Ordinary Nothing

The Pre-Eurovision show was just broadcasted here. The supposedly best singers and bands Israel has to offer were competing to decide who will represent us in the Eurovision contest.

And I must say that so far I’m impressed. No, not with the songs, those are all seriously bad. They’re so bad, that I think it must be done on purpose.

Think about it. International relations are not too hot for us this year. We’re practically bound to lose votes due to politics, even if the song would be excellent. The result would be a lot of angry people complaining about it. Complaining about how all those countries (which would be labelled by the angry people as anti-Semitic for that) vote against us on purpose. That’s not the way to encourage harmony and peace. So instead, someone found out a way to prevent that.

We’ll send a bad singer, with a bad song. That way when we get poor votes, nobody will take it too hard when we get voted down. It’s downright brilliant.

And how do you make sure that the winning song here is bad? Easy! You make sure all contestants are bad. Which they were. Some were plain horrible, but the best were merely unimpressive and uninspiring. Either the song was bad, or the singer/s were bad, or both. Mostly both.

Very sad. We do have some good singers here, good musicians, good songs. Honestly, we do. But none of them made it as far as the Pre-Eurovision contest…

Most TV channels here are purchased. Many from the US, and some from European and other countries. But there are a few local channels.

Only one of them is fully a commercial channel. Several different broadcasting companies wanted a channel, of course. But only one is allocated. So they go by the odd way of giving the franchise by days of the week rather than by channel. There are three different companies that divide the days of the week between them.

This of course starts endless bickering over the days. Someone will get more, or less, viewers simply by getting "better" and "worse" days. So as a compromise, they just change the schedule once in a while, and switch days. This is supposed to be fair.

And for the broadcasters, I suppose it relatively is. For viewers, it can sometime be very annoying.

First, you have the regular amusing occurrences. Someone having Friday can create a program called "Friday Evening" and have it on Fridays. Imagine the fun when it starts to be showed on Thursdays instead… Things like that can really give you a few WTF?! moments when you look at the daily TV schedule…

Then there’s the problem of shows changing days. Purchased, and even local, series don’t have the same lengths, and aren’t always started at the same time. Even more, the day switching dates aren’t dependant on the broadcasting schedule of shows. So if you’re used to having a show on a specific day, it can up and switch some week, and it won’t be on season’s end.

Like what happened right now, which prompted this post. See, the thing is, they did announce the day change a bit on the channel. I think. But I’m not the kind of person who sits all days in front of the TV. I only watch the very specific shows I know I want to see. This limits my ability to notice those announcements. They also might have shown them a few times during commercials, but not all the time, and like I say I don’t watch that many shows. More so, in this channel they have too many commercials. Way too many. So I tend to ignore them altogether. [Note to broadcasters: Less commercials will improve the effectiveness of those that you do show! Seriously!].

First time I learned that they exchanged days this month, was this evening when my parents told me there was a show on which I usually watch. I was a bit surprised, since it’s usually on Sundays, not Thursdays. I asked what gives, and was told that they probably( probably. Both my parents didn’t notice the alleged announcements either, and they’re in front of the TV much more than I am) changed days.

Why is that a problem? Well… There was a show I wanted to watch which is later Thursday night (Alias, but that’s beside the point). Surprise, surprise, it’s there no more. It moved to Tuesday. Starting from this Tuesday. Yep, the one that just passed… And no, no reruns.

This is very annoying. Sure, I could always download the episode from the Internet, and watch it like that. Legislature here is less insane than in the US about it. But what if I was less Internet savvy? Should a broadcasting company really count on the ability of the viewers to download episodes from the Internet in a legal grey area? Not everyone can, even if they wants to…

A sexual harassment lawsuit? Check.
Nipple fetish? Check.
A gorilla (a gorilla?!) ? Check.

What more could you possibly ask from a news story?

Two fired caretakers for Koko, the world-famous sign-language-speaking gorilla, have sued their former bosses, claiming they were pressured to expose their breasts as a way of bonding with the 300-pound simian.

Yep, you read that right. And that nipple fetish I mentioned? It’s not the boss’ fetish, it’s the gorilla’s. Seriously!

