Monica

Shabbat services were well-attended this week. I think we have a significant number of interfaith families in the congregation, so I wouldn't have been surprised by sparse attendance.

This morning my rabbi asked us to mention, during this darkest part of the year, something that brought light into our lives. Most people mentioned family in some form. He pointed out that where there's light there's also darkness, and certainly all families have times of strife (including Yaakov's family, which we read about one final time this week).

My family is pretty good in that department; there are some tensions and disagreements, of course, but mostly we all get along pretty well. I'm lucky to have parents who still love each other very much and other family members who are doing ok. My niece still needs some basic socialization, but oh well. (Her younger brother, who used to be a real brat, has grown up considerably, and is better behaved than she is at the moment.)

We visited them this evening for dinner and exchange of loot. (It's not my holiday, but it's theirs. I can play along to keep them happy.) Everyone seemed to be happy with what we got them. We had one challenge: my parents had hinted that they'd like a new card table and chairs, but it's not practical to wrap that. So we stashed them on the porch, and I wrapped up a deck of cards. When they opened that I said "and here's something to play them on" and we brought in the real gift. That went over well.

My father had asked Dani to bring his laptop along (it's a Mac running Panther). They spent a while playing with it before dinner, and he liked a lot of what he saw. So the copy of Panther we got him went over very well when we gave it to him later.

On our way home, several blocks from my parents' house but not yet on the highway, I observed to Dani that the car felt a little bumpier than I know this road to be, and asked if he had a flat tire. (I had a specific nominee based on the feel of the ride.) That was in fact the case. It looked like it might be fixable with an air compressor (at least for the nonce), so I called my parents to ask the location of the nearest gas station with air. They said they had a compressor, so we went back there. (At tonight's temperatures, driving on it and risking damage to the rim seemed like a better idea than changing the tire.) It turned out, though, that the tire has problems beyond what a refill can solve, so I suggested that we're paying AAA for five service calls a year and it's awfully cold out. It didn't take much to convince Dani that we could wait inside my parents' nice warm house for someone to show up and do this for us.

We were promised service within the hour and someone showed up 45 minutes later. With the right tools (a real jack rather than the toy that came with the car, and a power ratchet set instead of a hand wrench) he had the tire changed in just a few minutes and we were on our way. It turned out that my parents know the guy, because small towns are like that. In the process of digging out the doughnut Dani stumbled on the air compressor that he'd forgotten he had (and I never knew about). Heh. Not that it would have helped this time, of course, but it's useful to know that it's there.

Today's Halloween, so I've been assuming that costumed children (and some non-costumed non-children, based on past years) would show up on our porch seeking sugary tribute. I saw nothing in the newspaper about scheduled hours for this, so I applied the power of Google. I wonder whether this means that the web really is pervasive, or if people who have kids (or otherwise care) have alternative sources of information. Silly me; I just naturally assumed that this was one of the jobs of a local newspaper.

I did buy some sugary tribute; we'll see how many people show up before we leave for dinner with friends. We didn't get a lot of people last year or the year before; it's possible we have a a reputation as the house that hands out weird stuff due to Dani handing out comic books for a few years in the past. On the other hand, we might just live on a low-payoff street; the houses are more spread out than a few blocks over and I'm not sure how many neighbors participate.

This afternoon we visited with my parents (and sister and one of her kids, though said kid preferred the computer's company to ours). My parents are taking the death of their dog (about a month ago) pretty hard. Thor was a 14-year-old golden retriever; they'd had him since he was 2.

They had him cremated, and my mother showed us the urn that contains his ashes. I'll have to look that one up in Miss Manners. I mean, what's the proper response? "It's a pretty urn"? "I'm so sorry" (but I said that already)? Silence? (Oh, and a wise move: they seal the urn, so accidents that don't involve breakage are harmless.)

I knew that dogs could be trained to do a lot, but I was surprised to read about the assistance animal that called 911, barked persistently into the receiver until the folks on the other end reacted, and then unlocked the front door for the ambulance crew when his owner fell.

