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Catching up...
Oct. 2nd, 2009 06:41 pmI got home from my simulation assignment at around 11:30 pm last night. I was tired, and LJ was down, so I shut off my machine and hit the rack for what turned out to be 8 full hours of much-needed shuteye.
Being back in the bowels of the Mission Control Center felt, in some ways, as if I had never left. There was no hesitation jumping back into the flow of interpreting, as it turned out, between the US capcom (a venerable title derived from "capsule communicator," a term used back in the days of the Mercury program) and the Russian glavniy (short for glavniy operator, literally, the "lead operator").
In other ways, it was as if I was a newbie all over again, as attested to by my "escort required" tag, the explanation for which is bureaucratically complex, involving a new and improved background check to supplant the two I've had in the past.
I got a late start this morning, too, due to some errands that took me out and around. Things have changed a lot since last I've been in this area, and it's hard to tell why particular changes have occurred.
Among other noted changes, the Denny's that used to be on NASA Road One between the McDonald's and Space Center Houston is gone, the building up for rent. The Papadeaux seafood restaurant in Kemah is gone, too. Literally. The building has been razed, a casualty of hurricane Ike, though I am told the restaurant has been relocated.
* * * I find it difficult to express myself in a civil manner regarding l'affaire Polansky, mostly because I find it all to easy to slip into coarse and vulgar language when I consider the amoral, elitist, and at the same time stunningly brutish position of Polansky's apologists.
I've heard rationalizations along the lines of "it wasn't really rape" (which leads one to hope the purveyors of this canard simply haven't read the testimony, or if they have, simply lack comprehension skills), as well as "the girl had it coming to her" (a rationalization worthy of slack-jawed, inbred knuckle-draggers).
In the end, though, I find I am not so much concerned about Polansky, for he is in jail on another continent. What worries me are those who consider what he did to be no big deal and what is happening to him now to be unfair and wrong, for such folk are free and walk among us, and our children.
* * * Galina and I have spoken with her sister in Moscow more in the past couple of months, via Skype, than we have over the phone during the previous three decades. Over the past few days, I've encouraged her to go sign up with Facebook, so she could "friend" us and the other family outposts on Facebook, and in particular to the page that Shannon set up with all the pictures of the grandkids.
To aid in the effort, I switched my language setting to Russian (so I could describe what my sister-in-law should look for on her screen as she navigated the site), and when I did so, the following showed up on my profile page:
Having recently read all sorts of buzz about Facebook's "crowdsourced" site translation, this result (which should read "Alex теперь использует Facebook на русском языке") supports my initial reaction, which was to not pay all that much attention to the buzz. Crowdsourcing is okay if you don't mind slow, erratic, inconsistent, and sometimes wrong translations, and as such qualities are not in high demand among my clients, I figure on not losing any sleep over this concept.
Apropos of translation, the current PowerPoint file is a particularly vile exemplar of translator's nightmare, to which I should return if I am to have a prayer of getting the job done on time.
Cheers...
Being back in the bowels of the Mission Control Center felt, in some ways, as if I had never left. There was no hesitation jumping back into the flow of interpreting, as it turned out, between the US capcom (a venerable title derived from "capsule communicator," a term used back in the days of the Mercury program) and the Russian glavniy (short for glavniy operator, literally, the "lead operator").
In other ways, it was as if I was a newbie all over again, as attested to by my "escort required" tag, the explanation for which is bureaucratically complex, involving a new and improved background check to supplant the two I've had in the past.
I got a late start this morning, too, due to some errands that took me out and around. Things have changed a lot since last I've been in this area, and it's hard to tell why particular changes have occurred.
Among other noted changes, the Denny's that used to be on NASA Road One between the McDonald's and Space Center Houston is gone, the building up for rent. The Papadeaux seafood restaurant in Kemah is gone, too. Literally. The building has been razed, a casualty of hurricane Ike, though I am told the restaurant has been relocated.
I've heard rationalizations along the lines of "it wasn't really rape" (which leads one to hope the purveyors of this canard simply haven't read the testimony, or if they have, simply lack comprehension skills), as well as "the girl had it coming to her" (a rationalization worthy of slack-jawed, inbred knuckle-draggers).
In the end, though, I find I am not so much concerned about Polansky, for he is in jail on another continent. What worries me are those who consider what he did to be no big deal and what is happening to him now to be unfair and wrong, for such folk are free and walk among us, and our children.
To aid in the effort, I switched my language setting to Russian (so I could describe what my sister-in-law should look for on her screen as she navigated the site), and when I did so, the following showed up on my profile page:
Having recently read all sorts of buzz about Facebook's "crowdsourced" site translation, this result (which should read "Alex теперь использует Facebook на русском языке") supports my initial reaction, which was to not pay all that much attention to the buzz. Crowdsourcing is okay if you don't mind slow, erratic, inconsistent, and sometimes wrong translations, and as such qualities are not in high demand among my clients, I figure on not losing any sleep over this concept.
Apropos of translation, the current PowerPoint file is a particularly vile exemplar of translator's nightmare, to which I should return if I am to have a prayer of getting the job done on time.
Cheers...
