Blog/August 2015/Aug 7th

August 7th (See this week's devar torah)

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Work, work and more work! Esther and I were both very busy with our various kinds of work this week. The heat was intense: it hit 41.4C outside our house this week (that’s 106.5 to you Fahrenheiters). All week we had a pattern of hot days and warm nights, which is mostly uncomfortable; B”H, our air-conditioners work adequately!

Esther is one of two accountants at her office who handle US returns, and the other one is now out on maternity leave — so Esther has to take over her office-mate’s load. Fortunately, her boss is willing to pay overtime, but I think my wife would prefer less work to more money at this point. In any event, it’s keeping her out of trouble.

Last week I mentioned we were starting work on a port of 8th to the Raspberry Pi platform (RPI), as a start on our entry into the “embedded” arena. Not knowing much about RPI, I assumed it would take several weeks to accomplish the work. Well, by mid-week this week I had completed the port, and now I’m awaiting the arrival of the actual hardware so I can test it. Turns out that the RPI hardware runs a variant of the Linux operating system, and 8th already runs on Linux. So the porting effort is mostly geared towards handling special features that RPI has (for example, the “GPIO”, which lets you hook up the RPI to outside hardware devices). So probably we’ll have a complete port by end of next week!

I also mentioned that Sarah was upgrading her machine to Windows 10, and she did. So far, she’s fine with it. A word of warning to adopters of it, though: Win10 violates your privacy by default. In addition, Microsoft is charging for missing features. You know, the “nickle-and-dime them to death” software model.

This past week was also learned from the Obama administration that Israel indeed stands alone. Not at all surprising to those of us who’ve been paying attention to deeds rather than words, but still a bit shocking to hear it stated so baldly. I mean, how could we possibly take the United States’ commitments seriously when we hear Kerry state he doesn’t know if Iran is serious about destroying Israel. I mean, it just boggles the mind that the US is lead by such know-nothings. Or is it as simple as “money talks”?

What else?

• The Trump show has begun. Could this loon be the next POTUS?
• Because, you know, insanity doesn’t disqualify you from leadership!
• Another reason to not travel on shabbat.
• How “real men” settle their differences!
• Inching towards the Star Trek “universal translator”?
• Perhaps they’re confused as to what “kosher” means?

The forecast is for very hot weather on shabbat (36C high in Jerusalem, probably 39 or 40 here in M”A), but tapering off by Monday to a seasonal 31C (again, in Jerusalem). So glad to see an end of the very hot weather; hopefully it’ll stay moderate!

This week we’ve got two sometime-additions: Dinah and her brother Daniel will be joining us for (at least) one meal:
brisket, vegetarian pastel de papas, crock-pot chicken, roasted yams and potatoes, roasted broccoli and cauliflower, egg salad, roasted eggplant, salatim, watermelon, and brownies.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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