random bits

For his birthday I got Dani (among things) a USB-powered cup warmer for his coffee. So far the packaging is providing as much entertainment as the device itself. Sample: "Do not use the plastic or paper cup." And the temperature ranges from (whatever) at "the boarder" to (higher whatever) at the center. I wonder what language this stuff was translated from, and by whom.

We have two programmable thermostats in our house, one for the furnace and one for the AC. (Yeah, so it's up to us to make sure only one is engaged. This is not hard.) The one for the AC is on daylight savings time (sic), and the one for the furnace is not. As I was thinking about this and determining that there's no need to reset the latter, it struck me that "standard" time will soon be only 4.5 months of the year. That doesn't sound like much of a standard to me. A "standard" transmission in a car isn't standard any more either. What other things are still called "standard" even when that's no longer true?

On the edge of an aphorism by metahacker rings true to me.

Iron Chef Programmer by merle_ made me laugh even though I've never seen the TV show.

A service that could be useful to some of my readers: DynDNS gives you a domain name that you can then point anywhere else, for free. It's not as good as a full vanity domain, but the price is right and sometimes you just want a path that's better than "obscure.isp.com/users/my_arcane_account_number/public" or the like.

Shavuot is tomorrow night and Friday. This is one of the three festivals, equal in importance to Pesach and Sukkot, though it seems to be less prominent in many people's eyes. (It's one day instead of a week, which is part of it.) A holiday celebrating the giving of the torah is special for me, though, and I'm looking forward to late-night torah study with my rabbi tomorrow night.

I have paid the deposit to go on my rabbi's trip to Israel in December. There's a meeting next week for people interested in the trip; ironically, it conflicts with one session of the ulpan (intensive Hebrew class). Oops. :-) (It sounds like missing the meeting will not be problematic.)