when doing petrochemical translations, but again, I digress...

As fascinating as the tome is, we here in Pagosa live in a substantially and fundamentally different place, geologically, at least according to a CD I found at the library today, devoted to the Geology of Pagosa Country.

It turns out - according to the information on the CD compiled by the Forest Service and BLM - I live about 60 miles from the site of a volcanic eruption that was far larger and more violent than the massive Yellowstone Caldera explosion, which is estimated to have blown about 400 cubic miles (1700 cubic kilometers) of the planet into the atmosphere around 600,000 years ago (and again about 1,200,000 years ago, and which those in the business of hyping hysteria tout as "overdue" to blow again, any day now).

However, according to the USGS, the most destructive volcanic eruption ever (a superlative the Wikipedia article qualifies with the phrase "since the Ordovician," or roughly 400+ million years ago) was the La Garita Caldera, which blew out 1500 cubic miles (6250 cubic kilometers) of rock and ash from, basically, the next county over.

La Garita, though, doesn't merit the same apocalyptic press, as the underlying earth appears to have quieted down.

I am so not complaining.

Cheers...