The collected excuses of an absent mind

It's done. I hardened my heart and sacrificed my not-quite-virginal credit card to the altars of online bookstores. To be more precise, I finally, realizing their rapidly approaching out-of-print status, ordered all ten Sandman collections in paperback. And got them for a few euros less than the price of Absolute Sandman vol.1 in Finland - ten books for the price of one, so to speak. I simply didn't want to get into the situation where my only options would be to buy the oversized and overpriced Absolute volumes or to hunt for overpriced out-of-print used copies if I ever wanted to own the whole Sandman series (not counting the later additions like Dream Hunters).

It's a funny feeling you get when you've just spent almost 120 euros in books. *giggles, then jeers with a queer squint* But hey, the price per book came to something like 11.7 euros, when the retail price here is closer to 20. So I actually saved a lot of money while it may look like I splurged.

And my copy of Tales of Pain and Wonder has apparently shipped, but not yet arrived. I'm getting somewhat impatient here.

Speaking of impatience, I almost ran out of the said unvirtue when my SDLX edit kept mysteriously crashing on me yesterday. Since it almost invariably died only when I tried to confirm some specific segments in some specific files, I felt the problem was file-related rather than program-related and contacted the SDL Finland office where I had subcontracted the work (all right, it's the office previously referred to as "office B" or something, but it's really too much bother) and we used the best part of this morning trying to work it out.

It turned out that the problem wasn't file-related, but luckily my counterpart in the SDL office found a solution posted on one freelance translator discussion forum. It was indeed a bug, although easily fixable by fiddling with the settings. The only thing that bugs me is that I should have found it myself... I only tried to look into SDL's own solution database, but since they're revamping the system, the database was unavailable. And did I tell you I just updated the program and the problem occurred only afterwards? And that you can't report the bugs to the SDL technical team unless you have a paid support contract? And, based on the dates of the forum discussion, the bug only appeared after the aforesaid update package was launched? And for the time being at least, it isn't listed as one of the "known issues" of the said release.

For a while I felt like a fisherman watching his boat sink. If the this tabletop suddenly died on me, I could load the translation software on the laptop and carry on working. But if the software starts acting up on me, I'm reduced to twiddling my thumbs until I get it fixed. I'm really, really glad it's over.