Blog/September 2016/Sep 9th

September 9th (See this week's devar torah)

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Lots of adventure this week — certainly more than we desired!

This past shabbat, as I left the house to go to shul I heard a loud hissing sound, the sound of a high-pressure water leak. I looked around to see where it was coming from and didn’t see anything obvious; however, our water-meter was spinning rapidly. I checked inside the house and didn’t hear or see any leaks. Not a good way to start a shabbat morning!

According to halakha (Jewish law), one of the factors which invalidates prayer is being worried about something to the point where you cannot concentrate on the prayer. As I was standing in the synagogue, preparing to pray, I couldn’t help but continue to think about all the money being flushed down the drain to no purpose. Not that I find it easy to concentrate my thoughts in shul in any case, but I had a harder time of it that day.

On my way back home, I stopped at my neighbor (who is a plumber) and mentioned my problems; he said he’d come by after shabbat and take a look. In the meantime, I turned off the water to the house (which I should have done before leaving; I just didn’t think of it).

After shabbat, my neighbor came and looked at the situation. He determined that the “water filter” was leaking (I didn’t know we had such a thing), and that since we didn’t need it, he would simply bypass it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the right tools and supplies handy, so he said he would come back the following day, after he finished work. And so he did.

In order to fix the problem, he was going to remove the filter from the system. But he had forgotten to bring a length of pipe to fill the gap. “No problem”, he said, “I’ll just pull the existing ends together. There’s enough give.” As he started yanking on the pipes, the connector to the city mains broke off — leading to an “open fire hydrant” effect. He quickly shut off the water to all four units. Now my other neighbors were also affected; but no worries, it’s all good.

Fortunately, the guy’s a plumber and knows how to make plumbing submit to his will. After another fifteen minutes, the leaks were all fixed and we now have a brand-new shutoff valve on the city supply side, and no water-filter.

On another occasion, we brought in the car for yearly maintenance. There’s a particular garage I like, because I know the guy won’t rip me off. Anyway, when he checked the brakes he told me that the rear brakes were shot and needed to be replaced immediately. The front ones still have a bit of life, but the rear ones needed replaced. <sigh>. What can you do? You need working brakes. The hills of Ma’ale Adummim are very tough on brakes. Of course, so are Israeli driving habits.

Another day, I went to the “hand specialist” to have my hand-pain diagnosed. The doctor probed, as they do, and found the most exquisitely painful part of my hand. He said, “I need x-rays of your hands to be sure what’s going on.” So he sent me off to get x-rays taken. I came back, and he told me, “Your situation isn’t really all that bad, at all”. I found that encouraging, since he is, after all, an expert on hands. I’ve apparently got inflammation of (various) joints, and he’s sending me off to physical therapy. In the meantime, I started taking my pain meds to try to get things under control.

And y’all know I can’t stomach either of the front-runners in the US presidential race. Being of a libertarian bent, I would normally have chosen the Libertarian candidate. But this. Seriously, seriously messed up election cycle this time around.

So much for the negative side of the ledger.

On the positive side, we have reached an agreement with a client for a small project which we will develop using 8th! So even though it’s a (very) small project, it will give us more exposure and allow us to show real-world applications built with 8th.

On the hopefully-positive side: we’ve got another number of potential clients in various stages of potentiality. One is “very close”, a couple are supposedly close, another couple are in the hopeful stage. Two of these various clients are interested in 8th-based solutions, so we are looking forward to closing with them.

In other news: my dear, long-suffering wife Esther has an “event” to attend today, so preparation of the shabbat victuals falls upon my brawny shoulders. At the moment I’m still contemplating the deep spiritual implications of the foodstuffs I’ll prepare. One can’t be too careful…

We’re happy to welcome Dinah this week! We’ll presumably enjoy:
roasted veggies, teriyaki chicken, teriyaki tofu, fried rice, eggplant-mushroom pashtida, zucchini-onion pashtida, pea-potato soup, hard-boiled eggs, brownies, fruit, and spice cake.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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