 

They were threatened that if they "did not indulge Koko’s nipple fetish, their employment with the Gorilla Foundation would suffer," the lawsuit alleged.

 

The lawsuit claims that on one occasion Patterson said, "’Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples.’"  

If I’d have seen this at a satire fake-news site, I would have been sure that they stretched it a little too far. I guess it’s true that reality is stranger than fiction…

As probably anyone who ever listened to a weather forecast knows, they are woefully inaccurate and inadequate. In recent years the quality is improving, but it’s still not much better than taking a look out the window, and tossing a coin.

And yet, since those are the official forecasts, people pay attention. It may not be good, but it’s all we’ve got.

Part of the reason is of course that it doesn’t cost anyone anything to give bad predictions. Heck, everyone expect it,

Well, no more. It seems that from now on weathermen in Moscow will be fined for providing bad forecasts. So far it’s only if a financial loss to the city could be traced directly to the forecast, but hey, it’s a start.

It seems like one more of those crazy legal things, but I don’t think it is (Hey, it’s not from the US, for starters). That’s one habit that I do hope everyone will adopt, and the sooner the better.

Hat tip to Overlawyered for the link.

Posts to Yahoo! Groups are acting very strangely in the last few days.

Small delays of up to a minute between the time you post a message and the time it shows on the group were always common. It’s understandable, it’s a large service, with a huge amount of users.

But on the last few days it’s terrible. Some posts still find their way to the group nearly instantly, but some don’t. And those who don’t can be delayed for hours, for no obvious reason. I had posts waiting about 4-5 hours until the appeared on the group, and saw posts that waited around 12 hours by other people.

The behaviour changes from post to post, so I can’t find any obvious cause like poster identity, thread topic, keywords, time of posting, or whatever.

I try to imagine a method of queuing system that would have such results, and can’t. I don’t have a clue what is going on there, and what is their problem. I just hope they fix it soon, since it’s becoming very annoying. You can’t have a conversation when a certain percentage of the posts just don’t show up until way too late…

After a recommendation from a commenter here, and various good opinions on the web, I decided to also try the Copernic Desktop Search program as a computer search tool.

I used the 1.2 version, got rid of it, and lately installed the 1.5 beta version. The review is true for the 1.5 beta build 624, but most thing would be the same for the 1.2 version if not explicitly stated otherwise.

Pro:

• The interface is clear, and very easy to use. It’s less useful, and wastes more "screen real-estate" than YDS, but it’s elegant and has a "professional/serious" feel to it.
• Intuitive search refinement. Like a combo-box for file date, which has standalone answers like "today" or "this month", but also "after", "before" and "between" which open additional fields for dates that were previously hidden as long as they were irrelevant.
• Indexes changes. That is, it monitors for addition of new files (or file changes?), and index them in real time. This is a huge improvement over scheduled scanning (like YDS does) for several reasons:
  • It takes less HD resources when nothing has changed. Not that scanning the disk for change is an heavy duty, but if the disk is constantly working, it’s noticeable. I had YDS installed on two computers, one which is mostly idle, and one with constant disk activity. On the one with the disk activity, the schedules scans were very noticeable, but Copernic was smooth.
  • When something does change you have it indexed almost immediately. No need to change for the next indexing time.
• Preview for a large amount of file types. Common file types that I tried were all previewable.
• Fast searching. For the things which are indexed, files matching various keyword combinations were shown relatively quickly.
• Result count in other categories. The results are separate for general files, emails, audio, pictures, video, etc… But when running a search on one category you get a view of result count in the others.

Con:

