Blog/June 2016/Jun 17th

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

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It was a short week for us, because of the holiday at the beginning of the week. Nevertheless, we were busy as usual. The weather was hot: we had a heat-wave, but it went away and now it’s normal for the season and scheduled to stay that way in the near-term. The six-legged freaks seem to have been dissuaded for now…

After last week’s political screed, I won’t belabor the point after the horrific events of this week in Orlando. However, I will just comment on a ludicrous article: an AR-15 is not a full-automatic weapon, its action is much the same as most pistols (semi-automatic, one shot per trigger-pull). It has almost no recoil, so you can shoot it (inaccurately) with one hand. Unless you have haemophilia, you are very unlikely to get a bruised shoulder from firing one.

Moving on:

Our EE partner finally finished checking the hardware he created for us, and the prototype boards are on their way! Once we get the boards, we’ll be able to really start the “e8th” port, which is very exciting. Since there were “takers” for the board from our Indiegogo campaign, we also have to build some — so I’ve ordered the electronic components, and will order the PCB boards we need in order to assemble the actual product for our clients.

The quantity of PCB boards we need is not large, so we needed to find a manufacturer who (1) deals in small quantities, and (2) has a price we can afford. Everyone we asked said, “go to China”. So we looked up different options there, and found one which had quick turnaround and gave us a price of $195, including shipping, for 50 PCBs. We thought we might be better off using an Israeli firm, since we would have to pay VAT anyway, and we figured a local company might be easier to deal with.

So the first company I contacted quoted me a price of $3,000 (yes, 3K USD). Only 15 times more than the Chinese company. For that price, the PCBs would have to come with body-servants and tall, cool drinks! I asked if that included component procurement and assembly, in which case it might be an OK price. But no, that quote was only for the PCBs! Chutzpa!

A second company was far more reasonable: $343 (not including VAT) plus $130 shipping. Far more than what we could get on our own, but at least not astronomically so. But this company was quoting a price using a Chinese supplier… so why would we do that when we could do it ourselves for much less?

The downside of doing it ourselves, is that I’ll have to assemble and test the boards myself. That involves getting a pile of components and soldering them to the PCBs, and running electrical tests and software tests. So it’s time-consuming (and time is $$$). But my EE assures me the soldering task is simple enough if you know how to solder (and I do). However, I will need to get the correct kind of equipment, since I left my electronics stuff behind when we moved to Israel almost nine years ago.

We would like to wish a hearty mazal-tov to Rabbi and Rebbetzin Farkash on their becoming grandparents for the first time! כן ירבו, as they say.

This shabbat we will enjoy the company of Dinah and Natania. Bring on the wine! On the menu:
good wine, homemade ḥalla, meat bourekas, potato bourekas, shawarma, veggie stir-fry, rice, veggie chili, eggplant not-Parmesan, Natania’s mystery dessert, and fruit.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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