Daily Report: Out For BBQ

Up early again (thanks Epril). I got to work a bit later than yesterday... mostly just wandering around aimlessly on the internet while I had my coffee.

For lunch, Susan made a nice chicken in sweet orange sauce. We've finished "Carrier", we've finished "Doctor Who" (4 seasons' worth), we've finished "Heroes". Now, we're on to the second season of "24" for our lunch break television.

After lunch, I edited a picture of Inday (see photo here or scroll down) in her Thai gown on a great photo-editing website that I found online called Aviary.com. (Once again: If I was still a graphic artist in New York City... yadda yadda yadda.) As far as free online photo editing programs go, it's easily the best I've seen. It's far from perfect, and the lag time is pretty bad (though that may be this old computer and my internet connection), but as far as editing tools go, it offers just about anything an amateur would need to do quick touch-ups. I will say though that it has a bit of "sculpting with a chain saw" feel to it. It's hard to be nuanced and subtle in your edits.

I put in a short afternoon at work: Jobs ran out at about 4:00 a.m. back in America. I have a feeling I'm going to be seeing more of that. They've moved a suprising amount of doctors to the speech recognition software (even some ESL speakers). Although I find it slower to do the S.R. than to just type it out, I am in the top 1% of transcriptionists, speed-wise. Most of my slower coworkers are getting more done with the S.R. than they did before. The result will be less work for those of us who want it.

Well, at least until people start quitting. Hopefully that isn't too far away.

Epril and I went out for BBQ at Quinze Amigos tonight. One of those typical almost-a-shack type affairs with plastic chairs and tables, open air dining, a couple of macacas in cages, big ornery fish in a tank, and a coca-cola refrigerator filled with San Miguel beer for 40 cents per bottle.

Epril and I selected a couple of chicken leg/thighs on a stick, and 6 skewers of pork, which the fellow behind the grill proceeded to cook for us, brushing it all with a fine BBQ sauce. We had 2 beers, 1 coke, 2 quarter chickens, 6 pork skewers, and 2 plates of rice. Total price $3.70.

After that, when I got back home, I noticed that some more work had become available while I was out, so I sat down and put in another 45 minutes before going to bed. (It's possible there won't be anything to do when I wake up in the morning, so I figured I might as well get some down now just in case.)