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Harmonica alley!
Don't ask why, but on this, the occasion of my birthday, I've decided I need to take up some musical instrument and have settled on the harmonica. This is probably some kind of really delayed reaction to my having chosen to play the baritone horn in junior high and high school, a behemoth of a brass instrument outweighed only by the tuba.
At the time I chose the baritone horn -- and I did choose it first on my list of preferred instruments, much to Mr. Horowitz' undoubted joy -- I simply wanted to avoid being one of about a dozen clarinetists or trumpet players in the class. I suppose if I had applied myself to learning something past basic music literacy -- or if I was unnaturally talented -- it wouldn't really have mattered what instrument I chose to play. In the end, I put away the baritone horn at the conclusion of high school and am only reminded of that phase of my life when I run across my old mouthpiece, which now serves as a funnel in the workshop... when I can find it.
And from time to time, I experience both joy and a little ache whenever I see someone sit down and play an instrument the way I sit down at a computer keyboard and start typing words. How wonderful it must be to be able to "translate" notes in your head directly into real notes in the air!
My old acquaintance and fellow product manager at Borland, Zack U., started playing the piano from scratch at about the time I left Borland, and he's stuck with it over the years, proving -- as if I ever needed proof -- that it's never too late to learn.
So, it's the harmonica for me!
* * * Dinner was our turkey at the kids' place, where they supplied the veggies, drinks, and the birthday pie (pecan!). I had a fine time, marred only by the fact that I hadn't finished the translation due tomorrow morning by the time it was time to go eat.
* * * The fact of there being only 2600 words to translate today was deceptive, because this part of the manual actually referred a lot to specific labels on equipment, which are repeated in Cyrillic in the target text with a translation appended afterward. (For example, if the Russian says "Отключение сигнала производится командой ОТКЛ 3ВУКА," the translation is written "The signal is turned off with the 'ОТКЛ 3ВУКА' ['SOUND OFF'] command.") It's great for the word count, but murder on speed.
Then there was the issue of figures. Fortunately, only 12 of the 69 figures in the document required translation (although some of them rather a lot of work).
In the middle of all this, throw in having to deal with the editor, who was under the impression he was to see the whole job by the end of the day today, which was something of a distraction (the translation manager had given me until tomorrow morning to deliver), although in the end, I had to figure out a way to make a 23 MB file available from my wiki web site anyway. You see, every email system I tried barfed and died when I tried to send such a large file as an attachment, and even my wiki site would not accept an upload that large directly. (I'm not sure whether it was a size issue or timeout issue.) In the end, I had to ftp the monster by hand and then hand edit some MySQL databases to make the file available from my wiki.
Among other things, I definitely need to send some invoices tomorrow! :^)
Cheers...
At the time I chose the baritone horn -- and I did choose it first on my list of preferred instruments, much to Mr. Horowitz' undoubted joy -- I simply wanted to avoid being one of about a dozen clarinetists or trumpet players in the class. I suppose if I had applied myself to learning something past basic music literacy -- or if I was unnaturally talented -- it wouldn't really have mattered what instrument I chose to play. In the end, I put away the baritone horn at the conclusion of high school and am only reminded of that phase of my life when I run across my old mouthpiece, which now serves as a funnel in the workshop... when I can find it.
And from time to time, I experience both joy and a little ache whenever I see someone sit down and play an instrument the way I sit down at a computer keyboard and start typing words. How wonderful it must be to be able to "translate" notes in your head directly into real notes in the air!
My old acquaintance and fellow product manager at Borland, Zack U., started playing the piano from scratch at about the time I left Borland, and he's stuck with it over the years, proving -- as if I ever needed proof -- that it's never too late to learn.
So, it's the harmonica for me!
Then there was the issue of figures. Fortunately, only 12 of the 69 figures in the document required translation (although some of them rather a lot of work).
In the middle of all this, throw in having to deal with the editor, who was under the impression he was to see the whole job by the end of the day today, which was something of a distraction (the translation manager had given me until tomorrow morning to deliver), although in the end, I had to figure out a way to make a 23 MB file available from my wiki web site anyway. You see, every email system I tried barfed and died when I tried to send such a large file as an attachment, and even my wiki site would not accept an upload that large directly. (I'm not sure whether it was a size issue or timeout issue.) In the end, I had to ftp the monster by hand and then hand edit some MySQL databases to make the file available from my wiki.
Among other things, I definitely need to send some invoices tomorrow! :^)
Cheers...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Shall be spending mine working too, surprisingly enough :)
no subject
Sorry I sort of got lost this weekend in preparing for finals. The clock in the living room has read 7:44 and 23 seconds for the past few days..
Anyway, I'm glad you had a happy birthday! I wish I was there to celebrate it with you. So maybe we can do that a little later, say, in a couple of weeks? :)
Love you!!!