( Tuesday )

Simply moving the cable to my iBook didn't work; I assume I would have to do some configuration, but I don't know what. So I fell back to plan B: I had, as a precaution, put those posts on my thumb drive. There was only one USB connection on their computer, so -- while off the network -- I plugged in the thumb drive and looked for a writable place on disk. C: was out but "Shared Documents" (whatever that is) worked. After I copied the files, I then disconnected the thumb drive, reconnected the network, and continued. (I had to open the files in Wordpad to select text to paste in; Notepad garbled the text and of course emacs wasn't available. Nor was any non-IE browser, but I expected that.) When I was done I deleted my files.

I hope that didn't disturb the clerk at the front desk. I had told her I was going to try to connect my computer and she said "good luck", so I took that as permission to explore more widely. I did notice that they've locked down the machine somewhat, which is smart -- in addition to not being able to write to the local disk, the network settings in the control panel were off-limits. (I couldn't even look.)

While doing all this I had a nice conversation with Stefan from DC, who is here for one night and then heading to Tel Aviv, assuming he can get a replacement for his dead rental car. Friendly fellow; I hope that works out for him.

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mortuus

Bruce Schneier observes that "password" is no longer the most common password; it's "password1". Who says users can't be trained? (Link from goldsquare, I think.)

Hebrew question: the word "lamdeini" means "teach us". Adding the suffix ("ni") seems to have changed "lameid" to "lamdei"; why? Why isn't this "lameidni"? Just because that sounds awkward, or for a grammatical reason I haven't yet met?

Packing report: if I were just going on the trip and there was nothing special about it, everything would fit in one checked bag and my backpack (small carryon). But if I want the option to bring anything back, that would be a bad idea. So, two checked bags, one small. (I've used the small one as a carryon, actually, but as long as I have to check anything, why shlep it through airports?)

Yay! In about 28 hours I'll be in Jerusalem! I'll miss Dani and the cats, but boy is this going to be fun!

There will be no time when it would be in compliance with both Jewish and federal laws for me to light the channukiah for the seventh night (tomorrow night). How peculiar. (We leave Newark at 3:50PM and it'll be morning when we get off the plane.)

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.

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.)

We have an invitation for seder for the first night, from a fellow congregant. This is good; Dani knows the family, so he won't be among strangers, and they like to sing, and they're the sort of people who don't race through the haggadah to get to the meal. So everyone's happy -- yay! Second night is odd: as a Reform Jew I don't see the need for two-day yomim tovim, and Dani is secular, but he's used to two nights from his family (necessity of parental divorce) and I don't mind, so I may yet try to find us something. (I said "well, there's always Chabad" and he said "let me know how that goes for you", so I guess not that since the point would be to do something for him.) He's still opposed to just holding one ourselves.

My rabbi will be leading a trip to Israel at the end of this year. I'm thinking seriously of going. I'd like to see some of the place, and I'd love to do it with my rabbi -- so there'll be, y'know, some religious content, as opposed to just being a tourist. I'll have enough vacation time to do it, since most of the fall holidays have the decency to land on weekends this year, and a bonus I'll be getting at work removes any doubt about being able to afford it. It sounds like this will be a family-friendly but not family-obsessed trip; i.e., I won't feel like e fifth wheel. So I don't see a down-side here, and I think it would be an exciting experience.

Short takes:

This comic reminded me of some cats I've known...

Hold my beer, a look at washroom multitasking (not safe for work), from brokengoose.