Blog/May 2015/May 8th

May 8th (See this week's devar torah)

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We were ridiculously busy this week. So was our Prime Minister. Unlike him, however, we act in good faith and keep our promises.

The early elections (called by Netanyahu) and the subsequent protracted coalition negotiations (caused by Netanyahu) with their resultant bad-blood (engendered by him), have cost the country a lot of money and resulted in a government which is too fragile to be effective. Perhaps that’s a good thing, overall. Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said, “That government is best which governs least”, and I’ve found little to contradict that sentiment. But we Israelis live in an area of the world where our gov’t often must take decisive action in order to protect us — I hope this coalition will not be too fractious to act decisively.

As for us, we were super busy. After last shabbat, we checked our email and found out that Apple had accepted our game for their App Store! This is a major milestone for our 8th product, because it is solid proof that one can write an application in 8th, and get it approved by Apple. Until this point there were lingering doubts, which inhibited potential customers from even looking at 8th seriously.

So we spent a lot of effort on Sunday to “get the word out”. That effort did result in much increased traffic to our site, and more downloads of our product. It also confirmed our long-held belief that people are too lazy to read. The subject line of one of our posts said that our app was now in the Apple App store. One brilliant individual commented that our product “looked interesting”, but that “Apple doesn’t accept apps like that”. So I had to point out that the subject line of the very post he was responding to indicated that Apple did, indeed, “accept an app like that”. As I like to say, the problem with the world is people.

On Thursday we had two business meetings in Tel Aviv. On Wednesday we had to take our car in for service. The garage didn’t have the replacement part, and because it was apparently a safety issue, they wouldn’t return our car to us. So we had to rent a car (through them) for a nominal amount (they should have given us one for free, but that’s a quibble). We realized just how thoroughly used to our car we had become, when we couldn’t figure out how to start the replacement...

Anyway, we spent the entire day in Tel Aviv, and the end of the day back at the garage trying to free our car from their clutches. They had fixed what needed to be fixed, under warranty. But we had to pay for the rental, and their computer system was not responding. I told them we would gladly waive payment, but they didn’t take us up on the offer. Finally we finished up and got back home, completely drained and ready for bed. It was only 4:30 in the afternoon…

The weather has been most pleasant, and it is supposed to warm up a bit but remain in the normal range — clear and warm. We are looking forward to another calm shabbat with friends and family.

This week we’ve gone nuclear again, and have been invited out for dinner. The other meals will consist of:
veggie moussaka, black-bean chili, cornbread, rice, roasted beets, coleslaw, and fruit.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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