Blog/April 2017/Apr 21st

April 21st

We started the week by getting ready for the last day of pesaḥ, which started Sunday night. Since we had made quite a lot of the homemade matsa on Friday, we had leftovers which we put in the freezer. Thawed out on Sunday late afternoon, they were just as good as they had been on Friday (well, almost). We all enjoyed a relaxing end-of-holiday.

But then the holiday was over, and we had to get back to “normal”. Daniela and Jeremy packed and flew back to the USA the following day. We were sad to see them go, but enjoyed their short stay while it lasted. Esther and I reverted the kitchen to “normal” status. Even though my dear wife seems to accumulate more “pesaḥ gadgets” each year, we actually used fewer storage boxes this time around. We’re still not sure how that happened.

Jew Haiku:

Passover’s over
Counting down to shavuot
Festival of the torah

None of us were interested in returning to work; indeed, it was very difficult to resume the normal schedule after a decently long hiatus. But return we did, and just in time! We were running out of food to eat, after having done nothing but eat for days on end. Of course, the stores were denuded of edibles as well, so Esther had to make a few shopping trips just to restock the pantry. Sarah’s been put in charge of expanding the English-language section at her store. I’m not sure she’s excited to get the added responsibility without any added pay, but it could be interesting anyway.

Security news items:

• Obama admin spying was old-hat by the time they did it to the Trump team
• Ambient light sensors can be used to steal browser data
• Smart-TV hack embeds malicious commands in ordinary broadcast signals. Clever, and disturbing

As I mentioned last week, our router was “bricked” on pesaḥ. The new one finally arrived yesterday, so we went to get it, and then I installed it. It took me a while, since I misconfigured it at first; but all’s well now. I also took the opportunity to put in a “UPS” to try to prevent power spikes and outages from wreaking havoc with our electronics.

Speaking of which: why does a bird which sounds just like an electronic alarm, always do its hooting very early in the morning right outside my bedroom window? That was a rhetorical question.

Resuming work on 8th, I’m fixing bugs and expanding its cryptographic repertoire as well as “hardening” it some more. I’ll probably make another release in two weeks; there’ve been quite a few feature requests and some bug reports, so I’ll be busy.

A mini heat-wave is forecast for shabbat. The temperatures may hit 33C (91F) in Jerusalem, and likely another 3C hotter where we are. So I anticipate we’ll have the A/C on for the sake of shabbat comfort. Speaking of which…

This shabbat we’re back to the nuclear three. We’ll have:
homemade ḥalla, baked chicken, roasted yams, roasted beets, vegetable and tofu “chow-mein”, various salatim, and fruit crumble.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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