Blog/December 2012/Dec 21st - Revision history

Ron at 07:21, 28 December 2012

2012-12-28T07:21:05Z

Ron: Undo revision 8287 by Ron (talk)

2012-12-28T07:18:28Z

Undo revision 8287 by Ron (talk)

Ron at 07:18, 28 December 2012

2012-12-28T07:18:13Z

Ron at 10:48, 21 December 2012

2012-12-21T10:48:34Z

Ron at 10:27, 21 December 2012

2012-12-21T10:27:47Z

Ron: Created page with " {{blog}} {{bheadernew|Dec 21st|http://ronware.org/devar/vayigash5773.pdf}} Hi, again! A..."

2012-12-21T09:59:52Z

Created page with " {{blog}} {{bheadernew|Dec 21st|http://ronware.org/devar/vayigash5773.pdf}} Hi, again! A..."

New page

{{blog}}

{{bheadernew|Dec 21st|http://ronware.org/devar/vayigash5773.pdf}}

Hi, again!

Are you confused, bewildered and dismayed by the plethora of political parties in Israel? Need help figuring out what they stand for? As promised, I've put together [[Israeli_political_parties_-_19th_knesset|a synopsis of all the parties]] running, with information on how many seats they currently hold (if any) as well as a pointer to their web-page (if any). Corrections/emendations/suggestions may be made via the link on that page. Enjoy!

The weather is getting cold and wet; it was cold but not wet (here, anyway) most of the week. But we awoke this morning to heavy rainfall and ''cold'' temperatures (high of 9C). So it looks like the heating will be on this ''shabbat''. My fingers are getting numb just typing this!

Daniela and Jeremy will be spending ''shabbat'' with his parents in Baltimore, since he's going to undergo a relatively minor surgical procedure. We all wish him רפואה שלימה -- a speedy and complete recovery! His brother will be joining us ''next shabbat'', along with his sister and my nephew. But that's next week...

As for this week, my nephew Chris started his [http://www.birthrightisrael.com/Pages/Default.aspx Birthright] trip, and he'll be touring around with them for ten days. After that he'll be staying with us and getting fat from good cooking. Or something like that; we'll see how we'll keep him out of trouble.

Sarah has started putting together (e.g. editing) videos for school, and we're impressed with what we've seen so far. Someday soon we'll probably have a link to share with you so you can see for yourselves. Her school gave her an external 2T (two ''trillion'' bytes) hard-disk, which is primarily intended for a Mac. They even formatted it so it had a "Windows" and a "Mac" side. Unfortunately, Sarah put her files from school on the Mac side -- so her Windows laptop could not read it.

But fortunately for her, her father uses Linux, and thus had no problem reading both sides of the disk. So he very kindly copied her Mac files to the Windows side. Problem solved. And speaking of the Linux machinery...

... I've been using [http://www.kubuntu.org kubuntu] for a long while now, but after setting up the new machine with [http://www.linuxmint.com/ Mint] I decided to move my laptop over to it as well. It proved to be a pleasant and useful experience. My laptop is running ten degrees cooler, and it's faster. The install process only took 15 minutes, including downloading updates, and it remembered my wireless connection information. If you've been considering leaving Windows (especially the abomination Windows 8), I highly recommend giving Mint a look. Just a few of the things I like very much about it:
* easy Wifi setup
* fast(er than kubuntu)
* simple and easier to use (than kubuntu)
* seamless support for removable media (USB sticks, CDs, etc.)

Work was very intense this week, as we're trying to get a major bit of work done before the end of the month. I'm coming home "squeezed dry", but at least we're making excellent progress. The bosses are happy, which is a Good Thing.

This week also witnessed a tragedy in the US, a "school shooting". The media and the "powers that be" have latched onto this as a cause célèbre, and are pushing for comprehensive gun control and bans. One of the more ludicrous reactions is from [http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/19/bulletproof-backpacks-kids-body-armor-in-demand-following-connecticut-school/ people buying bulletproof backpacks] for their children. A cursory look at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_related_to_primary_schools a list of school attacks] shows that many of them take place in China, where it is already impossible to acquire firearms. How would banning guns improve that situation?

