Fuming Friday...

I had considered not going to the amateur radio breakfast this morning, especially since I still had to translate a PDF of a file that had been filled in by hand, but I got up early and managed to get 80% of the document finished by the time it was time to consider getting ready to go, so I went.

The whole point of this post—the mentality behind delaying the completion of documents in time for them to be translated, i.e., how a presentation deadline of the 10th will aid in missing a get-it-into-translation deadline of the 6th—just went away, as I have just been informed by email that an expected glut of work has evaporated. Again.

And there's still no news from Limbo (I am given to understand that's a small town in Virginia, somewhere).

I shall keep calm and carry on, and endeavor to do it better than some other folks I know. There is an opportunity here. I just have to look for it and recognize it.

Cheers...

End of day...

This morning, I indirectly mentioned how the translation phase of a project often gets "squeezed" when people fail to meet milestones in advance of some can't-put-it-off event. My "favorite" horror story in this regard involved materials developed to support John Blaha's flight aboard the Mir station back in '97.

I recall there being a hard-wired deadline of April 30 of that year for the completion (including the translation) of something like 600 pages of material in preparation for Blaha's mission. The initial delivery schedule was predicated on an intense, but doable translation effort. I seem to recall the job would cover about two weeks and would involve a team of translators and editors. No problem.

Then the people originating the material found they needed more time, and their delivery schedule began to slip. A few days here, a weekend there, then another few days, and so on.

But management still expected the final translated product to be delivered by April 30.

In the end, the document originators finally delivered their material on April 28, and despite numerous communications/entreaties/hints/calls for panic/etc. that had taken place as the delivery schedule slipped, management was dumbfounded as to why the final product could not be ready by April 30.

In the end, of course, the translation was not ready by April 30, and I'll let you guess where people tried to pin the blame. (Key word in previous sentence: tried.)

I suspect the underlying cause of this phenomenon is indirectly related to why so many people find themselves driving to the post office at 11:45 pm on April 15.

A fairly sizeable job did come in just short of noon, and I managed to send it off about 90 minutes or so ago. All 6,600 words of it.

Limbo is still limbo, but from all indications, I'd have much better odds drawing to an inside straight.

In the end, it was a good day.

They all are. You just can't let yourself be sidetracked.

Cheers...