• No fall-back in case of errors. For example, I had a few non-standard xml files. It tried to show them using it’s xml viewer, and failed. Instead of showing them as text instead, I got an error message with the problem the parser/viewer encountered. This is fine if it was my file and I wanted to debug it, but not on the general case when it’s not. I think it should at least show an option to show as next-best-thing, which would be text in this case.
• No Hebrew support. Oh, it’s possible to enter Hebrew text in the search text box. But it doesn’t index it, and doesn’t find it. Worse, it can’t show Hebrew on previewed files. I assume this problem isn’t just for Hebrew, but for other languages as well.
• Slow preview for large text files. I have an IM log file slightly larger than 1MB. When I choose it on the search results, it could take a couple of minutes to load it on the preview pane, during which the Copernic program is unresponsive, and so is Windows Explorer. On the 1.2 version it was worse, and I gave up and killed the process after five minutes of waiting. So even randomly browsing through returned results can hang the program for a long duration.
• It doesn’t index the same log file. There is a setup option of not indexing content of files above a certain size, but I keep it at the default of 50MB. Yet searching for strings contained within this log file does not return it in the result list. Searching for strings in the file name does. Other, much smaller, log files are returned when searching for words in their content. This is a big problem, both because I can’t count on the program to fetch files it’s supposed to index, and because it’s not documented.
• The indexing of Thunderbird email isn’t working in this version, despite this being exclaimed as finally included in the 1.5 beta. When going to search in the email category I’m told that email indexing is disabled, and provided a link to open the settings dialog to fix it. But I fixed it. I specified that emails for Thunderbird would be indexed, and emails for Outlook won’t. It just doesn’t pay any attention. It’s not that it claims there aren’t any indexed, which would be a different problem. It claims I didn’t enable indexing of emails.

I got rid of the 1.2 version due to the problem of it hanging over large text files. It made it unusable for me. The 1.5 beta isn’t very much better, since the files are still not indexed, but it doesn’t hang the computer, so it’s usable. Currently the computer with the high disk activity is running Copernic 1.5 beta, but the one with low disk activity is running YDS…

My main conceptual problem with Copernic at this stage is that it feels like a stable and complete program, yet has those problems. YDS also has some big problems, but it still feel like a program in development stages, so it’s somehow less problematical. It’s all in my head, of course, since what really matter is functionality, but still.

From the New Scientists, Another fine example of how not to do research.

Sample size of 20 people? Only 14 showing the result of the conclusion? In my book it’s more like meaningless statistics with plenty of noise, than actual sample and conclusions.

And even so, they reached a conclusion that laughter is good for you.
Because there was a measured 22% increase of blood flow after laughing. Compared to the 35% decrease after stress. If the sample and research are unreliable (which they sure seem to be) then none of these matter. But if the research can be used to reach a conclusion, which seemed stronger? That laughter is good, or that stress/Ryan is bad? My money would be on the other direction that the one the research used.

Can I say "Who has a conclusion waiting for a research" or would that be slander? Can it be slander if it’s true?

One service which in retrospect seems obvious, but which I never expected to see…

Find a Grave. Where you can… er… find graves. The main value for most people is probably to locate the graves of important/famous people, but they’re perfectly willing to list the grave location of everybody else as well.

The person currently quoted on this blog’s subtitle, Goethe, is buried in Weimar, Germany. Yea, it doesn’t really matter, but I figured I should check someone, so there you go.

Hat tip to Karen (No, it didn’t come from a blog or a public web page, so no link).

Our cable company recently updated the menus used by it’s "digital" tuners. The regular tuners for analog channels were simple boxes with channel selection, and frankly, most TVs could very easily receive all the analog cable stations by themselves anyway, so no problem.

But all the newest channel are sent as digital channels, and you need special digital receivers/tuners from the cable company. Ideally it wouldn’t matter, but it does. You see, these tuners offer special features. You can get a short description of the show you’re watching (not including something like original name in English, since nobody there apparently thought anyone would want it. As if any extra details whatsoever are searchable based on the stupid Hebrew translation of the name), timetables, and so on.

I don’t mind the extra features, some of them are even useful. But channel switching is slow. When you enter a channel number, it takes a few seconds for it to switch. Just browsing channels by going up and down is impractical and as annoying as hell, it’s just so slow. But that’s it.

In any case, a few weeks ago the cable company decided to upgrade the design and functionality of all the menus in the digital tuner devices. So for a while they sent the updates over the cable connections. And everyone got the new menus. Which look worse than the previous ones, and offer reduced functionality. But are more similar to what the competitor, a satellite TV company, is offering. I thought the idea was that the player with the worse offer copied the better one, but I guess it doesn’t work like that around here.