Furthermore, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate a review of causes of death by rate] shows that the vast majority of deaths are caused by coronary issues, cancers, strokes and diseases. ''Less that 1%'' of deaths are caused by non-self-inflicted violence (and presumably not all of that 1% is caused by guns). So in my not so humble opinion, a far more effective method of reducing mortality in the general population would be to concentrate on proper diet and exercise and elimination of contagious diseases. In fact, AIDS/HIV accounts for almost ''five times'' the number of deaths as violence does -- and yet there's little clamor for prevention of AIDS/HIV through behavior modification (the most effective treatment by far). But who asked my opinion?

This ''shabbat'' will be a quiet one, just us chickens, eating:
beef-barley soup,
smoked fish,
''schnitzel'',
chard-mushroom ''pashtida'',
baked butternut squash,
quinoa ''pilaf'',
radish salad,
beet salad,
eggplant with ''ṭeḥina'',
''salatim'',
fresh fruit
and "just cake" with berries.

Until next week,<br>
''shabbat shalom''!

{{nav|Blog|Blog|Blog/December 2012/Dec 14th|Dec 14th||}}

← Older revision		Revision as of 07:21, 28 December 2012
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 {{blog}}
-{{bheadernew|Dec 28th|http://ronware.org/devar/vayechi5773.pdf}}
+{{bheadernew|Dec 21st|http://ronware.org/devar/vayigash5773.pdf}}
 Hi, again!
-It's been another intense week; lots of work without much of a break.  The political scene here took yet another unexpected turn, this time around looks to be quite interesting.  The weather has been cold but nice and we are looking at a cooling trend into the coming week.
+Are you confused, bewildered and dismayed by the plethora of political parties in Israel?  Need help figuring out what they stand for?  As promised, I've put together [[Israeli_political_parties_-_19th_knesset|a synopsis of all the parties]] running, with information on how many seats they currently hold (if any) as well as a pointer to their web-page (if any).  Corrections/emendations/suggestions may be made via the link on that page.  Enjoy!
-But first, a health update!  This week, Jeremy underwent an operation, as I mentioned last week.  B"H, he's doing well and seems to be getting better very quickly.  According to his father, my daughter Daniela "is doing a great job nursing Jeremy back to health".  So kudos to Daniela! On the other hand, she got sick and is now trying to fight off a cold while taking care of him.  And Jeremy's father was back in the hospital this week because of an infection from a previous surgery,  and we are very concerned about that.  So the "refua sheleima" (speedy recovery) list now includes: Daniela (דניאלה רות), Jeremy (ירמיהו יצחק) and Richard (שמואל בן יהושע).  Yikes!
+The weather is getting cold and wet; it was cold but not wet (here, anyway) most of the week.  But we awoke this morning to heavy rainfall and ''cold'' temperatures (high of 9C).  So it looks like the heating will be on this ''shabbat''.  My fingers are getting numb just typing this!
-Two of Jeremy's siblings will be spending ''shabbat'' with us, along with my nephew Chris who just completed his "[http://www.birthrightisrael.com/Pages/Default.aspx Birthright]" trip.  He had "the best time, ever".  So we're hoping to continue his having a "best time" while he stays with us for the next two weeks.
+Happy birthday to Daniela!  She and Jeremy will be spending ''shabbat'' with his parents in Baltimore, since he's going to undergo a relatively minor surgical procedure.  We all wish him רפואה שלימה -- a speedy and complete recovery (Yirmiyahu Yitshaq ben Shaindel Faige)!  His brother will be joining us ''next shabbat'', along with his sister and my nephew.  But that's next week...
-Sarah's been working long hours at school.  Though she's only got three days a week of classes, they give a lot of homework.  The kind of homework which involves a lot of time.  So our paths barely cross, and we're all very tired all week long.  Thank God for ''shabbat''!
+As for this week, my nephew Chris started his [http://www.birthrightisrael.com/Pages/Default.aspx Birthright] trip, and he'll be touring around with them for ten days.  After that he'll be staying with us and getting fat from good cooking.  Or something like that; we'll see how we'll keep him out of trouble.
-As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the political scene here took an unexpected turn this week.  Netanyahu [http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6850 attacked Naftali Bennett], the leader of the [http://baityehudi.org.il/englp/ Jewish Home] party -- considered to be a "right wing" party, and also considered by the punditocracy to be a natural ally of Netanyahu's [https://www.likud.org.il/en/ Likud] party.  Of course, those of us who are ''really'' on the "right wing" of the Israeli political scene have been saying for years that Netanyahu is not at all on "our side" of the fence.  But the really unexpected thing was not that he attacked Bennett -- since he has a long history of attacking the right-wing of his own party.  The real surprise is that the public reaction has been very strongly in favor of Bennett and against Netanyahu.