We had a visitor Shabbat afternoon, and the three of us played games for a few hours. Aha -- that's a good way to spend (part of) long Shabbat afternoons! (I can't just read all day -- I get headaches from eyestrain.) Of course, with the change of seasons and now the time change, long Shabbat afternoons are going to be much less long for a while. But I must remember this come summer and try to arrange for it on a regular basis. Besides, I like having company and I have friends who like to play games, so what's not to like in this plan?

Friday night at services someone was wearing a Kerry/Edwards button -- transliterated into Hebrew. Some words should just not be transliterated into Hebrew. "Edwards" is one of them. Boy did that look funny.

Four times during the Jewish year it is customary to recite Yizkor, a prayer in memory of the dead, as part of morning sevices. It's traditional for people whose parents are both still alive to leave during this, but my congregation urges people to stay. I feel a little funny doing so (not clear why -- it's not like I have a traditional background that's at odds with my current synagogue), but I stay because my rabbi wants me to.

Mourning non-Jewish relatives is a little strange anyway. The practice that has evolved for me, though it's kind of odd I suppose, is that I say kaddish on the appropriate dates for the two grandparents who died since I became religious, but not for the other two. One of the other two turns out to have died three days (on the Jewish calendar) before one of the others, so I mentally include her at the same time. The fourth, my paternal grandfather, died when I was a child and I don't even know the date. And I liked him, and I feel funny about leaving him out of the "formal" observance completely.

This Shavuot during yizkor it struck me: I don't know the date, but I do know that he died in May, and Shavuot is usually in May (or early June), and I'm going to be there for yizkor anyway... so it seems logical that, for purposes of private observances (e.g. memorial candles), I should observe my grandfather's yahrzeit on Shavuot. That also creates some degree of parity -- each of the grandparents who died long ago is getting added onto something else, but no one is getting forgotten. (Not that I would forget them in any case -- but I mean formally.)

When did you first discover the net?

In college, and in stages. I first encountered the idea of email in 1979; I knew there was a bigger world out there, but as a student I was limited to campus email addresses. In, I think, 1982 I got a job with the CS department, which as a side effect got me my first account on a machine with ARPAnet access. I discovered the SF-Lovers digest, but little else, and I didn't know anyone outside the university who had email. In 1984, after I graduated but while I still had a legacy account, CMU got Usenet and I got sucked in for a while. (There was no reader on the box on which I had an account; I read articles directly out of the spool directory over the network for long enough to decide that this was interesting, and then wrote a reader.)

What inspired you to pursue a career in technical writing?

I blundered into it by accident, really. I headed off to college in pursuit of CS. CMU didn't have an undergrad program at the time; what you did was to major in applied math and load up on CS courses. Well, the CS stuff was cool but the math was frustrating; for a program with "applied" in its name it seemed awfully uselessly-theoretical to me. While angsting about this I talked with someone who said "you have an aptitude for writing; why don't you do that?". I said "what, journalism? you can't make a living doing stuff like that". Then this person told me what technical writing was, and that sounded nifty and I ended up changing majors. I took almost all of the CS courses that I would have taken as a math major, by the way.

My first position out of school was at a startup as half tech writer, half programmer. Eventually the company got larger and the management structure got weird and I had to choose one, and because of things that were going on at the time I chose the programming route. I remained a programmer through one more job change, and come the one after that I realized that I was an adequate programmer but could be a good tech writer in the right kind of position. I found a company that was looking for a tech writer to document programming interfaces and software design and such, which was perfect. Now that's the kind of position I seek out, and so far I've been decent at crafting a position to fit what I can offer.

If I ever find myself irrevocably writing "application software 101" -- you know, "from the file menu choose 'save', type a file name into the dialogue box, and click on the 'ok' button" etc -- I think I'll have to take it as a sign that something has gone very, very wrong, and maybe it's time to bail.

Who has been your greatest influence?

My father. Both of my parents are great -- they were always there and supportive when I was growing up, very nurturing, and so on. But my father, in particular, is the one who was always challenging me to think harder and to do things I didn't think I could do (ranging from riding a bike to solving polynomial equations). My father is very smart, and he realized that I could be smart too but that's not just about schoolwork. He taught me to be analytical, inquisitive, and persistent, and I think two of those stuck pretty well.

