Day 586

Dash did a lot better on his first solo trip to the dog park than I thought he would. He whined a bit, but was really no worse than he usually is. Probably I just couldn't hear him as easily, since my car is a lot noisier than Janet's. It's surprising how many people know these dogs. All weekend, Dash and I would run into people who would stop us and ask where Dot was. Even at the dog park, where few people know us at all, someone inquired about Dot.

It was so hot this weekend that I worried my car would break down and leave Dash and I stranded. Being stranded on the side of the road in 100 degree weather with a dog in your car is not a good thing. My car was just fine this weekend, but unfortunately Janet's car did break down. As soon as she and Dot returned from Houston this evening, Janet turned around and went to the grocery store. About two hours later, I got a call that she was stranded in the grocery store parking lot. I made one trip to retrieve the groceries before they spoiled, and then I made another trip to follow the tow truck up to the Land Rover dealer. At least her car is still under warranty. The warning light in the dash said something was wrong with the transmission and that sounds expensive.

I practiced translating a few pages of the German technical manual this afternoon to see if I still remembered enough to make it worthwhile to even bid on the job. Surprisingly, everything came back to me quicker than I thought. I can do this! I've done work for this company before and I still remembered a lot of the technology involved. That definitely helps. I'll call the guys tomorrow and give them a bid. The only question now is whether translation jobs still pay anything anymore. Back when I used to do a lot of this stuff, these type of jobs paid quite well. I suspect that things have changed however. Machine translation has come a long way. Now, anyone with a browser can get a rough translation in virtually any language with a few mouse clicks. I'm fairly impressed with Google's translation tools. They're much more sophisticated than the old Babelfish website. Maybe there's still a need for what I do though. We'll see.

I've got something to do out of the office every day next week. It's nice to be busy, but I'm getting real close to being too busy. I'm hanging in there the best I can. Hopefully, I won't have any more website revisions until I get caught up with everything else.

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