parsha bit: Vayeitzei

The torah describes Leah as having eyes that are weak. The midrash says that as she grew up, she heard people say that it's fortunate that Rivka had two sons while her brother Lavan had two daughters, because now the older son would marry the older daughter and the younger son would marry the younger daughter. Leah, the older daughter, inquired about Eisav, the older son, and when she found out what kind of man he was she cried until her eyes grew weak. (Genesis Rabbah 70:16)

international power conversion

Dear LazyWeb,

I am travelling to Israel and want to take some of my US electronics with me. I've found "international power converters" that claim to cover "just about everybody" but when they list countries/regions, Israel is never on the list. What kind of power do they use? What are the magic keywords that will let me not fry my laptop? As far as plugs are concerned, is "if it fits it's right" a safe approach, or dangerous?

Thanks.

random bits

This morning the parkway was uncharacteristically slow, which I discovered only once I was well down the ramp. As I was crawling along I spotted a signboard ahead. Oh good, I thought; it might say what's going on. It said "congestion ahead". Well duh. Would it have been so difficult to say how much farther ahead? (Didn't affect me; I was getting off at the next exit anyway. It could have helped others, though.

I'd sure like to know why, semi-randomly, no browser installed on my home PC will render the ThinkGeek site. The only deterministic aspect so far is that once it fails, it apparently won't work until a reboot. I even tried clearing the cache, turning the firewall off, and trying the site -- zip. (Yes, of course I immediately turned the firewall back on.) Maybe I'll pull out the laptop later.

For what I assure you is a perfectly good reason, tonight I was trying to find DVDs of the Star Wars movies in the Italian language. Searching got a little more productive once I switched to the term "guerre stellari", but it's still bringing me no joy. Looks like even if I could find them, and find them in NTSC, they'd be region 2. Oh well. But it wasn't a completely wasted effort; back-translation supplied the following titles: "Vendetta of the Sith", "The Ghost Threat", "The Empire Still Hits", and "Stellar Wars YOU - The Return of the Jedi".

Last night I learned that my former boss (the most recent ex-boss) is going on the Israel trip. He doesn't live in this city any more, so I didn't expect that. Nifty! More people I actually know in the group. (I already know less than half the group, so far.)

From passionateusers: The zone of expendability: how management feels about you.

osewalrus has an excellent post about why "stealing" wireless isn't stealing but trespassing.

On a different subject, osewalrus also had an interesting entry recently looking at legal aspects of marriage, custody, and consent a little differently.

Scott Adams on Bill Gates for president. There are worse ideas.