If you could live at any time and place in recorded history, when and where would you live?

There are lots of places I'd love to visit, but for actually living, I don't really want to give up the benefits of modern medicine, instant communication with a large number of people I'd never know otherwise, the (pretty-much) guarantee of a comfortable home and ample food, and the ability to pursue whatever interests me regardless of class, gender, family background, etc.

What do you think is the best way for the US to balance the need for national security and individual privacy? ( Read more... )

You know the drill: if you want a set of questions, ask. You'll update your journal, including the offer to propegate.

Saturday's D&D game was a lot of fun. It was a sub-group (two characters are currently elsewhere), and we got to do a lot of role-playing and story, and some nice little character bits came out. It was quite nifty. I think being (largely) unconstrained by time helped, too -- most sessions are on weeknights and people have to worry about getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Here, we could just play until a natural stopping point. (We're at the point where we need the other two players now.)

I talked with my parents yesterday. I enthused about some of the recent loot, particularly the scanner. They said that my nephew, who had seemed utterly indifferent to the DVD we bought him, went home, watched it, and was happy. That's good to hear. The kid still needs to learn some basic manners, though, like "thank you" and at least feigning interest in gifts.

I was surprised to learn that my parents knew basically nothing about the show 1776, either stage or movie. (I said this to a friend last night who said he didn't know it either, but he didn't grow up in a musicals-intensive house in one of the 13 colonies, so that's not surprising.) I remember seeing the movie as a kid; I mistakingly thought my parents had taken me. (We also saw it on a school outing.) The CLO is doing it this summer, which is what brought this up, and now I'm thinking that Dani and I, and maybe some friends, should go. I've never seen the stage version. I worry a bit about having my illusions shattered -- some other things I remember fondly didn't work out so well on more recent viewing, and maybe I should leave well enough alone. But it's probably safe.

Study with my rabbi today was very good, in a hard-to-summarize way. Maybe there'll be a separate entry later. (Aside: according to the talmud, God prays. This prompted me to say "what and to whom?" before my rabbi could continue. We've looked at "what", and then had to stop. In a sense, that's the less-interesting question.)

Most people were back at work today. Naturally, the single person who understands the part of the software that is currently getting in my way is out for a few more days. Oops. Tomorrow I begin plaintively asking not-so-random developers "do you know anything about [module]?". :-) (It's got to be pilot error; no one gets this right on the first try near as I can tell. If I figure out what that error is, then not only can I move past it but I can also improve the documentation.)

( Thanksgiving )

( aside: buying beer in PA )

Friday we (I rode with Robert) headed out to Darkover Grand Council, a science-fiction convention in Timmonium MD (near Baltimore). The name is a bit misleading; while the con has its origins as an MZB con, the amount of Darkover content has dwindled over the years. I'm not a fan of the series, but I can still find reasons to go to this con. It has the strongest music track I know outside of cons dedicated entirely to music. So I go to perform, and I go to listen. And I go to visit with friends.

( people )

( Clam Chowder )

( On the Mark )

( so *that's* where they keep the cushy rooms!, and hotel misc )

We had a new "interim" CD at this convention. Some of its contents will eventually go onto a "real" live CD, but that will be a couple years away and we wanted to have something for people now. So we did this one on the cheap (allowing us to sell it for $10), but had enough decent material to fill up a CD. It was fun, and it includs a bunch of stuff that we haven't previously recorded.

( Shabbat challenge: probably boring to most readers )

On the way to the con on Friday, the biggest challenge was the dense fog in the mountains. (I couldn't see the car in front of us, and we were following pretty close. Fortunately, I was not driving. Had I been, I would have had to wait it out, and then hope I could get to the con before sundown.) On the way home, however, traffic was worse than usual. It was still much worse going in the other direction; we counted a ten-mile stoppage at one point on the turnpike. I'm not really sure what caused our erratically-slow traffic; we saw two accidents and one near-accident, but there were also just some standing waves in the traffic. (Near-accident: note to driver: if your wheels are going up onto the jersey barrier, you are not centered in your lane.)

