Blog/August 2016/Aug 19th
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< Blog | August 2016
| August 19th (See this week's devar torah) | Comments or questions? Click here! |
We had a very busy week, as usual — all work, mostly.
Today is our (Hebrew calendar) 9th anniversary of making aliyah. Nine years! We’re looking forward to the next nine, and hopefully seeing you join us!
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been sending out “cold-call” emails to companies to introduce us and our products and services. I’ve sent out a lot of emails, generally with no response. This week, it’s as if the trumpets sounded at Jericho and the walls came tumbling down: most days I got an inquiry or had a meeting or set one up. Strangely, two of the inquiries came from people I contacted three months ago.
So in preparation for the incipient flood, I’m seeking to expand my network of software development contractors on whom I can rely. If you know of someone who wants to work on a contract-only basis and is a “self-starter” and technically very sharp, please introduce us. The person’s physical location is not important, as long as they are responsive to email etc.
We worked our “social media” hard this week, and saw a spike in new downloads of 8th. Part of that may be due to our discussion of “skinning” a GUI, which in two days garnered over 200 hits. For those of you who don’t care to read that (or who may not follow the technical talk), what it discusses is a simple method of changing how an application looks, e.g. its “skin”, in 8th. This came about because one of my customers asked how to do that, so I whipped up some code and posted it in the forum.
In other news: the weather’s been pretty pleasant this week. Stable, Israeli summer weather. It looks like it will continue that way for the next week as well.
Sarah’s been asking me to clean her laptop, for a while. The reason is that here on the edge of the desert, it’s dusty; the dust collects in the laptop and eventually the cooling fan gets clogged and the machine runs very hot (and it can be damaged). So yesterday she gave me her machine to clean.
I do this for the other machines in the house; generally, it’s pretty simple. But her laptop is “special”. It has to be completely disassembled in order to get to the fan. So it took me a good long while to take it all apart, clean and reassemble it. Fortunately, it works after the treatment!
The other day, Esther showed me what looked like a broken rubber washer which she found in our shower. We didn’t know what it was, exactly, though I suspected the shower doors (which run on tracks in a semi-circle). Then, yesterday, more broken-washer-pieces fell out, and the door stopped working correctly.
So I took the parts to the best hardware store in our area and asked the guy if he had any washers like those. He said he didn’t, and didn’t know where to get any. I asked a few places, with the same result. Desperate, I went to the tiny hardware store local to us. The guy behind the counter said, “you have a sliding-door shower?” and I said, “yes”. He turned around, and gave me a blister-pack of four wheels (for a sliding-door shower). I could have kicked myself for not going there first.
In the event, Esther and I had an opportunity to get to know each other even better, as we crammed into our small bathroom and maneuvered the shower doors into place (with their new rollers). It wasn’t easy, since neither of us had ever done that; however, we were successful and the doors work better than they ever did before. So much for needing “expert contractors”.
During the week, Esther had her monthly get-together with fellow knitters, in Jerusalem. We had ordered some documents from a printer, and they were waiting for us to pick them up. So I accompanied her to Jerusalem. We picked up the documents, and headed to a restaurant for dinner. Then we went shopping at the “Osher Ad” super-market in Talpiot, since we were short on various supplies. This is the chain that seems to import from Costco — it’s really weird to see “Kirkland” brand items for sale. The store doesn’t have any Arab workers, because of security concerns. But it was full of Arabs shopping there; ah, the irony!
This shabbat we’ll be taking it easy. Our emergency back-up daughter Dinah is joining us for lunch. We’ll hopefully all enjoy:
meatloaf,
lentil-loaf,
mushroom soup,
mashed potatoes,
roasted veggies,
chicken-salad,
chocolate-chip cookies (probably),
(and ḥalvah).
Until next time,
shabbat shalom!
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