+Sarah has started putting together (e.g. editing) videos for school, and we're impressed with what we've seen so far.  Someday soon we'll probably have a link to share with you so you can see for yourselves. Her school gave her an external 2T (two ''trillion'' bytes) hard-disk, which is primarily intended for a Mac.  They even formatted it so it had a "Windows" and a "Mac" side.  Unfortunately, Sarah put her files from school on the Mac side -- so her Windows laptop could not read it.
-The upshot is that Likud has been slipping in the polls, while [http://www.timesofisrael.com/likud-beytenu-declines-to-33-seats-in-latest-poll/ Jewish Home has been gaining].  Even more surprising is that the "Jewish Home", which is essentially a party of the "Nationalist Religious" in Israel, has been gaining lots of traction with ''secular'' young Israelis.  This has got to be very worrying to the left-leaning Likud leadership, since it means that as of now Jewish Home is the third largest party, and will wield considerable clout in the next government.  And my favorite party, "[https://www.facebook.com/otzmatoisrael Otsma LeYisrael]" looks like it will take three seats (up from two currently).  Of course, there's almost a month until the elections -- anything can (and will) happen!  By the way, can anyone explain to me why my party doesn't have a proper website with English, Russian and French pages?  They would make even greater inroads if they properly reached the immigrant communities here.
+But fortunately for her, her father uses Linux, and thus had no problem reading both sides of the disk.  So he very kindly copied her Mac files to the Windows side. Problem solved.  And speaking of the Linux machinery...
-Last week [http://ronware.org/wiki/Blog/December_2012/Dec_21st I mentioned] that I migrated my laptop from "kubuntu" to "Mint".  This week I did some further "migration" within Mint, moving from the default [http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ Cinnamon] desktop to the much lighter-weight [http://www.xfce.org/ XFCE] desktop (not to be confused with [http://xkcd.com/ XKCD]).  I said last week that Mint was faster than kubuntu; and XFCE is much faster than pretty much any other comparable desktop.  Since I work primarily on laptops with limited resources, using a lighter-weight desktop means everything else I do gets more resources and runs faster.  That's the sort of thing that makes me happy... I'm pretty easy to please.
+... I've been using [http://www.kubuntu.org kubuntu]  for a long while now, but after setting up the new machine with [http://www.linuxmint.com/ Mint] I decided to move my laptop over to it as well. It proved to be a pleasant and useful experience. My laptop is running ten degrees cooler, and it's faster. The install process only took 15 minutes, including downloading updates, and it remembered my wireless connection information.  If you've been considering leaving Windows (especially the abomination Windows 8), I highly recommend giving Mint a look. Just a few of the things I like very much about it:
-I had seen XFCE before, and it always looked ugly to me.  That's because I didn't know that it can be "tweaked" to look very different from the default.  Once I saw how it ''could'' be set up, and saw that it was so much more responsive than either [http://www.kde.org/ KDE] (kubuntu) or Cinnamon (default on Mint), my mind was made up.  Now I have a really fast setup, which makes me ''really'' happy.  Next week I'll give a more point-by-point comparison of the major desktops on Linux, just so you can make an informed decision when you abandon Windows ...
+Work was very intense this week, as we're trying to get a major bit of work done before the end of the month.  I'm coming home "squeezed dry", but at least we're making excellent progress.  The bosses are happy, which is a Good Thing.
-This ''shabbat'' will be a loud and noisy one, B"H!  Our nephew and two of Jeremy's siblings will be rounding out the guest list.  I hope we'll have enough food:
+Furthermore, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate a review of causes of death by rate] shows that the vast majority of deaths are caused by coronary issues, cancers, strokes and diseases.  ''Less that 1%'' of deaths are caused by non-self-inflicted violence (and presumably not all of that 1% is caused by guns).  So in my not so humble opinion, a far more effective method of reducing mortality in the general population would be to concentrate on proper diet and exercise and elimination of contagious diseases.  In fact, AIDS/HIV accounts for almost ''five times'' the number of deaths as violence does -- and yet there's little clamor for prevention of AIDS/HIV through behavior modification (the most effective treatment by far).  But who asked my opinion?
-baked salmon,
-crispy-baked chicken,
-baby rosemary-potatoes,
+This ''shabbat'' will be a quiet one, just us chickens, eating:
-carrot ''kugel'',
+beef-barley soup,
-chicken soup,
+smoked fish,
-meatballs with rice,
+''schnitzel'',
-black-bean salad,
+chard-mushroom ''pashtida'',
-roasted zucchini,
+baked butternut squash,
-spicy eggplant,
+quinoa ''pilaf'',
 radish salad,
-chocolate pie,
+beet salad,
-apple muffins
+eggplant with ''ṭeḥina'',
 Until next week,<br>
 ''shabbat shalom''!
-{{nav|Blog|Blog|Blog/December 2012/Dec 21st|Dec 21st||}}
+{{nav|Blog|Blog|Blog/December 2012/Dec 14th|Dec 14th||}}