Anyway, since I rarely watch the digital channels, and I needed an extra power outlet for a while, the tuner in my own room was not working during the time they sent the updates. So now I still have the old menus. Which work fine.
As long as they don’t decide to roll a second update, I’m a happy camper. And I seriously consider keeping the thing disconnected when I’m not using it, despite the simplicity and ease of leaving it always on…

I was driving in a two-lane street, in a city, a couple of hundreds of meters before a turn into the highway. The turn to the highway is only accessible from the right lane, and so this is the lane I was driving in.

Another car was driving on my left. In the same speed as me, with its front about 20-30 cm ahead of mine. And it very slightly and very slowly veered to the right. At first I thought the driver was just not paying attention, and since the lane was wider than my car I moved slightly to the right myself, in order to give it room. But as we drove, the car kept getting more and more to the right, pushing nearly into my car. This was all going on for some distance, and not at a high speed.

Eventually, when I noticed I was bordering on getting out of the lane myself, I realized that the other driver was actually wanting to change lanes, into mine. Without signalling. When they knew I was there. They could have accelerated to get in front of me, or slowed down a bit to get behind me, but no, they had to start veering to the right directly into my car.

I’m not in the mood of crashing into another car just because the driver is a stupid jerk inexperienced, so I slowed down a bit, and let it get in front of me. All that without any signalling from that car.

We turned into the highway, and the single turning lane joined the two-lane highway. The car in front of me, with the driver who was so insistent on violently pushing me off, drove at a speed of about 15 km/h bellow the speed limit (which makes it about 20-25 km/h below the average driving speed at that road, but that’s another problem).

I didn’t spend too much time on being surprised as to why they didn’t just slow down before, but rather waited until the highway to turn into a turtle, and just decided to overtake.

I turned to the left (faster) lane, while signalling of course, and accelerated. I took a short peek at the other car and noticed that the driver was a 30-something years old women, busy talking loudly (I assume that it was loudly due to the vigorous hand gestures) to a man on the seat next to her.

As I moved forward I took another look at the rear-view mirror, and noticed that she also didn’t turn on the car’s lights. Which is required by law. Worse, which is just a very good idea when things are cloudy and visibility isn’t good, like it was at the time.

I sped on, and forgot all about it. Until about 3 minutes later… Guess who came blazing from behind, at a very high speed, overtaking other cars like a madwoman? That’s right, the selfsame driver in the selfsame car. And still without the lights…

These latest spam messages are amusing. Nothing different in content, the same offers for cheap mortgages as the rest of them.

But the subject line is a work of art. They don’t offer to "lower your mortgage" or "low mortgage interest rate", no. What they offer is "Become one of the low 3.25% rates".

I wonder how it would feel like to become a low mortgage interest rate… To be one with my mortgage… Hmm…

The timezone set on messages sent from my Yahoo! Mail account is always PST. Which is wrong.

My account settings are correct, and at GMT+2 . Other procedures that rely on timezone (like Yahoo! Groups) get that right, and do the time translations correctly.

The email doesn’t. And the problem isn’t mine alone, or something unique. Not only that, but it also happen with people using the localized Yahoo! services. All messages from any Yahoo! Mail accounts (that I checked) arrive at PST, whether they are send from an @yahoo.com address, or from others (like an @yahoo.de address).

This is annoying. I do expect messages I receive to be in the sender’s timezone, it’s much simpler for me to automatically change hours based on the known location of the sender than on the email account the sender is using. And I most certainly expect my messages to show my own timezone.

For comparison, Both Hotmail (which is otherwise inferior) and Gmail do this properly. Not to mention every client-based program. I can’t think of a single good reason for Yahoo! not to be able to.

It looks like the Norwegians have joined the bandwagon.

Anyone heard of the large furniture selling network, IKEA ? Well, most of the furniture comes in pieces, as "flat pack", with instruction manuals explaining how to assemble them.

So what’s the problem? Some manuals contain drawing of human figures alongside the pieces of furniture, illustrating positions and movement needed for the assembly. And the Norwegian prime minister is furious because all the figures are either of men, or of indiscernible gender. So it must be sexual discrimination, you see?

Do you? Really?

Especially those indiscernible gender figures. Have they no shame?!

He’s absolutely right. Next time I buy something in IKEA I want the instruction manual to be jam-packed with drawings of scantily clad females. And be accurate and elaborate, so there won’t be room for confusion. We have to know these are real women, and not men in disguise. Equality is important, dammit! Are you listening IKEA?