All in all, it was a fun weekend!

Addendum: extra bonus -- two nights completely free of the usual snoring soundtrack!

A post in a community for Jewish converts (and converts in training) raised this question: the poster has a disabled sibling and has in the past been the person who accompanies said sibling to church on Christmas. (The rest of the family is in the choir.) Is this behavior permitted, required, or forbidden of a Jew?

Much of the feedback so far weighs in on the side of "required -- family is family". Someone cited honoring one's parents (the source of the request), and a couple people mentioned protecting a life (the sibling is apparently in real danger of injury without someone there).

I, on the other hand, am leaning toward "forbidden", though "permitted" is a possibility. Definitely not "required", though.

The issue is complex. While the sibling needs a caregiver, that's a service that can be hired -- so there's no apparent need for the poster to do it personally. Of course it's important to honor one's parents (this comes up a lot in text), but the talmud also teaches that if a parent asks you to transgress the Torah, you must decline (Bava Metzia 32a). This raises the question of whether attending another religion's worship service -- on its second-holiest day, to boot -- is avodah zara, forbidden worship. Is it enough if you don't intend to worship? What if you don't participate? What if you don't listen? That is a complex question with varied answers depending on circumstances, ranging from exactly what will take place to the strength of your own Jewish education and commitment, and you really need to ask your rabbi for a personal ruling.

I think the experience of facing this issue is valuable for the conversion candidate, actually. As a member of a minority religion (that sometimes faces hostility from others), sometimes you are going to have to make choices between your religion and your family/friends/society -- things like this, or resolving Shabbat issues with your employer, or various other matters. Finding out how you will handle those choices before it's "too late" -- before you convert and acquire new obligations -- seems useful to me.

I assume that most conversion candidates face some sort of religion-vs-world-at-large test during the process, but I don't actually know.

Someday I will figure out how one properly decorates a sukkah; the only decorated ones I've seen have been done up with stuff made by the kids in the family/congregation. If I decorate, I want adult decorations. Whatever those would be. But at least the strands of small white lights (bought on December 26 one year :-) ) are pretty. And, more importantly, provide ample light to see dinner by.

So far it's a one-splinter year for the sukkah. That's pretty good for me. :-)

For bizarre reasons, yesterday I found myself needing to know how to say "purple dinosaur" in Hebrew. My dictionary was of no help on "dinosaur", so I ended up settling for "reptile". Not the same thing, but good enough in context.

I found out recently that my parents have never, in their entire lives, eaten Indian food. Wow. Chinese food was a novelty for me when I was growing up, but I thought that was just due to the local restaurant options. No, my parents just haven't explored a lot of unusual foods. So we're going to take them to an Indian restaurant in a couple weeks. (And no, I haven't asked them about sushi yet.)

I've been getting a lot of spam lately for Vicadin, whatever that is. From googling it appears to be either a painkiller or a psychadelic, but I'm not sure which. (I suppose the latter is a type of the former, for some people.) Did it just come onto the market or something?

1. If you were running for president, what would the major points of your platform be? ( Read more... )

2. What is the best job you've ever had? What did you like about it? ( Read more... )

3. Aside from religion, what is one aspect of your philosophy, beliefs, or lifestyle that has changed significantly in your life? What motivated the change, and how did you go about it? ( Read more... )

4. When you were growing up, who in your family did you feel closest to? What was the best thing about that relationship? Are you still as close to them now? ( Read more... )

5. Consider the following scenario: ( Read more... )

That's refreshing. On Sunday I ordered a couple of books from Amazon third-party sellers (neither urgent), and B5 second season from Amazon directly. Monday morning I received mail from one of the marketplace sellers telling me my book had shipped, and I got similar mail from the other Monday evening. (Both of these are books that I came out of the tikkun with recommendations for.)

Sunday afternoon we went to my niece's graduation party. The balance of guests was not what I expected. I was assuming there would be a flock of 17-year-olds and a smattering of folks our age, mostly relatives. As it turned out, the kids were all migrating among many parties, so at any given time the adults outnumbered the kids by, oh, 5 to 1 or so. (Graduation was Friday night, so this was probably the prime party weekend.)