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 {{blog}}
-{{bheadernew|Dec 21st|http://ronware.org/devar/vayigash5773.pdf}}
+{{bheadernew|Dec 28th|http://ronware.org/devar/vayechi5773.pdf}}
 Hi, again!
-Are you confused, bewildered and dismayed by the plethora of political parties in Israel?  Need help figuring out what they stand for?  As promised, I've put together [[Israeli_political_parties_-_19th_knesset|a synopsis of all the parties]] running, with information on how many seats they currently hold (if any) as well as a pointer to their web-page (if any).  Corrections/emendations/suggestions may be made via the link on that page.  Enjoy!
+It's been another intense week; lots of work without much of a break.  The political scene here took yet another unexpected turn, this time around looks to be quite interesting.  The weather has been cold but nice and we are looking at a cooling trend into the coming week.
-The weather is getting cold and wet; it was cold but not wet (here, anyway) most of the week.  But we awoke this morning to heavy rainfall and ''cold'' temperatures (high of 9C).  So it looks like the heating will be on this ''shabbat''.  My fingers are getting numb just typing this!
+But first, a health update!  This week, Jeremy underwent an operation, as I mentioned last week.  B"H, he's doing well and seems to be getting better very quickly.  According to his father, my daughter Daniela "is doing a great job nursing Jeremy back to health".  So kudos to Daniela! On the other hand, she got sick and is now trying to fight off a cold while taking care of him.  And Jeremy's father was back in the hospital this week because of an infection from a previous surgery,  and we are very concerned about that.  So the "refua sheleima" (speedy recovery) list now includes: Daniela (דניאלה רות), Jeremy (ירמיהו יצחק) and Richard (שמואל בן יהושע).  Yikes!
-Happy birthday to Daniela!  She and Jeremy will be spending ''shabbat'' with his parents in Baltimore, since he's going to undergo a relatively minor surgical procedure.  We all wish him רפואה שלימה -- a speedy and complete recovery (Yirmiyahu Yitshaq ben Shaindel Faige)!  His brother will be joining us ''next shabbat'', along with his sister and my nephew.  But that's next week...
+Two of Jeremy's siblings will be spending ''shabbat'' with us, along with my nephew Chris who just completed his "[http://www.birthrightisrael.com/Pages/Default.aspx Birthright]" trip.  He had "the best time, ever".  So we're hoping to continue his having a "best time" while he stays with us for the next two weeks.
-As for this week, my nephew Chris started his [http://www.birthrightisrael.com/Pages/Default.aspx Birthright] trip, and he'll be touring around with them for ten days.  After that he'll be staying with us and getting fat from good cooking.  Or something like that; we'll see how we'll keep him out of trouble.
+Sarah's been working long hours at school.  Though she's only got three days a week of classes, they give a lot of homework.  The kind of homework which involves a lot of time.  So our paths barely cross, and we're all very tired all week long.  Thank God for ''shabbat''!
-Sarah has started putting together (e.g. editing) videos for school, and we're impressed with what we've seen so far.  Someday soon we'll probably have a link to share with you so you can see for yourselves. Her school gave her an external 2T (two ''trillion'' bytes) hard-disk, which is primarily intended for a Mac.  They even formatted it so it had a "Windows" and a "Mac" side.  Unfortunately, Sarah put her files from school on the Mac side -- so her Windows laptop could not read it.
+As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the political scene here took an unexpected turn this week.  Netanyahu [http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6850 attacked Naftali Bennett], the leader of the [http://baityehudi.org.il/englp/ Jewish Home] party -- considered to be a "right wing" party, and also considered by the punditocracy to be a natural ally of Netanyahu's [https://www.likud.org.il/en/ Likud] party.  Of course, those of us who are ''really'' on the "right wing" of the Israeli political scene have been saying for years that Netanyahu is not at all on "our side" of the fence.  But the really unexpected thing was not that he attacked Bennett -- since he has a long history of attacking the right-wing of his own party.  The real surprise is that the public reaction has been very strongly in favor of Bennett and against Netanyahu.
-But fortunately for her, her father uses Linux, and thus had no problem reading both sides of the disk.  So he very kindly copied her Mac files to the Windows side. Problem solved.  And speaking of the Linux machinery...
