Pandemonium

Realizing something was amiss (her address), that considerate woman spammed me today. Again.

Please note that my correct e-mail address is adriana_lesova@hotmail.com

Be careful. :)

P.

PS: Another address for our friend: adriana_lesova@macroconsulting.com

I received the following message this morning:

I am contacting your company because I have been working as a freelance translator for nearly five years and would like to offer my services to additional translation agencies.

I translate from French into English and also provide proofreading and editing services.

Do you require translators to complete an application form? Do you require tests or samples? What range of rates do you typically pay?

Colleagues of mine may also want to offer their services to your agency. What other languages do you require.

Please let me know if you would like to me send my curriculum vitae.

Thank you for your interest.

Best regards,

Adriana Lesova
French - English Freelance Translator
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
E-mail adriana_lesova@videotron.ca

I am used to receiving this type of messages asking for jobs (someone put me right in the middle of a directory, or so it seems), so I’ve answered the following:

Please, do check my web site, right where it says: “I work exclusively into Spanish, my mother tongue“. That means I do not outsource.

Best of luck,

P.
———————–
Pilar T. Bayle
Traductora EN-ES Translator

And then I’ve received the following message from my server:

This is the mail system at host hl20.dinaserver.com.

I’m sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It’s attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The mail system

: host mx.videotron.ca[24.201.245.37] said: 550 5.1.1 unknown or illegal alias: adriana_lesova@videotron.ca (in reply to RCPT TO command)

So I’ve started googling. That «adriana» sends viruses. Please, be careful.

P.

My 17″ TFT screen has just died after 5 long years of dutiful service. Suddenly, it started flashing (now you see, now you don’t) and that’s it!

Fortunately, I received my last computer yesterday. I confess I don’t care about the latest cell phone, or the most advanced photo or video camera, or anything like it, but I die for computers: More or less, when I buy, I always have the latest and most advanced hardware; software is another thing altogether, and I don’t change programs unless the new ones have been properly tested, you can trust them, and they are rid of quirks. For instance, I still use my Office 2000 to its full potential, knowing nothing bad will happen with it.

My new computer has 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and quad processor. Now you have an idea of what I mean, I guess. And with my computer, I also received a beautiful 19″ TFT screen. So I switched screens and I am still working with my old CPU, until I run it away from my desktop this coming weekend.

P.

In Hardware & Software I, I said that I didn’t consider shameful to use professionals for hardware changes, but I also said software was a different thing altogether, and that’s my topic for today.

I am going to talk about a tiny program that may save us from some worries. First things first, I use Outlook 2000 for e-mail (bad program, I know).

Almost all of our work comes through e-mail. In general terms, the years of originals and faxed documents are over (quality used to be disgraceful, so thank God!), but also quiet times are over in the electronic postal world. Nowadays, about 90% of e-mails has iffy purposes: virus transmission, spam, fraud, catalogue girlfriends, pills… And I stop here not to bore you.

Besides the filters my two e-mail servers have (I have two paid accounts, the domain account and one in a good server, just e-mail), I have placed a program in between mail servers and my computer that acts as a filter.

The program connects to mail servers, checks mail, and downloads a part of the message. Nothing is downloaded onto my computer, it’s a “viewer” to see the mail piling up in my mail servers. Since the filters in my domain mail server are not too fine, many useless messages get through. From my viewer, I select spam, add it to my black list, process messages, and just download onto my computer the messages I want.

The program is called MailWasher and you can find it at http://www.firetrust.com/. The trial version is good for 30 days, and no, I don’t earn a commission, it’s just very useful.

P.

I was flabbergasted yesterday by a statement I read in one of my mailing lists that put opening a CPU on a level with opening a pen when we were kids. I don’t know what kind of pens my colleague used, but mine were Bic and went straight to the waste basket when they didn’t work.

Opening a CPU is not difficult, but you need some knowledgeable help in the beginning because a CPU is basically a box with a board where everything is connected, and everything must be connected in a certain way… Here you are an ASUS motherboard (my favorite for their design). Check it out; all slots you need are there, the ones you need for processors, graphic/sound cards, RAM memory… everything. That’s where you connect even additional fans you install in your CPU.

I have said ASUS boards are my favorite because of their design. It is obvious I have seen a few boards and know how they work.

