Blog/September 2014/Sep 19th
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< Blog | September 2014
| September 19th (See this week's devar torah) | Comments or questions? Click here! |
Hi, again!
It has started to cool down here in the Land, fall is trying to break through the summer heat! It was a week of frustrations and achievements in equal measure. More explanation after this break for family news…
Sarah and Dinah are spending their last shabbat in the not-very United Kingdom, and from what we’ve heard, they will be very happy to come back. While they enjoyed the beauty of the Isles, the cliché is true: “there’s no place like home”! They’ll be back, B”H, on Monday; and we’ve made sure to restock the larder with all the food they’ve missed for the last month. We’re looking forward to the return of the Wandering Jews.
Frustrations first. Esther spent a couple of tense days trying to communicate with our accountant’s assistants. The accountant himself is out of the country right now, so Esther had no choice but to deal with the “assistants”. Those of you who’ve known us for years, know that Esther is very particular about her work (which happens to be accounting). She knows the kinds of mistakes people are prone to make, so she takes care to organize the source materials in the best order and to present them in an organized fashion. Every single month.
So imagine her shock and dismay when she found out that the accounting team had not examined the materials she had sent them all year, and were asking for the very documents and schedules she had already sent them! Since we are citizens of the USA as well as of Israel, we have to file tax reports in both countries; and the US authorities are not forgiving of late reports. So her frustration was multiplied many-fold by being told that the report which she was told would be ready was not, in fact, ready. And compound all that with the supposed “accountants” mis-classifying something as income and taking on our behalf a rebate from the Israeli sales-tax authority. A rebate to which we are not entitled at all! She was… unhappy, let’s say. And to top it off, we have two months to prepare a “declaration of assets” for the Israeli tax authorities. And we have an audit coming after the Rosh Hashana.
We’ll be sure to imbibe heavily this shabbat. Ah, and an interesting tidbit: the US is now less competitive, tax-wise, than either Greece or Israel.
My frustrations centered around finishing the “alpha” version of my client’s product. Trying to get the video processing working quickly enough has been a huge pain. I really, truly, hate Java! The frustrations were compounded by my futile attempt at putting air in our car’s tires. The car came with ‘extras’. Among them tire air-pressure monitors. The tire valves have special caps which don’t come off in the normal manner, and I still haven’t figured out how to get them off. Very frustrating!
In the corporate realm, things were mostly hectic: I made an interim (bug-fix and improvements) release of the beta-release of my product; my beta-testers have been giving excellent feedback. But all that excellent feedback has been extending my work hours even more than usual. My employee has made very good progress on her portion of things, and also uncovered bugs (which we fixed, of course). All in a good cause, but I’ll be relieved when we finally ship it.
And by the way: our product is about two months from shipping, and is shaping up quickly. If you want to invest in a revolutionary product, we are interested in discussing it with you.
I’m planning on making another interim drop of the beta right before yom-tov (coming up this Wed. night! are you ready?). Then I’ll be incommunicado for three straight days, which means that my beta-testers will have filled the forum with many dozens of comments I’ll have to sort through. All in a good cause, all in a good cause…
We’ve been slowly gearing up for the Holidays. Our “wine-cellar” is stocked, we visited the butcher, we got our bulk-supplies and we’ll visit the shuq in the next couple days. Now all we need to do is get ourselves ready!
This week it’s still just the two of us, for the last time (for quite a while, we hope!). We’re going all-out:
beautiful braised beef-ribs,
chicken slow-roasted to perfection,
amazing vegetables,
scrumptious salads,
and the calm before the storm
Because of Rosh Hashana, you won’t hear from us this coming week, don’t be alarmed!
So, until next time,
shabbat shalom and shana tova!
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