Year: 2004

What a day!

Well, it’s been a damned nice day, at that.
Well, once you get past last night, that is.
Imagine, going to sleep with the most terrible headaches, and waking up in the middle of the night with seizure-like uncontrollable sneezes. After I got that quieted down, and took to my bed, I woke up around 9 this morning.
So I called in, told them I was sitting the day out, and that I probably wouldn’t even head out in this weather to a doctor, as it would do far worse than good.
After that, I spent a luxuriating day of lounging around watching a ton of British Accents.
Oh yes, finally got around to finishing “The Importance of Being Earnest” starring Rupert Evrett and Colin Firth. Ah, the subtleties of comedic repartee are all thanks to Oscar Wilde.
After that, it was more or less just letting the rest of “Horatio Hornblower” captivate the rest of my day.
So now, I sit back, a slightly healthier version of myself, and plan to enjoy the few hours left to this wonderfully supplied — well, not a vacation, per se, but– extra day of rest.
I hope you receive the rest you need as well!

It’s been a long time…

… since I’ve sat down to seriously write.
I don’t know why, but maybe it’s because I no longer have the leisure that I used to at work, now that I have oh-so-much-more work to do (somewhat voluntarily 🙁 ).
Now I’m home, after a decidedly odd weekend, with this damned cold that won’t leave me!
Leave, cold! Go away! Yer nae welcome ’round thi’ boddie!
See? Now it has me speaking in tongues again. And why would I speak in tongues, anyways? I’m a habitual vegetarian, after all…..
In any case, I just finished a whole lot of garlic soup (courtesy of mother, delivered by father) and I should get some sleep before work tomorrow.
G’night, universe.
(as if it cares…)

Only becuase it really fit this time around:

I would serve the Airforce!
The Airforce! The IDF Airforce is known as the best
Airforce in the world (if you didn’t know, you
do now), and as a soldier serving it, you are
skilled at everything you do, disciplined and
are the best of the bests. Go you.

Which force of Israel Defence Forces would you serve?!
brought to you by Quizilla

Spent three interesting years there.
Highly suggested!

I’m finally succumbing…

… to the evils of Linux.
I just spent a long few hours in reading up on differences, advantages and disadvantages to the systems available.
I also scoped out some articles on DesktopLinux.com where there’s an in-depth review of a Debian-based distribution called “SimplyMEPIS“. From what I’ve read, it seems to be somewhat decent.

I’m willing to sacrifice my good ol’ Toshiba Satellite 4030CDT to the cause.
This laptop has gone through some serious trouble over time. Let’s see….
It’s been lugged around the world, clocking over 600km travel distance a month. Sometimes even more, if overseas was involved. It accompanied me during the Air Force, and actually assisted in doing tons of dictation recording and helped me put a few Warrant Officers through business school (made MY life a whole lot easier).
The screen hinges died at some point. Local service wanted a few hundred sheqs to replace them. I ordered replacements on the web for 12 bucks. While I was at it, I also ordered a new power supply, after the old one melted during a good StarCraft Lan party game with and another friend, way back when.
I also replaced the dinky 4.3GB drive with a whopping 30GB, added another 64MB ram to total 128MB, and replaced the CD-Rom drive, when it funkified, as well as the battery, which is no longer that great anymore. I also swapped out the keyboard once, when it had died and gone to a better place.
I’ll be the first to say that it may not be a spectacular laptop, but it’s been a damn good mule, and a good sport to boot about all this.

So, anyways, I figure if I install SimplyMEPIS on it, and then toss XPde on top of it, I should be OK for a while. While I’m at it, I’ll probably use a prog sent me to, called “Synergy” which allows for some cool computer interfacing.
If anyone has any comments/advice/ideas/whatever, let me know.
Long live the free software! (not necessarily Open source! 😉 )

Well, THAT was fun!

