Sruli's blog

It's been busy, so I've been neglecting my poor blog. And the machine I'm working on is so fast that compiles don't take long enough to make a real blog entry. Still, a blog is worthless without the occasional contribution, so I'll try. Important stuff: I got a job doing C# and VB.NET. Wow, now maybe I'll be able to pay my mortgage! What a concept. I'm training Tzirel to do the web hosting, but I'm spending plenty of time on that after hours until she can get up to speed. Still haven't swapped out sneezy, may have to postpone that. But it self-rebooted again, which is a good thing. I've visited the USA twice recently and will probably go again soon. Once for Tani's bar mitzvah (he knocked 'em dead) and once for the job. Next will again be for the job. I've got some more pictures to post, will catch up on that when I can. I will have to learn to post here from the Treo 600 one of these days, pictur...

Well, my DTA is working after about two days of being "broken". Turned out it was on their end after all. While trying to figure out how to migrate "client B" from below from sneezy to bashful (dopey isn't online yet) I remembered that the new Redhat Enterprise Linux (and I think Fedora too) doesn't support user names with dots in them, so for example sruli.the.grate@alsonetworks.com wouldn't be allowed. Sneezy is my last Redhat 7.3 box, so all clients with those kinds of addresses are on that box. Eventually I found a patched RPM here... http://ftp.pslib.cz/pub/users/Milan.Kerslager/RHEL-3/RPMS/ ...that solves this. Who knows what it means for future upgrades? Why would Redhat disable this? So many people use the format first_name.last_name@mydomain.com as an email address! Gonna move the client as soon as I have tested. In the mean time there was a 15 minute period of down time on sneezy AGAIN today. Phooey. Tzirel got to do th...

This day was a contender for one of the most stress filled days in a long while, starting in the morning when I needed to go visit Stuie's house, about an hour away. I checked my servers. They're running fine. Armed with cell phone (for SMS messages just in case), Tzirel and I set out. About 10 minutes away from the bus station, a phone call comes in to my cell phone... sneezy is down. Usual checks, yep, it's really down. :-(. Not again... well, I'll check in to the Internet Cafe in the station in a couple of minutes. I bought an hour's worth of time, and they had a promotion available for a free 30 minutes (today only). I used that. Got the DC to reboot. Client says "it's up, thanks... but BTW, you should know that client B spoke to me and he's REALLY unhappy". He's right to be, too. I called, tried some damage control. In the short term he'll let me deal with it, but not sure about middle term or long term anymore. Wha...

She's sleeping now, but she brought home lots of stuff, including Dunkin Donuts :-). It's good to have her home. I let her sleep in this morning (of course) and got the kids off to school.

Volume 1 of The Dreamers , remember?   More of the same stuff.  Story somewhat different, though many of the same elements.  Because it's Eddings, the characters are easy to get to know (in fact, you sort of know them already) and the story is an easy read.  But because it's Eddings, you've seen it all before.  It worked great the first time, and okay the second time, but they should really come up with new characters.  Leah and I were talking about this last night and offhand we were able to come up with several "favorite" authors who wrote new, interesting characters  every time that were easy to tell apart.  Here you're saying to yourself, "hey, that's something Silk would do" or "she sounds just like Polgara there" or "sure, just like Belar".  Oh, and there are at least two powerful, magic jewels in this one.  That's new, at least.  Oh, wait, it isn't.   You can skip this one and you won't ...

The tutorial I mentioned below isn't "traditional" chisanbop for multiplication (I didn't look at division).  Interesting, though.

Chisenbop tutorial I found this great looking tutorial on Chisenbop - gonna show it to the kids. It even has Multiplication and Division!

This would be an "ARGH" morning even if Tzirel were here. Let's see.... I didn't get to sleep until 1:00 AM because I committed the mortal sin of going to a wedding last night - and I had no fewer than three customer calls on my cell phone while I was there. Some I have to follow up on today. One potentially serious problem went away because a different solution was found. Then, when I got home, there were three more problems waiting in my email box waiting for attention. At least there was a new order too. So naturally I didn't prepare lunches or anything last night. Which means that to daven and prepare everything I had to get up at 4:30 AM. So I did that, and things WERE going smoothly and I was anticipating going in for a "quick" nap as soon as they were gone... But as Hadassah and Hillel were getting ready to leave, I discovered Akiva's sandwich still in the refrigerator. And Hadassah remembered that she had gym today, so had to ...

This is sooo much fun. Actually it's not too bad so far. I got up early in the AM to make the sandwiches, check schoolbags, etc. Morning routine went okay. This afternoon I'm going to a wedding so things won't be "routine" - we'll have to see how that goes. I have to figure out dinner for Akiva and Hillel, too, but I don't anticipate problems with that.

This is the first in a series called The Dreamers. Let's hope this turns out better than last time :-/.

Hillel looks nice here.. 

This is a nice shot of Hadassah: 

Akiva is usually very photogenic, but he's looks more and more like a teenager :-( :-) 

Sent some pix along with Tzirel so the relatives can have them. Here's Leah: 

Tzirel is flying to the USA now to visit her Mom. Boy, will I miss her. 

We went to the Tank Museum at Latrun today, me, Tzirel, the three younger ones. Spent some time climbing on tanks, but it wasn't my speed. The kids liked it.

Hillel drives an armorned car! 

Akiva and Hadassah on tank 

Someone just came to borrow the cat carrier.  He offered me a kitten.  I offered him four kittens in exchange.  We smiled, understanding each other perfectly.

I re-read The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting.  Had a lot of fun rediscovering an old friend.  There were some racist remarks in the book, which would make me consider carefully how to present the book ;before giving it to one of my kids. I sure don't remember that book as being racist, but I didn't feel too offended on behalf of Jews when I read Ivanhoe either, so maybe I'm just not as sensitive as I should be.  Ivanhoe was much more blatant, and the racism was much more an integral part of the story.