Musings from an overworked translator

Relief from that feeling of panic… December 27, 2023

You know the feeling… when you’ve spent a few hours working on a file and you have been saving the file, but you try to open it before delivering and can’t find it anywhere? Well, that happened to me today. I am a pretty savvy computer user. I have a document system that works for me (even though it has gotten a little out of control in the last few years). Unfortunately, I pulled an all-nighter last night to deliver the first file to my client, and my brain isn’t working as effectively as normal today on just 5 hours of sleep (I went to bed at 7:30 a.m.). When I opened Word to check my latest file before delivering it, it was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t find the file in the Most Recent list and a search of my hard drive came up empty. I knew it had to be there (or at least a .tmp file), because I am fanatical about saving my files as I work. I had even used “Save as” and added an addendum to the filename. Queue the panic.

Luckily I have a friend and colleague who I can call up out of the blue in a panic. I knew he would be able to find it for me and find it quickly! And he did. He used his remote computer support tool to open Total Commander and locate the file since I had worked on it within the last hour. He was able to copy the temp file into my designated Documents folder. It turns out I was saving the file back into the Zip file instead of in the folder where I have all of the unzipped files saved.

I know we have all experienced this at least once in our careers. If this happens to you, I cannot recommend the services of Roland Grefer enough! You can reach him at http://www.globalsupportinc.com/. He offers computer support and troubleshooting, Internet security, virus assistance as well as system installation and configuration. He’s also one of our own and is a English <=> German Translator. He is also an excellent editor and proofreader with an eagle eye who does his research to back his suggestions up. So if you are faced with a computer problem you can’t solve, save yourself the grief and reach out to him. He’ll save your bacon quickly and efficiently!