Ok.
This weekend has been pretty nice to me.
A crappy week at work, which ended in a late Friday (6:30am – 8:45pm) with pizza at the office.
Friday, slept a lot, missed the morning rain.
At about 12:30, put on my iPod, shades, and headed down Emek, looking for brewing materials at the local hardware store.
Got some decent equipment for fairly cheap, but not everything I need. Hardware store guy advised to head around the Shuk and find more stuff there.
Will do next Friday.
In the meantime, I’ve finished polishing and bottling my first batch of “Hey, It Ain’t Urine!” alcoholic beverage. Alternate names are gladly accepted.
This is a lemony, high alcohol content drink, made in one week, and packs a nice punch. A deep yellow color accompanies this citric wonder, hence the name.
So, coming home from the hardware store, I stopped at the grocey store for more ingredients. Ran into Noa, who gladly filled me in on her current sex life fantasies, now that she’s in Nurses’ school, and has the tight-fitting white unfiorm and curvy…..
Right. I also ran into Leora, a former roomate of another frined’s, who we were both going to eat Shabbat dinner at. It had just finished the major downpour, and we came back to my place to sit and schmooze for the rest of the afternoon.
She’s a stunning beauty of a woman, in a compact package full of energy. She styles herself as neurotic and always tense. I think she just won’t let herself relax. The entire afternoon we sat and talked and drank. She wasn’t stressed out at all. Maybe it’s the other people. Anyways, she has a boyfriend, and even though he’s somewhere in China now teaching English, and she’s here, and they aren’t going to see each other for a few years, she’s ok with that. I don’t get it.
Why are all the good ones taken? If only…
I need to find that someone who “gets” me like I “get” them. Ebay?

An interesting weekend…

Well, this weekend, a lot has happened.
To start, Friday morning, came over to complete the final stages of restoring his laptop back to life. While he was doing this in the kitchen, I was working on ‘s laptop in my own room.
Later that day, two friends, and , arrived from Haifa to spend the weekend, and we all went on the wonderful adventure called “shopping for food”.
After we had successfully navigated that dungeon and made it home, we said goodbye to who headed out to ‘s for the weekend and I eventually went to sleep for a bit.
That night, I was called into action to head out to the line of fire at a friends’ party that I had committed to go to, and wasn’t really aware of the existence of anything beyond the reach of my nose at that point.
At this party, a friend who come in from Herzliya had brought a bottle of Black Absinthe that we then proceeded to drink some of, while passing others around. He was actually surprised that Yos and I would drink it. Our natural response was, “There ain’t nuthin’ too foul for me ta….” and then droned off into uncomprehensible syllables.
I eventaully fell asleep on their small, two-seater couch. Ouch.
Woke up a few hours later and moved to the larger 3-seater. Goody. About an hour later, I get up, futz around and eventually leave, with unprotected eyes against the blazing morning sun of Jerusalem. Why did today have to be such a clear day?
Anyways, I got home and got some more sleep. A couple hours later, I got up, had a nice conversation with my guests, who thankfully are able to keep themselves occupied, and left to another friend’s place for a day of chilli preparation and weird computer stuff.
Spent the day making wonderful chilli, server over rice, and eventually spending time talking to one of my friend’s beautiful rommates, who is in her first few weeks in Israel. A very intelligent person, well-versed in politics and other social-science types. Oh, did I mention that she’s good lookin’? Downside: She’s got a boyfriend. But I’m not sure what that whole story is, and I’m sure she’ll cue me in if there’s anything to be cued in for.
All in all, it’s been fun! I hope everyone else’s weekend has been as eventful and fun-filled!

Ok, now this is a tough call.

I’m reviewing the site for Worldcon 2005, to be held in Glasgow, August ’05.
Registration price is $170 for the entire shebang, which I can actually split into payments, if I register now.
I alos jsut spoke to a friend, a travel agent, who actually sent to Boston’s Worldcon for a decent price, and he is of the opinion that there will be better prices a bit closer to August, but it shouldn’t be more than about $400.
Now, I don’t know how much the hotels will cost, but I can be sure it won’t be cheap.
So it’s a long-term concept dream, and who knows what will happen by then.

Oh what a night!

Late December back in ’63….
Don’t sit at home and wait for your friends to call to pick you up and NOT go to the bathroom.
They called about an hour late, and I had to take a leak. So I didn’t.
Now, after walking around downtown, drinking a couple liters at the bar, eating some fries at the bar, then riding over to my frined’s place, drinking some more, smokin’ some weed, watching some tv, heading home, and LOTS of laughter, I finally took a leak.
Felt like releasing the waters of the Gihon dam a second before they overflowed on theri own.
Just had to metnion it.
G’night.