On a side-note, the CNN news article managed to get IKEA’s name wrong in the title. The web page title, in the HTML, not the headline. The article itself is correct all the way, but on the title it’s spelled ‘Ikea". An overzealous copy editor?

Hat tip to Common Knowledge.

A friend of mine often takes a taxi ride between home and work. Both are near a main street in his city, so many taxis cover the route, charging a fare which is identical to the price of a bus ticket.

A few days ago, on the way back from work, the driver of the taxi decided that instead of going all the way to drop my friend, he wants to go in a different direction, to another city. So he stopped mid-route, gave my friend his fare money back, and told him to get off the cab.

My friend tried to argue, but to no avail. The driver didn’t care he agreed to carry him, and was mid route. He didn’t care that the time needed to drop my friend at his home station would have only been a few minutes of driving. He decided he prefers to get better fares on an inter-city drive, and wants to do so immediately.

He stopped at a place where another cab was parking. So he told my friend to use the other cab, and that he won’t have any problems. And drove off.

The other cab was standing there because the driver was eating at a nearby stand. And was not willing to stop just in order to carry one passenger for a short distance (Can’t fault him for that, really).

My friend did catch another cab a few minutes later, and arrived home safely, but that was some lousy experience.

This is another one of those things I originally posted elsewhere, but decided to also copy here. The story was very slightly edited to keep her anonymous.

Before I get to the sad tale itself, here are a couple of reviews about it, which made me think that it may merit reposting:

I laughed so hard, I was afraid I was going to wake up my mom (and then I realized she didn’t go to sleep yet. LOL)

Followed by

LOLOLOL, know what you mean, I did wake up my roomy - and she wasn’t happy!! :)

So you see, it has to be good. Has to!

Anyway, here goes:

Well, let me tell you the harrowing tale of how she broke my heart and then forgot all about it. Twice.

We were sitting on some lecture in the university. I won’t mention which since she still has trauma from it, and hate for the explicit names being mentioned. In any case, at some point she came up with some harebrained theory about the effects of global climate conditions, and long-term the climatic behaviour (The lesson was in Economics, it was potentially relevant to the topic discussed at the time).

And she told me to suggest this theory to the lecturer.

Which is when I made my *big* mistake. I said no.

At the time I thought I had a good reason. Her theory made no sense and was obviously wrong. Totally so. Due to that it seemed logical to avoid raising it in class (even though the lecturer was probably dumb enough to consider it).

So, to repeat the sad moment, I said no.

At which point she gave me this gorgeous, but oh so sad, pout, raising tears of sympathy to my eyes. I was overwhelmed by the desire to repent, and suggest her claim to the lecturer, anything to remove the hurt look in her eyes. But before I could do so she told me…

Excuse me for a minute there, I need a short break before I can continue…

She told me… That she didn’t love me anymore.

Now you have to realize that she never did tell me that she loved me before that point. Yet, surely, she cannot stop loving me if she never did, right?

So for the briefest of moments, a mere tiny fraction of time, my heart soared and leaped to unimaginable heights, knowing that I had her love. Only to come crashing and tumbling down, the long long way down, when the realization hit me that she no longer does. Worse, I did not get to bask in the glow of her love while I had it, and only found out about it once it was so abruptly taken away…

My heart, as I said, fell down and hit rock bottom, all in an instant. And if you didn’t know, the preservation of momentum and kinetic energy hold sway even in matters of the heart. Because it soared so high the moment before, the landing was so very hard.

My heart, which I thought so durable up to that moment, shuddered, and broke into billions, nay, trillions, of tiny microscopic pieces, spread all over the place. Many flew so far and wide that I to this day know not where they landed. The rest was spread around me, the glittering dust of my heart that now felt like ashes of despair.

And then she turned around, and we continued with the lesson.

With the utmost investment of will power I managed to hold a semblance of calm, not showing the turmoil raging inside me. I managed to go through the rest of the day, the rest of the following couple of years, in a daze of pain, sorrow, loss, and yearning, while maintaining an amicable façade to all those around.

Then, at some point much later (about two years), while talking with her, she asked if she could ask me to do something. I replied with a flippant "Have I ever said no to you", and as the pain of memory lanced through me, added hurriedly "apart from that last time?".