+The upshot is that Likud has been slipping in the polls, while [http://www.timesofisrael.com/likud-beytenu-declines-to-33-seats-in-latest-poll/ Jewish Home has been gaining].  Even more surprising is that the "Jewish Home", which is essentially a party of the "Nationalist Religious" in Israel, has been gaining lots of traction with ''secular'' young Israelis.  This has got to be very worrying to the left-leaning Likud leadership, since it means that as of now Jewish Home is the third largest party, and will wield considerable clout in the next government.  And my favorite party, "[https://www.facebook.com/otzmatoisrael Otsma LeYisrael]" looks like it will take three seats (up from two currently).  Of course, there's almost a month until the elections -- anything can (and will) happen!  By the way, can anyone explain to me why my party doesn't have a proper website with English, Russian and French pages?  They would make even greater inroads if they properly reached the immigrant communities here.
-... I've been using [http://www.kubuntu.org kubuntu]  for a long while now, but after setting up the new machine with [http://www.linuxmint.com/ Mint] I decided to move my laptop over to it as well. It proved to be a pleasant and useful experience. My laptop is running ten degrees cooler, and it's faster. The install process only took 15 minutes, including downloading updates, and it remembered my wireless connection information.  If you've been considering leaving Windows (especially the abomination Windows 8), I highly recommend giving Mint a look. Just a few of the things I like very much about it:
+Last week [http://ronware.org/wiki/Blog/December_2012/Dec_21st I mentioned] that I migrated my laptop from "kubuntu" to "Mint".  This week I did some further "migration" within Mint, moving from the default [http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ Cinnamon] desktop to the much lighter-weight [http://www.xfce.org/ XFCE] desktop (not to be confused with [http://xkcd.com/ XKCD]).  I said last week that Mint was faster than kubuntu; and XFCE is much faster than pretty much any other comparable desktop.  Since I work primarily on laptops with limited resources, using a lighter-weight desktop means everything else I do gets more resources and runs faster.  That's the sort of thing that makes me happy... I'm pretty easy to please.
-Work was very intense this week, as we're trying to get a major bit of work done before the end of the month.  I'm coming home "squeezed dry", but at least we're making excellent progress.  The bosses are happy, which is a Good Thing.
+I had seen XFCE before, and it always looked ugly to me.  That's because I didn't know that it can be "tweaked" to look very different from the default.  Once I saw how it ''could'' be set up, and saw that it was so much more responsive than either [http://www.kde.org/ KDE] (kubuntu) or Cinnamon (default on Mint), my mind was made up.  Now I have a really fast setup, which makes me ''really'' happy.  Next week I'll give a more point-by-point comparison of the major desktops on Linux, just so you can make an informed decision when you abandon Windows ...
-Furthermore, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate a review of causes of death by rate] shows that the vast majority of deaths are caused by coronary issues, cancers, strokes and diseases.  ''Less that 1%'' of deaths are caused by non-self-inflicted violence (and presumably not all of that 1% is caused by guns).  So in my not so humble opinion, a far more effective method of reducing mortality in the general population would be to concentrate on proper diet and exercise and elimination of contagious diseases.  In fact, AIDS/HIV accounts for almost ''five times'' the number of deaths as violence does -- and yet there's little clamor for prevention of AIDS/HIV through behavior modification (the most effective treatment by far).  But who asked my opinion?
+This ''shabbat'' will be a loud and noisy one, B"H!  Our nephew and two of Jeremy's siblings will be rounding out the guest list.  I hope we'll have enough food:
+baked salmon,
+crispy-baked chicken,
-This ''shabbat'' will be a quiet one, just us chickens, eating:
+baby rosemary-potatoes,
-beef-barley soup,
+carrot ''kugel'',
-smoked fish,
+chicken soup,
-''schnitzel'',
+meatballs with rice,
-chard-mushroom ''pashtida'',
+black-bean salad,
-baked butternut squash,
+roasted zucchini,
-quinoa ''pilaf'',
+spicy eggplant,
 radish salad,
-beet salad,
+chocolate pie,
-eggplant with ''ṭeḥina'',
+apple muffins
 Until next week,<br>
 ''shabbat shalom''!
-{{nav|Blog|Blog|Blog/December 2012/Dec 14th|Dec 14th||}}
+{{nav|Blog|Blog|Blog/December 2012/Dec 21st|Dec 21st||}}

