Blog/December 2010/Dec 3rd
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Dec 3rd (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!
This week started Hannukah, the "Festival of Lights". Though it's a winter holiday, the summer is loathe to leave us. The Haifa area is experiencing one of the worst forest fires in Israel's history. Lots of work and techno news. Sarah's forgetful clients. Wikileaks!
As you know, Hannukah started this week. It's generally a pretty laid-back holiday, since there aren't any restrictions on work, and it usually is accompanied by chilly weather. This year, however, we are still experiencing warm (not hot) weather; presumably that will change next week, but I'm not convinced. On the other hand, it is cold enough at night that sleeping with a comforter is a good idea. At least we don't have to worry about the rain extinguishing the Hannukah candles!
It is not clear yet why, but a massive forest fire is raging in the north of Israel, near Haifa. It's actually now on the outskirts of Haifa; tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and at least 41 people have died. It was bad enough that the government called for nearby countries (Greece and some others) to help if they could. At the moment they say the fire is under control; we hope and pray that no one else is injured. For those of you with a weak sense of Israeli geography, Haifa is quite a long way off from where we live, so we are not in any physical danger. Besides which, there's not much to burn in Maaleh Adummim after Lag B'Omer.
Sarah was planning on taking Sunday Hannukah (this coming Sunday) as a vacation day from sherut. But since the place she was supposed to work was closed on Wednesday, she came home; and then since she didn't want to go back for half a day, she took Thursday as a vacation day instead. One of her five allotted days, as she mentions bitterly whenever the opportunity presents. She is also encountering one of the less joyful aspects of old-age: one of her 'ladies' simply has forgotten who Sarah is and why she is supposed to visit her; so she is no longer on her list of 'ladies' to visit.
At work, I was given a task which was difficult; but when I researched it, I found it was actually impossible. The bosses-that-be insisted I had to do it anyway, since it was a client demand and the client pays our bills. So one day, as I was travelling with my lovely wife Esther, I was complaining to her in an agitated manner about the situation; and as I explained to her exactly what the setup was, I was struck with a brilliant idea of how to give the client what they want, in a manner which was easy (!) to implement. Thank you, Esther! It turns out that giving the customer what they need does not always mean giving what they ask for. Anyway, my bosses were very happy -- so hopefully that will translate into something more meaningful to me in the near term...
In other work, one of my independent clients arose once again to give me work. Even though I'm at 100% capacity already, with my translation project and the other things I have going on, I felt a certain obligation to help him out. So now, on the list of things taking up my time is updating the software I wrote 6+ years ago for him. Since modifying the program (which I had thought I was done with six years ago!) is becoming a pain, I'm looking into porting it to my Reva Forth. This will make is extremely easy to work with for me, as well as more flexible (and it will then run equally well on Windows as Linux).
And what can you say about Wikileaks? You must have head about it by now! Everyone who's anyone is mentioned there. I'm happy my part in the Dubai take-down was kept out of it though. Really, was there anything particularly surprising? Everybody (in Israel) already knew that the Arab Gulf nations are scared witless of a nuclear Iran. Everybody (in Israel) already knew that the real obstacle to peace is the lack of a desire on the Pally part. And everybody (in the world!) already knew that the European leaders are foolish playboys and that the Russian leaders are the same recycled autocrats. So what's new? Nothing at all.
What else? Well, we went as a family to target-practice. Sarah, it turns out, is quite the sharpshooter. Esther and I both improved our accuracy, and it was really quite a lot of fun.
This week, we have NOTHING for shabbat! We are having dinner at one set of friends, and lunch at another. If I'm lucky, perhaps we'll have some tuna and crackers for se`uda shlishit... <snif>
Until next week,
shabbat shalom!
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