I received a beautiful cookbook at Christmas. I thumbed through it and looked at the pictures of the dishes that I could prepare from it. I was excited about cooking the recipes in the book.

Several days later when I sat down to find the perfect recipe for dinner, I noticed the book was written in Italian. I don’t know how I missed this key piece of information but I did.

I knew I could guess on how to prepare most of the recipes in the book because I have years of experience cooking Italian food. The ingredients were easy to figure out but some of the instructions were too complicated to just combine the ingredients in a set order. I had to have a higher level of understanding to make some of the pastries and desserts. I knew I could make something that was passable but it wouldn’t be eccellente because I couldn’t totally understand the instructions.

I don’t speak Italian. I don’t speak Greek either. Italian is like Greek to me. I can’t understand either one without someone else translating for me. They have to be between me and the Italian for me to understand or use anything that has instructions written in Italian.

I’ve tried on-line translation programs and they work fairly well, but I only get a general idea of what is being said. If I need to get the intricacies, I have to use a better translation system. I have to use an expert in Italian.

Capisce? That means, “do you understand what I mean?”

I’ve learned that trying to do things with the wrong tool takes longer, I make more mistakes and I usually miss something important that makes the difference between great and okay. When I use the right translation tool, it is easier and faster. When you have an expert helping you, they can give you insights into things that you didn’t even know you needed to know.

I know language translation software can only take me so far. It is not dynamic or flexible and there are always words that cannot be translated. And in cooking, precision counts if you want to avoid seeing your guests spit out their food in disgust at the dinner table.

Traditional mud drilling software has had similar faults. They are patched together from Excel spreadsheets and will give you results but it leaves you hungry for something better. If you want to figure out several different mud mixtures, you have to hand calculate each component then put them together in another application to do the comparison. It is tedious, takes a lot of time and often results in calculation errors.

PVI’s MUDPRO software works in perfect harmony so all your mud ingredients blend together to delight and amaze you. And when you finally taste what mud drilling software is supposed to be like, you’ll never settle for half-baked software again.