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 The weather is getting cold and wet; it was cold but not wet (here, anyway) most of the week.  But we awoke this morning to heavy rainfall and ''cold'' temperatures (high of 9C).  So it looks like the heating will be on this ''shabbat''.  My fingers are getting numb just typing this!
-Daniela and Jeremy will be spending ''shabbat'' with his parents in Baltimore, since he's going to undergo a relatively minor surgical procedure.  We all wish him רפואה שלימה -- a speedy and complete recovery (Yirmiyahu Yitshaq ben Shaindel Faige)!  His brother will be joining us ''next shabbat'', along with his sister and my nephew.  But that's next week...
+Happy birthday to Daniela!  She and Jeremy will be spending ''shabbat'' with his parents in Baltimore, since he's going to undergo a relatively minor surgical procedure.  We all wish him רפואה שלימה -- a speedy and complete recovery (Yirmiyahu Yitshaq ben Shaindel Faige)!  His brother will be joining us ''next shabbat'', along with his sister and my nephew.  But that's next week...
 As for this week, my nephew Chris started his [http://www.birthrightisrael.com/Pages/Default.aspx Birthright] trip, and he'll be touring around with them for ten days.  After that he'll be staying with us and getting fat from good cooking.  Or something like that; we'll see how we'll keep him out of trouble.