The best laid plans, etc.

So I drive over to the old house this morning with the turkey on the seat next to me and my "road warrior" bag on the floor behind me. I'm figuring I may need the to connect to the 'net to fetch some information about my Blue Cross account, which is a task it is more than adequate for.

Upon arriving at the old house, I get a text, to the effect that there's an urgent letter waiting for translation in my inbox.

Hey, no problem!

I turn on my machine, which proceeds to start upgrading my version of Windows, warning me that not only will this take some time, but that the machine will restart several times during the process.

After about 10 minutes (and about 6% of the way into the process), I forward the email containing the (mercifully short) letter to Galina's account, unlimber Galina's machine, and start translating in Google Docs.

In the course of things, it turns out Galina's machine doesn't have Russian configured as a language I can type in (not surprising, as Galina doesn't use the feature), and I need to be able to type in Russian in order to look up a couple of words to distinguish fine shades of meaning.

The words get looked up, and the translation is completed, but by golly, does Google Docs suck.

Which is probably way more satisfying than stating, "I'm not a very experienced Google Docs user," but there it is.

I finally get to the point where I want to send the document as an email attachment, and Galina's machine does everything but lock up. All sorts of warnings, giving me choices like "End the process" or "Wait for the process to complete."

At this point, I'm about to do a "select all" on the translation, copy it, and then paste it into a new email (which is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, in terms of delivery options), but Google Docs won't even let me do that, at least not to the point where I'm sure I have all the text copied.

At about this point, my machine finally gets to a point where I can use it, so I completely stop messing with Galina's machine and, in about five minues, am able to retype the translation as a proper Word document and send it off to the client.

It may be that Galina's machine is simply underpowered,
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles... oops, no. Wrong context.

Anyway. The job got done. The decks have been clear for a few hours.

Sort of. A journal arrived several days ago, and I haven't even cracked the FedEx envelope.

Let's see what Sant brought...

Cheers...