Archive for 'Musings' Category
Awesome Responsibility
Sometimes the littlest things can be big. I recently delivered a small piece of software with a big responsibility. The task was to look in a database of products, customers and orders, and produce a daily report of how much to manufacture and ship, and who to ship it to. When I thought it was [...]
Visiting my parents
I have the best parents in the world. Morty and Viv are 80 and 79 years old respectively, and they’ve been married for 56 (or is it 57?) years. They snap at each other, a lot, but it’s obvious that, not only are they still in love, but they are very well matched.
Fifteen Years Ago Today (July 1994)
Second in the “Years Ago Today” series. See http://www.greenberg.org/archives/139. Where were we in 1994? Oh yes, I was working for 3Com. That gig was 12 years long, so may be a recurring theme. Technology was so different, but we were seeing the shape of things to come. There was no World Wide Web. I was [...]
Birchas Ha Chamah — The Blessing of the Sun
If you haven’t had your head under a religious rock these past few months, you’ve encountered the buzz about the Blessing of the Sun, which takes place every 28 years. A good explanation of this can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkat_Hachama We went to Birchat HaChama on the beach in Boca Raton, FL.  The event was [...]
Inauguration Day
I’m pretty proud of us today. I have to say that I was proud of us in 2000 as well. Why? Because even as our country was being buffeted by conflict, and our executive was in doubt, NOBODY PICKED UP A GUN. The military did not take control, there were no riots in the streets, [...]
Matzoh Brei Recipe
Chanukah has passed, although Purim has not yet arrived, but this is provided early just to get everybody’s digestive juices flowing.. (With apologies to those who do not eat gebrochts on Passover.) It’s from my father… Pieces of shmura matzo broken in large pieces for each piece of shmura matzo, one piece of regular matzo [...]
Ten Years ago Today (December 1998)
A friend’s blog led me to another blog, where I found that somebody had done a “Twenty Years Ago Today:” entry. I think it’s neat. I’m going to try a Ten Year version, then a Twenty. We’ll see how far back I feel like going. Ten years ago today, I was living in San Jose, [...]
Mumbai Tragedy
The situation in Mumbai doesn’t seem to have worked out as we had hoped. I was reading reports and holding out a bit of faith and hope, until I read “Boruch Dayan Emes” on CrownHeights.Info. That is a very final phrase. It literally means, “Blessed is the true judge”, and expresses the Jewish belief that [...]
An Ethical Quandry
The Los Angeles Times has been laying off staff over the past few months. Several of my favorite commentators and bloggers have been axed, including Steve Harvey and Veronique De Turenne. I’m struck by the fact that I can’t complain about this. Why? I don’t pay for a paper every day. I read it on [...]
Homemade Tortillas
Since I started making dough, I’ve always wanted to make my own tortillas. We sometimes go to a restaurant in Old Town San Diego called Cafe Coyote, where the tortillas are made fresh on the grill right in front of the customers. Folks ordering food get these tortillas served with their meal, and others buy [...]