Many of the adults were from the church choir (my father and Kim both sing in it). I noticed that most of the choir members were wearing red, so I asked my father about it. Sunday was Penticost, which I suppose I could have worked out on my own if I'd thought about it, and there is a tradition of wearing red for the holiday. (I think the reason had something to do with an association between the holy spirit and fire, but I didn't quite catch it. Education welcome.) I'm glad that the red shirt I pulled out of the drawer that morning had a spot of something on it (so it went to the laundry pile). I would have given an incorrect impression without meaning to. I much prefer that my incorrect impressions be planned. :-)

I found myself in the uncomfortable position of balancing kashrut concerns against being kind to my family. They went out of their way to make sure none of the side dishes contained dairy so I could eat the meat, when I would have preferred to stick to the dairy/veggie dishes instead. (They also made sure to put meat and cheese cold cuts on different platters, segregate the ham from the turkey, and so on.) I could see that I was going to upset my mother if I didn't eat the meat, though, so I did.

(I'll eat meat meals in my parents' home, and for that matter in my friends' homes, so long as the basics are observed (species, no dairy, etc). I want to be able to eat with my family and friends. In a situation where there's a variety of food, both meat and non-, however, I'll avoid the meat. Most parties are like that, for example.)

Sunday evening we had a lovely dinner with Ralph and Lori (mmm, brownies!) and then played a new-to-us card game that I've forgotten the name of. It was entertaining, whatever it was. It involves cards in rows and columns where you rotate cards to try to make edge patterns line up; if you do that you get to remove cards, which have point values. (The object is to maximize points.) There are enough unusual conditions to make the game interesting while not being so many to be hard to track. Most card games with individualized cards fall down on the latter point for me -- Magic, Illuminati, Chez whatever, etc.

Sometime during the evening it rained, which I didn't think much of at the time. I was surprised to come home to a dark house. Fortunately, we knew where the flashlights, candles, and mechanical alarm clock were, so this was not as inconvenient as it might have been. Pity I can't read by candlelight, though, but it was late enough that this wasn't a real hardship.

Panasonic scores points for at least one model of VCR. I'd noticed before that after brief power outages I had to reset the clock but the programming wasn't lost. A five-hour outage is more than the backup can handle, apparently, so this time the programming was lost -- and the VCR told me that in big letters on the screen. Definite UI points there for warning me that they'd violated an expectation I might have had. (Mind, I was going to check anyway, but still...)

Friday night there was a bat mitzvah at services. I would be really, really happy if the congregation would institute two rules for Friday-night b'nei mitzvah: (1) no "parental greeting", and (2) the kid's d'var torah must be longer than the thank-you section. ( small rant )

Saturday morning one of our occasional attendees (a young man) told me that he's moving to Arizona in a couple weeks. It sounds like he's connected with the community there, which is good. I would be intimidated by moving, alone, across the country. I wish him well, and I told him to send email when he gets there.

Saturday night after dinner we went to lefkowitzga's to hang out and play games, including the longest hand of Uno I have ever played. I was getting droopy around midnight (and knew we'd be meeting my parents in the morning), so we left around 12:30 or so.

Today was my father's 65th birthday. Our anniversary was a couple weeks ago. So we all went out to brunch and each of us thought we were treating the other. It was pretty funny. They gave us a nifty cheese knife and a very good vegetable peeler (Cutco). Good tools in a kitchen make a big difference! We took the cheese knife (along with some cheese) to Ralph and Lori's this afternoon; the knife was excessive for the soft cheese we were bringing, but the geek factor of playing with sharp objects prevailed. :-)

This afternoon was the annual bunny melt (and high tea). It was much fun, and we had vast quantities of food. The cats mostly behaved, though one of them (I assume Louie, but I didn't see it) attempted a close encounter with the remains of the fondue and was tossed across the room for his sins. Or so I gather; I wasn't in the room at the time.