So I don’t think it is a shame to take your CPU for technical service to extend memory, for example. If you have a friend who is into computers and knows how to do this, ask him to call you whenever he is ready to do something. This way you’ll learn the basic facts for hardware maintenance.

But software is another thing altogether. As translators, we work with software every day and we should know how to use it, to update it, to do maintenance, and to extricate ourselves from some of the messes it can cause. This includes getting rid of viruses we may have caught for any reason.

First golden rule: you need to be a little bit smart to avoid viruses. You need to ACTIVATE EXTENSIONS first. Boy, you don’t know what extensions are… They are the three letters or numbers that appear after the period in file names, like .avi, .doc, .mp3, .txt, .xls, .pdf, etc. They are important: they actually tell the computer what program to use to open a specific file. It’s easy to activate them: click My PC, for example, and choose Tools > Folder Options > View. In Advanced Settings, uncheck the option Hide extensions for known file types and check the option Hide protected operating system files. Click Apply to All Folders and then OK to exit the dialog.

This serves two purposes:

1. If you don’t see system files, you’ll be less likely to erase one.
2. If you see extensions, you’ll be less likely to open a virus (safe in the knowledge that Windows default configuration is hiding extensions, many hackers name their files XXX.txt.exe, for example, and you just see XXX.txt and think it is a text file).

More tips another day.

P.

The first commandment in computing has devastating logic: if it works, don’t touch it. Despite its logic and being a common-sense rule, we are always tempted by believing that what we are going to do will improve our quality of life, when in fact it turns our life into sheer hell.

Let me start singing “Mea culpa” (it means, literally, “my fault” in Latin) right now, because I spent 5 hours on Friday trying to revert my PC to its original state, even though in the end it was a little improved. (Yippee!)

For several days already, whenever I booted my PC it would run CHKDSK on the disk partition where I have all my work files. Since all my files are quite safe, because they are backed up daily to an external drive (I’d never loose over 24 hours worth of work), I was not worried about the possibility of loosing my work files but rather about the likelihood that the disk might be somewhat damaged.

Then I tried to defragment the work partition and the utility I run for defragmentation would detect that CHKDSK was programmed for start up and until then, it would not defragment my disk. Despite running CHKDSK, my utility would not recognized it had been run and would throw the same error if I tried to defragment my disk.

Then I read in the Internet that my problem seemed to be quite common among XP users and the only solution consisted of formatting the disk.

At this stage, I realized that since I had edited the registry (I am a naughty girl, and quite stupid too) trying to erase the configuration for CHKDSK, I had deleted my safety net, the program GoBack that allows the reversal of the PC to a previous state.

It was not just GoBack that had stopped working, but the whole Norton SystemWorks was kaput. Let’s put it this way: Norton is not a smart program. In order to reinstall it, you must remove even the faintest trace that you had it before in your PC or it will throw an error, in which case you’ll have to follow a detailed 30-step list prepared by Symantec.

Anyway, since I can waste time anytime, five hours to get CHKDSK not to start up whenever it feels like and to realize I am too old to fight Norton (I’ll be switching to something more intelligent next month).

P.

The brand-new heir to Eurodicautom does not work. It stopped working 10 days ago, coinciding with Easter. I armed myself with patience and waited, since even government employees take a few days off (I should have said that “in fact, government employees do take a few days off”).

But this past weekend I wrote, enquiring about the problem and its possible solution. The problem lies in the cookies, that are not coded correctly. And yes, there is a solution.

The recommendation they make is to delete cookies between searches, a solution that is a little bit cumbersome and tedious.

The solution that has worked for me consists of fine tuning the configuration of the browser and then forget all about deleting cookies. First things first: I use Internet Explorer 6.0 (yes, I know, how backward of me… Except that it doesn’t give me any problem displaying anything and I love avoiding trouble).

So open IE, go to Tools>Internet Options and choose the Security tab. Choose Restricted Sites and then click Sites. Include there the Internet address for IATE (http://iate.europa.eu). Click Add and then OK. Then click Default Level and you can close all that by clicking OK.

By including IATE in Restricted Sites, your PC won’t accept IATE cookies, and you get rid of the cumbersome solution of deleting cookies between searches.

P.