And she gave me a totally blank and puzzled look. As if to say what one time are you talking about?. And then she really did ask "What one time are you talking about?". I tried to give broad hints, since surely the most tragic event of my life must have left some memorable impression on her. But no.

Eventually, I had to relive the entire terrible moment, retelling the whole story. And as I concluded, and silence filled the room, laying heavily between us she said…

Please give me another moment here to collect myself…

She said in the most light and indifferent tone, "Oh? Really? I don’t remember that at all. Well, never mind, I take that back".
And turned around to go on with what she was doing before.

For a second, it was as if the ashes of my heart where trying once again to string themselves together into a remnant, but fuller remnant, of the whole that once was. She didn’t mean that she didn’t love me after all. But then it hit me that in the same breath she then didn’t mean that she did. And my heart came apart again, not having enough time to glue itself.

Then it became worse. The whole incident meant nothing to her. Nothing.
I was a ruined, devastated, and destroyed man, and she didn’t even notice, didn’t bat an eyelid, didn’t bother remembering.

And life went on. Until a few months later when she again asked me if I can do something for her. And having temporarily repressed the memory of the previous incident, I gave the same answer. And can you guess what she said? Can you? Let me give you a hint… "What one time are you talking about?"…

Yes, she forgot it again! Twice!

And so it stands up to this very day…

Yes, that’s today, March 15, aka "The Ides of March".

What does Ides mean, you ask? Just a mention of time. Like you’d make a single word for "the second Friday of the month" or stuff like that.
In the case of Ides, it’s the 15th on March (duh!), May, July and October, and 13 on any other month.

Many consider 13 to mean bad luck. But the most famous Ides for bad luck is on a 15th. Of March, of course.

Many people knows where the phrase "Beware the Ides of March" comes from. What almost nobody knows, and will soon be revealed here, is what the real meaning of it was, instead of the commonly believed falsehood.

OK, History lesson. Anyone heard of Caesar? Julius Caesar, the Roman "emperor" ? Well, as you probably know he was murdered on the Ides of March. Which isn’t all that exciting in and by itself, since it’s likely that over the years many people were murdered on every day, Ides or otherwise.
But, according to the (not entirely reliable, but close enough) histories of the time, Julius was warned, a few days earlier, by an astrologer to "Beware the Ides of March". And decided he’ll stay home on the Ides. Only he didn’t, he went to the senate. And the rest, as they say is history.

Does it mean that this astrologer was the real deal, and that his astrology was real? Well, if you believe the story so far, it’s still no. How come? The place was jam-packed of astrologers, and like most of the supposed astrologers in our days, they probably made vague predictions all the time, most of which did not come true. If you make enough predictions, though, statistically speaking you’ll get a couple of them right. That doesn’t mean you predicted anything.

Astrologers, however, like all soothsayers, oracles, precogs, and the likes, are extremely vague and unclear. Comes with the trade, I guess.
So here is what you don’t know, and with all the excitement over Julius being stabbed, nobody noticed… Ready? The astrologer was the real deal, but he wasn’t talking about Julius at all. At all. He wasn’t the sort that could predict something a couple of days in the future, he was one with the ability to lift the mists of time, and see far away into the future. As far as our own days. Kind of like Nostradamus, only he got a lot less fame, maybe because he didn’t talk about fun stuff like flying exploding pigs. Anyway, he gave the warning to Julius not because he knew Julius was going to die on the Ides, but because Julius was *the man*, and had the most likelihood to be able to do something to make sure the warning will pass over to future generations.

Which you have to admit worked perfectly. Of all the things said in that time "Beware the Ides of March" survived in the best shape, and is among the most famous.

Alas, as often happen with those dire warning, the true meaning eluded everyone. Nobody realized what the warning was truly about until it became much too late. See, the warning was really meant for my parents, or for the hospital staff where my mom gave birth. As it turns out, this is my birthday… And I’m too old now for anyone to heed the warning and do anything about it <wicked, sinister, and ominous laughter goes here>.

So there!

Oh, one more thing, then… Happy Birthday to Me!

Every time I get surprised all over again over how stupid people can get.

