Just before setting off

Two days before taking everything and leaving, one needs to think about the coming month. It's easy to think about "next month" in every-day life - If something needs to be done for two weeks from now and it takes a few hours to complete, one would usually delay doing it to sometime closer to the event itself.

So, buying a birthday present to one's dad, for example, shouldn't bother someone a couple of weeks ahead. You know what to get him, and you'd get it to him when time comes.

Things like that come to mind when dealing with something like the disengagement. Most of the week, we won't be at home, and it's a new situation for us. And now, I'm sitting here burning DVDs (all legal of course) for his birthday.

Disengagement

No need to hide it. Some people are going to the disengagement. Some do not.

Some people are happy about going, but most of them are not. I hear a lot of people ask others "But a left-wing person such as yourself shouldn't have a problem doing the evacuation, as you support it".

The answer is fairly simple: If you were supporting the death penalty, would you be willing to be the executor? It's even more than that. These are people who have done nothing wrong, literally. They followed a call of their country to go and settle a border area in order to gain demographic control over it. They built their house there, their families grew there - And now they need to see it all goes away. It's not that their lives are ruined completely, but that's not the point. It's like taking away from you that chess board that your grandfather gave you before he died. It's not the chess board: It's the sentimental.

However, one thing I don't agree with is the comparison to Auschwitz. With all due respect to these people's suffering from this act, they are not being led into death or even work camps. They are being compensated (if it's enough is arguable, but irrelevant to my current point), they are being led to new homes (again, arguable if it's the same, but irrelevant right now), and they will keep living in the Israeli society. Do these people who use the Holocaust trademark even realise how many Holocaust survivors or second/third generation survivors they upset with this? What about Their feelings?

The final point I have for now is the reason behind this. Some people claim that if this would have provided with immediate peace, it would be more reasonable to do this action. I agree, but do not agree with the opposite: That without an immediate peace this is wrong. I can't really explain it besides reminding us all the reasons we left Lebanon - It wasn't for peace, it was so children, daughters, fathers and mothers would stop dying over that border. The difference now is that we have villages and settlements inside those borders, and that the area is actually an Israeli border. But still, over a million palestinians are living there, enough of them hostile to our settlements. Our soldiers, trying to protect these settlements, get injured and sometimes even die. Our numbers are much less in almost a jokingly manner: around 7000 people live in these settlements.

To make myself clearer, I don't mean they are irrelevant. I just mean that the reason we're doing this is to leave a Hostile Ground. Saying that, I am aware to the Kasam threat. I do hope that the government would provide us with the security required after the evacuation happens, as it's a neccessity. They will not stop just because we left, and we need to be protected and feel that the government is also making our cities secure, and not just acting randomly towards an obscure peace goal.

This should, more or less, poise my personal view about the disengagement act. I will try to add more points of view as things advance there.

Carlsberg

Today, instead of going to a sports day as we always do on Thursday mornings, we went to see the Carlsberg Factory in Ashkelon.

I must say, it made me realise two things:

1. Not watching TV gives me the bliss of not watching commercials that show a sexual relationship happening just because of the exchange of glass bottles containing piss.
2. If I was a factory claiming to be very sterile and clean, I would check to see there are no turned-over, dirty containers lying around when a big group of visitors comes along.

Also, a friendly sign in the factory said "Please, for your friends sake, speak Hebrew!". Now that was great. I should put one in my office.

The Magical Week That Has Passed

A magical week has passed.

Joah has been to Israel and we had less than a week, even - Four days - But they were nothing like the last 30 days since she was last here. So, to make a sort of montage of what has happened in the last (unfortunately few) days:

• Transforming my house to a war-room after explosions in London stop most underground traffic, making reaching Gatwick really difficult.
  
• Cleaning my house with Ido, then leaving for Oded's wedding.
  
• Picking up Joah straight after the wedding, fast-drivin' back to the Tel Aviv place.
• Buying tent and sleeping bag - Preparing for a camping trip.
• False rat alarm.
• Eating too much Humos and Fasole Batota (However spelled) at my grandma's.
  
