Blog/March 2017/Mar 17th

March 17th

We commenced the week with purim, immediately after shabbat. We listened attentively to the Scroll of Esther being read, and did all the other things one must do for the holiday. That includes having the traditional meal with our friends. Sarah had to work, so she didn’t make it to the meal; her loss: it was a very convivial event, though she did look fantastic in her (legitimate) Japanese kimono.

Daniela and Jeremy enjoyed 14" of snow this week. Both took a ‘snow day’, and I think I’ve never seen Jeremy happier than when he was anticipating a fresh snowstorm.

As for us, no snow and little rain, but the weather did turn cold again towards the end of the week. Cold enough to make it worth wearing the (amazing, fantastic) woolen socks (which Esther knitted me) at night. They do keep the feet warm!

This year I’m going to make the effort to produce home-made matza. It’s not particularly difficult, but for one thing: I need “guarded flour” (קמח שמור). That’s flour which has never been in contact with water, which was milled from wheat which also never came in contact with water (once fully matured and harvested). If I can’t find that flour (or, barring that, the wheat from which to make it), I won’t be able to make the home-made matza happen this year. That will make me very sad. So if you know of a source (obviously, here in Israel) for this kind of flour, please inform me directly!

Jew Haiku:

Wheat, never moistened
Passover awaits you soon
Please don’t disappoint

Various and sundry:

• The encrypted communications application “Signal” now has video calling on all platforms.
• Though the CIA ostensibly cracked it, they didn’t really. The upshot is: if the phone has been compromised, then hackers can intercept the communications before they get encrypted.
• It seems they might have spied on Trump. Or some three-letter-agencies may have done, possibly under Obama’s direction. That really should be investigated. But which TLA gets to do the investigation?
• What will it be today? Maybe Bad Trump…
• … or perhaps Good Trump? Every day’s a surprise!

A Sad Story

I couldn’t sleep one night this week. That’s not so sad, it just happens (more frequently as I get older). The sad part was that I was unable to sleep because my brain was actively pursuing the question of “why?”. As in: “why is 8th having a particular performance problem?”. Being unable to sleep over something so inconsequential is pretty sad.

However, as a result of my insomniac pondering, I came up with a solution to that particular issue which indeed improved performance quite a bit, while simultaneously reducing overall memory usage. So there was, after all, a happy ending to my disturbing tale. I know, you were deeply worried about my sanity. For the geeks amongst you: the problem was related to how 8th utilizes “pools” to allocate data. I changed to a different algorithm which is faster to allocate, and less likely to cause contention.

The shabbat forecast calls for cloudy and warming weather. Rain reappears at the beginning of the week (they say). We’ll deal with whatever we get.

This shabbat neither Sarah nor Dinah are with us. Instead, we’ve got Chaim, Ariele, and Netzach. We’ll cook up:
chicken soup, baked chicken, slow-cooked beef, other stuff TBD, various salatim, chocolate babka, and watermelon.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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