Blog/September 2020/Sep 11th

Sep 11th

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This week wasn’t particularly interesting, just very very hot and very very long.

Follow-up to last week’s mention of replacing my laptop: I thought the machine would take some three weeks to be prepared and arrive. Well, it took four days to prepare, and should be here by Monday. So that’s nice. I’m impressed with UPS’ handling of import details: as soon as the package was put on the plane leaving the US, UPS in Israel contacted me to let me know the customs duties and taxes I’d have to pay to release it, and they offered (for a fee of course) to handle all that on my behalf.

I knew I was going to have to pay import taxes; but there were other fees I hadn’t considered. Nevertheless, I did the calculation and as of yesterday (e.g. the USDILS conversion rate), this machine costs (with taxes, duty, delivery to the house) 83% of what a roughly equivalent (though slower) MacbookPro would in the US (excluding sales-tax and delivery). And it’s a whopping 60% less than that same MBP would cost here in Israel. The Apple hardware is really nice, but it can’t be worth that kind of markup!

Anyway, Esther and I were just working this week. Sarah too. Nothing too unusual, there.

Various and sundry:

• Disney has remade “Mulan” as a “live action” film (the original from 1998 was “animated”). It may turn out to be the biggest flop of the year.
• But that won’t prevent it from winning an ‘Oscar’ for ‘best picture’, now that the “Academy” has gone full-retard.
• The cast of the “Princess Bride” is reuniting to raise money for the D party of WI. Which just confirms my opinion that if I cared what actors had to say, I’d never watch any movies at all.
• Biden should have quit after being VP. He just claimed that more than 6000 US military members died from COVID. The actual number is 7. Where’re the ‘fact-checkers’, baby?
• Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Left is furious. I mean, good ole’ Yasser got the prize, and he actively encouraged warfare. Obama got the prize, and he did absolutely nothing. At least Trump can legitimately claim to have encouraged peace in the Middle East (and the Balkans). If I were him, I wouldn’t want to be in the same company as Yasser and Obama, but that’s me.
• In case you weren’t aware, the terminology used by wine connoisseurs is “inextricable from racism and sexism” and excludes “dimensions of flavor that are unfamiliar to the white, Western cultures that dominate the world of fine wine and reinforcing retrograde notions of gender”. All of that? I just wanted a glass of wine, mxn!

I’m adding some more hardware manipulation features to 8th. To test them, I had to cobble together some parts (which I already had) and connect them to a Raspberry Pi. I couldn’t figure out why the “ID” value I was getting back from the main part was wrong. Consistently wrong. It turns out that the part I actually have isn’t the part I thought I had! Need to look closely at the fine-print on the component…

Next shabbat starts Rosh HaShanah (which will be two-days, as always). We had invited friends for dinner, and perhaps Sarah and Yarin. But our amazing government has decided (though it’s not final as of this writing) to completely shut down the entire country for 14 days, starting next Friday. So that sucks. It’s still possible the final decision will be less draconian, but they have been mulling a general closure for some time.

The beastly-hot weather (42C high!) over last shabbat didn’t cool off during this past week. However, it’s supposed to cool back to seasonal norms (29C high) by Monday. That would be most welcome! Hot nights are not conducive to good moods.

This shabbat we’ll cheer our spirits with:
homemade ḥalla (and non-homemade matza), Lancashire hot-pot, veggie cholent, various salatim, fruit crumble, and ice cream.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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