• Not finding camping site.
• Car broken into. Window smashed and lock destroyed. Fixed window. Eating more Humos as we fix the car.
  
• Going to the beach, stung by a jelly fish.
• Getting lost in Jerusalem trying to find the "Center of Town", or rather a specific location in the mentioned Center, without really knowing our ways in Jerusalem.
• Trying to find a good restaurant in Modiin, unsuccessful at finding it through maze-city. Eventually ending up in a Humos restaurant.
• Listening to Beni's newest. Avah doesn't like.
  
• Trying to make Sushi cakes with Mackarell fish. Joah doesn't like.

Yes. It has been a busy week.

And I miss Joah...

Security in London

After 7th July, you'd have thought that London would develop some kind of security mechanism on its stations. Talking with Joah about this, she claimed that since 3 million people use the tube every morning, having some security over the tube stations is impossible and would shut down the city's business area, as everyone would reach work 2 hours later than usual.

However, ever since that horrible terrorist attack, there have been numerous bomb scares, causing tube stations to be delayed and sometimes stopped, causing millions of people to be late for work. More than that, today 4 minor explosions caused the city's transportation system to reach a halt. At the moment no injuries are reported and I sincerely hope that none would, but this is ridiculous. A guard at the enterance of the station might have delayed millions, but it would've prevented this damage in routine life.

And on a personal note: Joah is supposed to reach the airport and was evacuated from one of the lines because of this bombing. She wasn't injured, thank god, but she Is delayed, and with her others, I am sure. The plane has already been delayed by 30 minutes and I do hope it's enough.

We have to meet before the begining of August.

Rats over a cup of Coffee

So, as I was checking out Sun's latest developments on the Looking Glass Project (very cool thing indeed), I heard a muffled noise from the bathroom. Disregarding it as water being flushed by the neighbour (You know how it affects the whole sewage system sometimes), I kept on surfing.

After a time, I heard it again. It sounded more like something being dropped into water than flushing, so I decided to check it out. Remembering that awful scene from Dreamcatcher, I approached with caution to the toilets where, to my surprise, I saw a RAT jumping into the toilet! Assuming it probably got From there, and being terrified as hell, I shut the toilet down and flushed the water.

The toilet seat is now closed, and I am scared out of my wits about it. For now, I try not to think of it. Called my land lord, and she said that tomorrow she will take care of it, and also will call city hall. Hopefully it won't happen again.

Java and Mac OS X

When I bought my Mac, I made perfectly sure that Java, my prefered programming language, was a valid programming language there. And so, I found that Apple claims itself to not only support Java, but to improve it to "work superbly".

Months later I was suprirsed to discover that when J2SE 5.0 came out, with all the Ease of Development features, Apple took it's time in releasing it's own implementation of the new standard. More to it, when it Did release it, they demanded money for it. While it's their own right to do so, I was feeling abused: If I had a Linux or even a Windows platform, I would have gotten my J2SE 5.0 with the rest of the gang, for free.

Now, when JDK 6.0 is at the doorstep, with so many cool features like the Generics DataSet, I don't even try to imagine I'll have my chance to see Mustang out on the Mac before I have children. But, I never imagined Apple would start with moves to disengage itself from Java altogether. Or maybe I'm just reading it wrong.

I wonder what's going on in those Apple-Heads' minds.

The saga continues, Episode VI

I'm starting to feel like I'm in some Star Wars kind of fight here. Soon we'll have cartooned characters helping us in our quest.

This actually happened a week ago, but so much has happened since that I have overlooked writing about it. I hope I'll be forgiven, but then again: It's not your blog, and I'll write what I want to when I want to! I don't need this bloody pressure!

Sigh..

So, let's get to work. The day continues where I left off: In the morning I was in the Salame 53 office. Disappointed, I went to work. I called the information service to discover the number to the MoIN office in Jerusalem, as obviously the MoIN office in Tel Aviv couldn't possibly know the correct number. Callimg the MoIN office in Jerusalem rvealed that actually there Is a way to employ foreign workers. They have separated offices to different types of foreign workers: Construction, Healthcare, Industry, etc. I asked what type of work is Translator and they refered me to the Industry number, telling me to call on Sunday.