PS: I always used Eurodicautom when IATE was down, but that does not work any longer, because Eurodicautom has been redirected to IATE. I don’t know whose privileged mind came up with that idea…

PPS: When IATE is back to normal, remember to delete the site from Restricted Sites, so that IATE will remember your search preferences…

The last few days I’ve been working in the translation of a software for a client that required Catalyst. For those of you who don’t know this program, it is a graphical interface to translate software. You can see the dialog boxes, the arrangement of options within menus… It’s a fun program, why deny it.

But the same way it is fun to work with, it’s a waste of time too.

This time things have been even more complex than usual. Besides Catalyst, my working conditions have been quite peculiar.

My client asked me to update to version 6, so I downloaded the .exe. After many attempts, I had to give up. XP does NOT like Catalyst.

Then I decided to install the program in my laptop, since it runs Windows 2000. I installed it in the first try, with its license and all. So I had to work in the laptop.

I pushed my regular screen to the back of my desk, and put aside my regular keyboard and my mouse. In the free space, I set the laptop, and the extra keyboard and mouse…

Now that I have finished and have dismantled this assembly, my desk seems huge, as huge as my regular screen. Above all, I am delighted to avoid deciding which keyboard/mouse to use… I was answering to someone’s comment before and I found it within my translation because I had forgotten to change keyboards to write in my regular computer… :-)

Happy 2007, a little bit late.

P.

I start a new category today that I’ve called “(Un)Safe Computing”, because since I installed Windows XP, it’s rare the week that goes by without some problem. The last time I had an issue was this past weekend. I started my PC and it did an automatic CHKDSK, then it reported that one of my index files was damaged and it had been recovered from the system backup copy…

I sighed with relief while my PC booted thinking that everything was OK… How wrong we are sometimes!

From that moment on until today, I’ve been suffering. What has been wiped out is all my configuration, who knows why. Imagine you enter your home and you find all your furniture piled up at the entrance. You know the place for everything, but you need hours to move the furniture around.

The first thing I do, in my case, is to get rid of the round look of XP. I just don’t bear it. Everything goes back to the classical aspect of Windows 2000. Since it is not the first time I do this task that involves tweaking 1,001 menus and clicking 1,001 buttons, it feels like riding a bike: the more you pedal, the more you remember how.

Another thing is to get all programs working the way they should… The first one to pose a problem was Trados, which toolbar disappeared from Word. This time it takes me a little bit longer to get it fixed. So I followed the three steps, one after another:

1. Close Word, search for all Normal.DOT files, and delete them. Open Word again to see if it works properly. (It did not.)

2. Uninstall Trados and reinstall it again. It usually works. (Not this time, though.)

3. Open your browser and go to C\Documents and Settings\Your user folder (SHOW ALL SYSTEM FILES IN THE FOLDER OPTIONS IF THEY ARE HIDDEN)\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\Startup, and check it contains the file TradosX.dot.

With this last item, I solved my Trados problem, but not Word’s. I opened Word, with a beautiful Trados toolbar, and I tried to start working. Word threw a fatal error that closed the program. I tried several times and I got the same result each time. In the end, I decided to update Windows and Office, in case I had “lost” any updates. I spent over two hours downloading and installing updates. ALL updates since Windows XP was named that. ALL updates for Windows XP and Office 2000 had been lost.

In all this mess full of reinstallations, I must report some good news: I am working again with a safety net. I installed Norton GoBack successfully in XP and my PC did not get into an endless loop of reboots. The worst part is that I installed only GoBack and it erased all SystemWorks, so I had to reinstall the whole thing.

In case you are interested, the working version of GoBack for XP SU2 is the one contained in SystemWorks 2006 Premier.

Of course, I’ve had no time to gather my pics of Plasencia to upload them to the web. To top it all, work was very hectic yesterday. My client pushed forward the deadline and I had to work 10 hours straight, with sheer dread on my part when I saw translating outrages such as “press the brake” instead of “step on the brake” (the correct way of saying it in Spanish), or “tank cover” instead of “tank plug”.

I did what I had to: I told my client and I did just what I was paid for (translating some odd 2,000 words). (I know, 10 hours for 2,000 words… If it were not that I am incapable of seeing a mistake in a 100% match and go by without correcting it. Hence the 10 hours, until I decided to skip all what had been done and just focus on what I was paid for.)

P.