I discovered this afternoon that I am still having hardware problems. My CD burner won't burn, and reading from a CD in the drive for more than about 30 seconds (I was attempting a software install) causes the machine to reboot. More side effects of the meltdown, I presume. It's all under warranty, but I don't want to be without my machine for several days again. Given that it's followup from the last repair, I'd really like it if I could make an appointment for a specific time to get it looked at. In other words, I want to wait in line at home. I'll bet I can't, but tomorrow I will call and ask.

Tonight Dani and I watched two more episodes of B5 (first season), "Signs and Portents" (important episode) and "TKO". I didn't care for "TKO" the first couple times I saw it, but this time it worked pretty well for me. (I never disliked the shiva plot; it was the martial-arts plot that didn't do anything for me.)

I had a geeky moment with the former plot. There is a point where someone says she's going to recite the "mourner's prayer" in English instead of in Hebrew. Last time I asw this episode I remember thinking, on hearing the English, "hey, that's not the mourners' kaddish". This time I recognized it for what it was (El molei rachamim). Cool; I'm getting literate. :-)

I have these pseudo-relatives (godparents, actually) in California. We've been exchanging fairly generic gifts in December for as long as I can remember. They're fairly generic, because we don't really know each other. (I try to put some thought into it, of course, and I assume they do too, but everyone's operating on old data.) They were college friends of my parents, and there was regular contact when we lived in California, but we moved to the Pittsburgh area when I was three, so I don't remember much of this. I've seen them once since then, when I was 14.

For years I've wanted to find a polite way to stop mailing gifts to each other, because it seems kind of pointless when we don't really know each other. But I've never been able to figure out how, so inertia has carried me forward. (It's easier to keep sending gifts than to broach the subject.) I have no way of knowing whether their feelings are similar. I tried asking my mother for help several years ago, figuring that she knows them better than I do, and her advice was to just leave it alone.

So this year, for either the second or third year in a row (can't remember about 2000 now), I didn't receive anything from them. They have been slow to pick up on changes of address in the past, but I know they have my correct address because they've sent thank-you notes for the gifts I sent them. They also sent us a wedding gift two and a half years ago, which might be the last thing I received from them. (Yes, I sent a thank-you note promptly.)

But now it gets weird: I received a thank-you note yesterday for this year's gift, and in addition to the standard content they said that if I'm ever in California please come visit, and here's a phone number, and they have plenty of space in their house now that they're empty-nesters. What the heck? Does this mean they want a closer relationship with me? How do I balance that against the lack of a gift?

So have they stopped sending gifts, or have they been sending them into a postal black hole and they think I'm rude for not sending thank-you notes? Do I respond to their letter without saying anything about gifts? Do I respond and say I didn't receive anything? Do I not respond? Other than this invitiation, which is unlikely to apply because I don't have any reason to go to California, the letter would not demand a response.

I'm not going to call them. I hate phones unless I already have a relationship with the person on the other end. That conversation would be awkward.

And I find that I'm not really inclined to try to develop a relationship with these people. They seem like perfectly nice people; I have nothing against them. But to develop, let alone maintain, a friendship, you need either common interests or easy and frequent contact, and we don't seem to have either here. So shrug. I think even my parents have dropped down to the exchange-letters-in-December level, so if they're not staying in closer contact, what would it mean for me to try?

I don't think Miss Manners covers this one.

Thanksgiving with my parents, my sister, and her kids went well. (My niece and nephew are still self-centered brats in a lot of ways, but oh well.) I enjoy spending time with my parents. So many families are messed up in various ways that I'm very glad I can say that.

We tried to pry some gift ideas out of various folks, with partial success. (If anyone can tell me the name of a series that ran on HBO, exists on DVD, and was described to me as "kind of like Saving Private Ryan", I will be grateful.)

Food was yummy. My mom made a new dish in the "yam" niche; it had applesauce, yams, brown sugar, oatmeal, and other stuff that I've forgotten. That doesn't sound like an especially promising combination, but it was very good. Sweet, though; I think I'd cut the brown sugar back if I made it.

We never got to the pies. That's fine; I didn't go hungry. :-)

Tomorrow morning I head off to a con (Darkover) with the rest of On the Mark. We have two performances, and I think we're going to sound great. I'll be back Sunday night.