buying or selling?

I just received (at work) a phone call from a consulting firm. It was pretty obvious that he was calling to either (try to) recruit me or sell services to me, depending on how the first 30 seconds of the conversation went. It was pretty amusing. He apparently doesn't get a lot of "actually, I'm very satisfied with my current position and company" these days. :-) But they might actually have some relevant services, so it wasn't a waste of my 15 minutes either.

(Specifically, if someone could come in and affordably wave the DocBook [1] magic wand for us, with fairly painless migration and all the flexibility we currently have, I'd lobby for that expenditure. There are important things that my current tools can't do and that, apparently, DocBook can. But I don't have the cycles to climb the steep curve right now.)

[1] Or maybe we should be looking at a different tool instead. That evaluation would be part of the job.

Shabbat (mostly)

Hey, CMU's new robotic receptionist (complete with personality) has made national news. It (she?) sounds like a neat project. I like that they are giving the robot a personality of sorts; an article in the local paper talked about her recent date with a vacuum cleaner, for example.

Friday night after services three different people who had been at the board meeting asked if I'm a lawyer. :-) One commented that another board member and I had been really going at it over that bit of wording; I explained that we are both CS types. (That board member and I were both at Transarc/IBM at the same time, as it turns out, though we did not work together on the same project.) Now I didn't perceive any actual hostility in that exchange; I think he understands this type of arguing. But I wonder if others, besides the person who talked to me, got an incorrect impression.

Saturday morning I read torah (and did the associated stuff, leading part of the service and giving a short talk). Afterwards I received the by-now-usual praise from various people. I think I have convinced one of them that I have no special background and he can do this too if he wants to; he said he would think about it and let me know next week if I can assign him a week.

Several people, over the last couple of years, have told me that I inspire them, either with learning or with participation. I find this flattering, but I'd rather they show me, not tell me. Is there some way I can move from "making people feel good" to "actually inspiring people to do"?

I didn't read the entire aliya this week (which is acceptable under our current practice), because I didn't have enough time to learn the whole thing. (I stepped in to fill a gap in the schedule.) I had promised myself that next time I would read the entire aliya; parts are assigned through mid-April, so this is not a problem. Heh. In looking at the schedule, it looks like I'm reading Tazria-Metzora. I guess I'm being punished for taking the easy path this time by getting the leprosy portion next time. :-)

My copy of Trope Trainer (software) came on Friday. I haven't installed it yet, but I'm going to fire it up soon. Looks like a good package, recommended by my rabbi, and I caught a sale.

Sunday

Sunday afternoon I went to that interfaith gathering. There were (at peak) 27 people there. It was moderated by the sole Baha'i. I was the only Jew; there were 7 or 8 Muslims (including Farooq Husseini and his wife, a pleasant surprise), two Quakers, I think one Buddhist, one person who said he was both Hindu and Christian (?), one or two others (specifics forgotten), and the rest Roman Catholics. ( Read more... )

In the evening we had a very pleasant dinner at ralphmelton's and lorimelton's house. Lots of good conversation; I enjoy spending time with this group of people. The cats were better-behaved than usual; I guess Louie was under the weather. :-)