Blog/August 2016/Aug 12th

August 12th (See this week's devar torah)

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Congratulations to Daniela on her finalizing her double-MA degree! She is a MAMA now, and we are very proud of her achievements!

After the “birthday shabbat” last week, we continued the celebration by taking my FIL out to a local “chef restaurant” called “Lago”. It is, in fact, next to the “lake”, which is not far from our house. The place was nice and clean. Though the food was pretty good, none of us were particularly hungry after shabbat. We still managed to eat.

Then on Tuesday my nephew Chaim and his wife Ariele made aliyah. That is to say, they immigrated to Israel and are now citizens! Their apartment wasn’t quite ready on Tuesday, so they slept over at our place. Congratulations to the new Israelis!

We made a new release of 8th this week, version 16.11. It included a fairly large number of changes from the prior release: the biggest among them, that different 8th licenses correspond to physically different programs which have different features. This is in response to a number of requests that we change our licensing, which we did. So of course, some people are happy and some are not. At least, we did sell two licenses as a result of the change. At this rate, we’ll be able to make the move from beans to falafel soon.

Along those lines (the licensing fees, not beans), it’s quite apparent that selling programming tools is not the path to riches. It’s not even the path to barely adequate income. It’s a labor of love; but despite claims to the contrary, love is not all you need. So we are going to do what we had wanted to do originally: that is, we will be creating programs of general utility. We’re starting by finishing up the “zemanim” application which I wrote some years ago for Android, and which is pretty popular. The reason we’re starting with zemanim is that it’s something we’ve done before (albeit not in 8th), and our happy customers are long overdue for an update. We’ll fix bugs that were reported, and make the product better than the original. We’ll also make the “iOS” version (which doesn’t currently exist) a paid one, so we may perchance make a few $$$. Probably very few, but likely more than we’re making now, we hope.

Once we’ve got zemanim out, I’ll make the MVP for my secure notebook product, and I think we’ll try to pitch it to investors. Or perhaps we’ll do a crowdfunding effort. We’ll see.

On the last day of my FIL’s visit, we were planning when to take him to the airport. Out of the blue, he decides he wants to visit Modi’in. Because… because, um. Because it’s so well known as a tourist destination? No, that’s probably not it. Whatever his reasons, we took him there. Since Esther works there, she was able to give us the five-minute tour of the highlights of the city. In case you aren’t familiar with Modi’in, it’s basically the same as Ma’ale Adummim, but bigger and more conveniently located.

Anyway, it was lunchtime, so we decided to stop at the Modi’in mall and have lunch at “Cafe Greg”. Esther and my FIL ordered normal menu items. I ordered the “Mexican Salad”. It sounded interesting. Here’s the thing: it had as much to do with Mexican food as I have to do with Eskimos.

Let’s start by saying that “feta cheese” and “sriracha sauce” are two ingredients which should never appear in any Mexican dish. Continue by noting that there is a proper proportion of “dressing” to “salad”, and that they erred entirely too far in the “dressing” direction. Then say that just because the ingredients came from cans does not necessarily mean they should be dumped in clumps rather than being mixed together. And finally, agree that such a mess of a dish should not cost 50% more than a normal sandwich-type dish. I think Mr Greg needs to visit Mexico. Nevertheless, I ate most of the dish. I was really hungry.

Well anyway. The 9th of Av actually falls on shabbat, but because it’s forbidden to fast then, the observance of the fast is delayed until Sunday. So we will go from a day of happiness and feasting to a day of sadness and fasting. Let’s pray that mashiaḥ appears between now and then and the fast is cancelled!

This shabbat is our first in quite a while with no guests! The nuclear family will enjoy:
celery soup, baked chicken, roasted potatoes, roasted broccoli, acorn squash, veggie chili, rice, fried tofu, eggplant lasagna, (and ḥalvah).

Until next time,
shabbat shalom and ṣom poreh!

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