Saying a silent prayer...

I am hugely grateful that quite a bit of the "fine-grained" functionality that I've kludged together—a little bit here, another bit there—over the years appears to be packaged well enough to "travel" (read: "be recovered") in large chunks.

There are my AutoHotKey macros, without which—I realized after reinstalling Office 365—I really cannot function.

There are my emacs macros, without which I cannot really keep track of my work.

There are my MS Word macros, that I use all the farblegargling time.

(The use of the word "really" above is meant to convey the idea that, if push came to shove, I could carry on without the functionality afforded by the AutoHotKey or emacs macros, but the taste of how it now sucks to be me would be quite bitter.)

I keep adding to the list of applications for which I need to go find the install files, but thankfully, the rate at which I keep adding names has dropped quite sharply. I've in fact started a list of applications (notably, Dragon Naturally Speaking) that I will pointedly not be reinstalling, simply because I never use it.

Cheers...

Of birthdays, and such...

Today is Huntur's birthday, and would rightfully be the subject of a quinceanera, had I not just recently learned of the custom through the medium of the movie McFarland, USA, which has a fairly interesting writeup at History vs Hollywood.

I might add that one of the things that drew me to the movie was Kevin Costner's involvement. There was a time—I do not recall when, exactly, or why—I relegated Costner to my "ignore" pile. But over the years, it dawned on me that among the films that I could watch (and, in some cases, watch again) were a number in Costner's filmography: The Untouchables, Field of Dreams, Dances With Wolves. A recent podcast, in which he was interviewed by Tim Ferriss, further solidified my admiration for the actor.

In other news, inter alia, I was made aware that yesterday, my LiveJournal shares a birthday with Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller—a name that probably means absolutely nothing to you, unless you've served in the Marines, and if you're a jarhead, no further explanation is required. I'm not going to get all weepy on the subject, but it caught my attention.

Good progress has been made so far on the work front, but I'm going to have to press on. I lay down on my bed at around 4:30 pm and the next thing I knew, Galina was waking me up from a nice, deep sleep. To be sure, I'd only been "napping" for an hour, but I'm pretty sure I'm good to go to midnight now.

I should go get some dinner.

Cheers...

Client awareness...

The fellow that put me back on the rails for a career in translation back in 1991 recently recommended me to a company that's competing for a contract to translate the standard "huge amounts of work," for which I am most appreciative.

What pleasantly surprised me was the end client's stated intention to make inquiries to make sure that the translators involved in doing the translation samples (which will be used as part of the the award evaluation process) will actually be working on the successful bidder's team.

Reading this in the instructions for the translation samples immediately recalled instances where I was asked to send along a CV and translate sample text, but no work ever materialized.

It reminded me, apropos of my recent effort to track down my old boss from my first engineering job, of this one client meeting that occurred during the time I was a senior engineer—yet not senior enough to have advanced to the exalted title of "Associate Vice President." It was a meeting to which I was not invited, for the purpose of discussing any questions the client might have about our proposal, the technical portion of which I had sweated blood to get just right.

Not having been there, I could not tell you what happened, except for the part where I heard one of the client's representatives say, loudly enough to be heard in the corridor nearby, "Isn't there anyone in your [expletive] organization who will be working on our project that's not an 'Associate Vice President'?"

I kid you not, I hadn't prompted the guy, because I had raised exactly the same point. It was customary to include pages describing the accomplishments of the engineers that were to work on a successful proposal, but there wasn't enough room—I had been told—to include everyone.

It was okay by me; no skin off my nose. Mentally, I merely donned my writer's hat and said "thank you" that the checks they kept giving me kept clearing the bank.

The sample I did today initially left me pretty much speechless, as it was not a particularly complicated text, nor was it particularly arcane. But after I had submitted the final version, it occurred to me that it was very likely an excellent go/no-go kind of test that would do an excellent job of separating those who can and those who can't.

I'll not hold my breath. There is other work on my plate, so I better "turn to" and do it!

Cheers...