Blog/December 2010/Dec 31st
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Dec 31st (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!
Timid reappearance of the winter; gravity sucks; light entertainment; no rest for the weary.
After the forceful winter storm we experienced two weeks ago, we were ready for a powerful winter. But last week there was no winter weather, and this week it was warmer than usual for most of the week. It was, that is, until yesterday; when the temperatures dropped and the rain started up -- gently, this time. ברוך משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם!
To lighten our spirits and to show solidarity with our friend the actor and his family, we went to the opening performance of Ruddigore in Jerusalem. It was a very enjoyable show -- they took some small liberties with the original text (my favorite was the repetition of one song in Yiddish). A good time was had by all -- including, one presumes, the British ambassador who was also there (a row behind us).
This week I rediscovered a truth known since ancient times, which is: gravity sucks. The specific manner in which I discovered this was by snagging the power cord of my laptop on my foot, causing the laptop to execute an ill-fated pirouette onto the hard, hard, tile floor. If it weren't for gravity, the laptop's screen would not have been inconvenienced in the least; but as we do live near the bottom of a significant gravitational well, the laptop was accelerated at 9.81 m/s2 towards a sudden encounter with the Tiles of Death.
At first, I thought the machine was fine; after all, it's been through a lot. But as soon as I picked it up, I knew: all hope was lost. The screen peered back at me with the distorted face only an LCD given a hammer-blow can present. It was sickening, particularly since the laptop was my primary machine!
After thinking about it overnight, I realized I could "repurpose" the laptop to be the server I needed to set up (since ronware.org will soon be hosted in my home rather than at an external site), because the server wouldn't need a functioning screen. So I could save money by not buying a server machine! On the other hand, I still needed to get a new machine, which was more than I had originally budgeted to spend on this project. It turned out well, however.
Looking for a work-machine which met my minimum requirements but was not too expensive, I settled on a "Lenovo IdeaPad G560". It looked beefy enough to use for development work, but not so expensive I would be afraid to use it. I picked one up at a local store, the second day after the unfortunate extinction event.
The machine came with Windows 7, which I promptly wiped off the disk. Installed kubuntu 10.10, which worked absolutely perfectly, detecting all the hardware properly. Life is good! Transfered all my data from the old machine to the new one, and ... no loss but a bit of time and a bunch of sheqalim. I'm now trying to get used to the keyboard layout and the mousepad, both different from their immediate predecessor. I keep hitting the wrong keys ...
Besides the stress induced by the aforementioned act of destruction, work has been getting more and more stressful. Last week I mentioned that we did not send out a build of our product (which I thought was fine, but the Bosses did not). So this week we had to get all the features completed and the product out the door. The small fly in the ointment, so to speak, was my dependence on another programmer -- one who is notorious for being unable to hit deadlines even with a cannon. The end result was that we did hit the deadline, but it involved me (of course) spending from 7:00 to 23:00 on Thursday getting things done. <grrrr>!
This week we're staying home, thank you, and the menu will include: fish balls, Hummous, eggplant, tabbouleh, Hilbeh, cabbage salad, soup, baked chicken, roasted potatoes, roasted veggies, fatay, spice cake, fruit, chili, rice and salads. Oh, and the usual homemade Hallah. Mmmmmm....!
(N.B.: despite the incredibly bountiful shabbat meals we prepare, B"H, both Esther and I have continued to lose weight by being "good" the rest of the week. In case you were wondering ...)
Until next week,
shabbat shalom!
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