Blog/January 2014/Jan 17th

Jan 17th (See this week's devar torah)

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Hi, again!

All of us were busy as usual this week. In addition to her usual classwork, Sarah was engaged to take videos at her classmate’s wedding. Daniela and Jeremy got their tickets to come here for pesaḥ — we’re very excited! Esther had a series of medical tests done to ascertain why she has trouble breathing. And I, well, you know…

Among Esther’s medical tests was an “EKG”, which would have been nothing to write about, but for this: according to Esther, the machine they used was some Soviet-era cast-off. An explanation is in order, I think. A couple years ago, both of us had had these tests done, and the machines used the “sticky-electrodes” which the technician would stick to your body at different places, and after the procedure would remove by peeling them off. But this week’s machine used suction-cup electrodes, which apparently the technician cranked-up a little too far, since they left serious bruises on Esther’s skin. She was not pleased. B”H, the tests indicated there’s nothing wrong with her, as usual, so she should just stop complaining!

Work was a mixed bag this week. On the negative side of the ledger: the third-party tests we had been avidly preparing for over the past few weeks gave very bad results (for our software). They were bad enough that they seem to be some sort of a problem with hardware configuration or something. However, the tests also uncovered a bug in our software which all our testing did not find — which is a good thing on the one hand, but more than slightly disconcerting on the other. I mean, the CEO is “over there” to make a big announcement about how great our stuff is, and the test results are not very encouraging.

On the positive side of the ledger, a couple things. First, I made a lot of progress moving 8th closer to “release candidate”. It finally has encryption working well, properly supports “unicode” and has a number of speed and efficiency optimizations. Second, our business consultant introduced us to one of his business partners, with whom I met this week. This guy has a start-up and wants us to develop his product (from scratch). It looks like an interesting and potentially profitable venture, so we did bid on it; we’ll see if our bid is acceptable to him.

As a belated birthday present, Esther took me out on a date for “dinner and a movie”. We don’t get out that much, so we were both looking forward to the outing. For dinner we went to the Cafe Rimon “bistro” which has a meat hekhsher we accept. We decided to order the “mixed grill plate”, which the menu indicated was “recommended for a couple”. What they didn’t say was that the “couple” would have to be significantly bigger eaters than either of us! It was a ridiculous amount of food, and after a while we simply couldn’t eat more. Since we knew that if we didn’t take it with us, the food would be thrown away, we took a “doggie bag” even though we weren’t going to keep the food, since we figured we could give it to someone needy. And in fact, as we walked from the center of town to the theatre we crossed the “shuq”, where we did indeed give the leftovers to a person who could benefit. So that was a Good Thing.

But all good things come to an end. We got to the theatre and saw this movie, which has been nominated for Oscars this year. Do not see it unless you are interested in borderline porn. Seriously: I am not easily shocked or embarrassed, but this movie did both to me, and I spent more than half the time with my eyes closed. Really. There was no plot or character development, but a super-abundance of sex, drugs and profanity; and almost all the characters portrayed were revolting individuals. If I had three thumbs, they would all be “down”. I’m still in shock. Not to mention that sitting for almost three hours in the uncomfortable seats exacerbated my sciatic problems so I’m now in physical as well as psychic pain. You have been warned.

To change the subject: one of the platforms I want to target with “8th” is Apple’s iOS. That’s the “operating system” for the iPhone and iPad devices, and I would like to support them as platforms for my software. But several people have told me that Apple does not permit “interpreters” in their Apple Store, and so I would not be able to target iOS. So I said to myself, I said, “Ron! Write to Apple and ask what their actual policy is”. And I did just that. But the response from Apple was: “we cannot provide feedback on Guideline compliance questions”, and that until the “approval process” completes I cannot know if my product adheres to their guidelines. However, they did give me links to documents explaining their policies.

So I clicked on the links they provided, only to be told that since I was not a member of their “development program”, I could not even read the guidelines! That is, I would have to pony up the subscription fee for their “program” in order to determine whether or not it was even worthwhile for me to join their program! This is one reason why, in my opinion, Apple is crapple. They have their fanboys and their detractors, but ultimately the problem with them from my standpoint is their excessively anal control of everything at all stages of everything. A pox upon them!

Other things:

• Interesting report on Linux for security
• And speaking of that, HealthCare.gov is even worse than we thought
• Can you say they “survived” if they are an extinct species?
• Reading this, I wondered how bad a paper-cut from a food-stamp must be, to cause higher healthcare costs?

This week we’re back to the nyuck, nyuck, nyuck… I mean, nuclear family. We’re going to do parve this time:
quinoa-stuffed vegetables, spicy green beans, steamed broccoli, Moroccan carrot salad, Moroccan eggplant salad, Israeli salad, lentil salad, split-pea soup, tuna salad and various and sundry fruit.

Until next week,
shabbat shalom!

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