Monday, July 25, 2011

Day 587

Early this morning, I took Janet up to pick up a loaner car while her car was in the shop and then went and got gas for my own car. My tank was almost empty and I didn't want to wind up stranded as well. By the time I got home again, the dogs were indignant that their morning walk was late. Both dogs are creatures of habit and would like their lives to run like clockwork. They always let me know when I am out of sync or off schedule. I don't know why they were in such a hurry to go outside. It was just as hot as it was yesterday and the day before. They both bounded out of the house like usual, and five minutes later their tongues were hanging out and they were ready to come home again.

I got some positive feedback regarding the translation job I'm bidding on, so I decided to have a positive attitude and go ahead and get started. I usually have to translate several pages of something like this anyway, before I can get a sense of how to bid the job. I translated six or seven pages today and will turn in my bid tomorrow. Translating is more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle than regular writing. The words are already there. You just have to get them to make sense again.

Hanging out on Google+ could easily give you an inferiority complex. The famous people and the pundits get an unbelievable number of comments for saying fairly ordinary things, while everybody else gets ignored. It's still interesting reading though. I'm usually so oblivious to what's going on in silicon valley that it's not hard to impress me with something new. Today, I downloaded and started to use Evernote. This isn't exactly a new application, but I'd never heard of it before. Evernote is actually extremely useful in my line of work and I probably should have started using it several years ago. I also followed a link to a cool site that shows real time traffic information for Dallas and other cites. This one is going to get bookmarked on the iPad right away, since you can see at a glance which roads are congested and should be avoided.

The giant market meltdown that was supposed to happen today if congress didn't reach an agreement on the debt ceiling never materialized. Somehow this didn't surprise me. I take what all the pundits say with a grain of salt these days. Even some of those Internet wizards who pontificate on Google+ are probably wrong.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day