Sunday comes, and after countless of times calling the numbers they gave me, I decided to call back to the main office. This time, I don't know how or why, I was refered to the department's CEO office, which of course answered. I explained Them the need for a foreign worker that would do translations. They said that it's in the Industry Foreign Workers department, and gave me a Different set of numbers, but said I should call on Sunday (As it was rather late in the afternoon).

Monday comes. I call the numbers I was given by the CEO office. They gave me three numbers, and I was performing a round robing technique on their numbers, manually obviously. After a while, I noticed noone is bothering to answer the phone. I call the CEO office again, and when the secretary answers I go ahead and tell her yet again about the need for a translator etc. She tells me I should call the Industry Foreign Workers department, and gives me a Totally Different set of numbers. At this point I get slightly curious and ask her why I was given a different set of numbers yesterday when I asked the same thing.

She said: "Yes, yesterday they were answering on Those numbers you were given, but Today they answer on These".

I thought I was going to flip with laughter.

I called the new numbers, and even though the first two weren't answering (three numbers again) one was busy. So I decided I'd be a nag and called it over and over again. And yes, you heard correctly - BUSY. It's a government office, and they can't afford the simple electronic secretary machine that gives you crappy music while saying from time to time "You are number 1512 in the queue".

Eventually, after literally an hour and a half of calling and getting a busy tone, I got a free tone and was answered. I got the information needed, including what is a "professional". A professional is someone with degrees in the area of his/her job, AND someone who will get over 14,000 shekels when working in Israel.

That's all they had to say? I am really worried about MoIN. Laying out these set of rules to the Salame office would have saved so much trouble. And even if they didn't hear of the Email, Fax, or even dictating it over Phone, I bet these short rules would've been transfered by Morse code, with error correction, faster than it took me to search for them all over Israel.

Free SkypeOut Day

Some companies I realy love - And that's even though I am aware they only want world domination and that interferes with my own plans.

And today, I found out about Free SkypeOut Day. Just be on the lookout for those days on the Share Skype site, and you can talk for free!

Do you want coffee? Number.

As I was installing HP's drivers for the new LaserJet 4200 printer in our office, I was presented with a Hebrew installer. Some companies think it's neat, so they check out the default language of the system and use a resource file to translate their software.

At one point, I was asked (in Hebrew of course) a question like "Would you like to install the printer as a local printer?". The printer was a network printer, so the answer to that is No. Surprisingly, the only two answers before me were כן, and מספר. To those readers who can not read Hebrew, I would translate: Yes and Number.

Now, I can see how this could have happened. The translator sat down and saw the resource kit. Seeing two words, "Yes" and "No", he decided to translate Yes as the positive answer to a question, and No as the abbreviation to the word Number. What I fail to understand, however, is how this was bypassed by the Quality Assurance team.

This leads me to two very quick answers. The first, being a consumer of numerous HP products, I already noticed that the company has NO quality assurance team. The second, no-one in HP's Israeli department tried the Hebrew installer.

The latter answer turned out to be correct: The installer was unsuccessful, and re-running it froze my system to a total halt. Only after running the English installation (by picking it specifically from a sub directory in the installation CD) I managed to get the drivers installed correctly and the printer to start printing.

The question I ask now, in this post which is too long anyway: If this is a network printer, having a web page of it's own as an interface for configuring and managing the printer, why doesn't it allow you to download the drivers from the webpage? It would make so much sense, and be so easy for the users. Another answer to this, as I have encountered by using HP's marvolous product NNM is that HP don't care about user interfaces nor about the user being comfortable using it's systems.

All that said, Joah and I use an HP camera, yet it still cannot connect to the computer on the first try.

QuickSilver

While reading one of my favorite web-comics, AppleGeeks, I noticed an application recommended there. Following the link, I found a small, comfortable, still in beta little software that actually helps you do things. Fast.

It's not easy to explain what it does, but if you have a Mac - Download it.

If you don't have a Mac... Go here for the starter's pack.