What It Is (posts below left; rate sheet, client list, other stuff below right)

My name is Bob Land. I am a full-time freelance editor and proofreader, and occasional indexer. This blog is my website.

You'll find my rate sheet and client list here, as well as musings on the life of a freelancer; editing, proofreading, and indexing concerns and issues; my ongoing battles with books and production; and the occasional personal revelation.

Feel free to contact me directly with additional questions: landondemand@gmail.com.

Thanks for visiting. Leave me a comment. Come back often.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Gates of hell

Regular reader(s) of this space know that I am often swimming in arcane material. Typically scholarly, directed to very small and academic audiences.

Today I've been proofreading what I guess would be considered a technical manual. Without getting too specific, because as usual I'm totally out of my league, it's essentially an instructional book for teaching some aspect of administering a particular Microsoft system. I could give the title of the book -- which would probably explain it enough -- but I don't want to get in trouble.

I want to relay here one sentence from the book, not to give an idea of its difficulty, because really it has been a pretty simple and straightforward job, but for another reason that I will explain after the sentence:

At the Exchange Management Shell prompt, type New-Mailbox -UserPrincipalName 'test.user@StudentXX.com' -Alias 'test.user' -Database 'StudentXX-A\Fourth Storage Group\Third Mailbox Database' -Name 'Test User' -OrganizationalUnit 'StudentXX.com/Accounting' -FirstName 'Test' -LastName 'User' -DisplayName 'Test User' --ResetPasswordOnNextLogon $true and press Enter.

You know what? If you can get that character-for-character correct within the first three tries (and I'm not sure I did, and I'm damn sure not going to check it), you'd make a helluva proofreader.

FYI: The whole book didn't read like this. Only the exciting parts.

Time to walk the puppies.

3 comments:

moi said...

Holy Crap! You're on a blob writing roll! I'll have to catch up when I have a free moment from writing about casinos. But I'd just like to leave you with this in case you have a mouth full of coffee: that pic of Bill is kinda hot.

czar said...

And you'll note that it was taken in Albuquerque. No offense to S.B., but you had your chance. . . .

moi said...

You remember that Seinfeld episode where Jerry's date looked good in one kind of lighting, terrible in another? That's Albuquerque. All men look good in this lighting. Hence, all of the chances that have passed Moi right on by . . .