Suppose you’re a 45-55 years old men, driving in the evening, with your three kids in the car. Further suppose you’re tired. Now suppose your 10 years old daughter starts to nag that she wants to drive. What would you do?

 
1. Stop for a short rest.
 
2. Ignore her and drive home.
 
3. Tell her to shut up and stop bothering you since you’re tired enough as is.
 
4. Agree, let her drive, and take a nap on the other seat while she’s at it.

Well, according to a news report from last week, there’s at least one person who chose option 4. This guy let his 10 years old daughter drive the car, and took a nap while she was at it.

They were stopped when a police car that happened by noticed a driver that seemed a little young. Naturally the guy had his driver’s license revoked for a few years (no problem, his daughter can drive him), and said that he understands that he did a very foolish and irresponsible thing (duh!)…

Last week we were in the Technologies 2005 exhibition in Tel-Aviv. It’s a purely Israeli event, but there are representatives from many of the major suppliers (and buyers) in various hi-tech sectors.

The exhibition itself was fairly interesting (well, some aspects more, and some less, there were very myriad types on things presented).

One mistake many presenting companies made was in the design of their stands. Everyone made sure you could see the company name, but some where so enthusiastic about having colours,  graphics, and eye candy, that they made it very hard to know what they do. If someone came over to search for then, that’s fine. For people who intend to spend time on each stand, and talk to reps of each company, that’s fine too. But most buyers were either generally browsing, or looking for specific kinds of items/technologies. And when someone makes it very hard to discern at first, or second or third, sight what it is they’re selling, many people would not spend the effort of coming over to talk to the rep.

And there seemed to be extremely bad judgement exhibited by many of those presenting thin LCD screens for embedded systems.

One supplier had a wall full of a large amount of models and sizes of screens. And what did they show on them, to demonstrate the display quality? The standard Flying Windows screen saver. So the screen was black, with the occasional fast-moving splotches of colour. Not helping to know anything about the screen at all, and mostly made me wonder what were they trying to hide…

Another vendor did worse. They also had a wall covered with LCD screens. And two huge problems. The first was a nice screen that was so totally out of synch that the picture looked sliced and flickering. Nobody should show that when they’re trying to sell something. It’s a huge run away - this product we’re selling is defective sign. The second one was that the lovely hi-res flower pictures they showed were often replaced by a notice that this is a free demo of some commercial screen saver product, with web address and contact details to buy the full version. And if it’s not clear, this was not by the company making the presentation. That’s right, they probably took a demo version of a screen saver of the Internet, and used it for the exhibition. This is both serious copyright infringement, and plain stupid. It looked so unprofessional. And they didn’t mind, it was like that for two days…

A third vendor of those screen had a more conceptual problem. I heard a discussion he had with one of the exhibition’s visitors that was taking a look at his stand, and it was obvious they completely misunderstood each other. The mistake of the visitor was understandable, he didn’t come from the right field. But the vendor had to know what he was talking about.  The visitor was mainly aware of computer screens as things you connect to personal computers. But the screens were meant for embedded systems (closed systems that also need to display information. Like hand-held computers). So the screens didn’t come with a connection to a regular computer’s graphical card, since they were not meant to be connected externally to a full computer. They were meant to be connected to computer boards for embedded systems, which have special types of connectors built directly into the circuitry of the board (TFT and LVDS). So the vendor was repeating the claim that you don’t need a graphics card in order to use the screens (which is true, but pointless for him to mention since hardly any of those systems use external graphics cards anyway), and the visitor kept claiming that you have to use a graphics card since there isn’t any other way for the computer to use a screen (which is also entirely true, for full computers like the visitor know from home). It was a long argument, and they both ended it feeling that the other person is an idiot…

Plus, as usual in these exhibitions, many of the traders brought all sorts of silly gifts and trinkets, such as free food-stuff, candies, pens, markers, flashlights, candles, toys, and up to a company that gave free wine (good one, even) plus the wineglasses themselves. All a colossal expenditure of money, which I doubt helped sales in any noticeable manner, since the people who came just to take the free stuff rarely paid attention to what was actually sold.

I’m not saying explicitly that it’s a German trait, but it is the second time something like that happens to me with a German, and it never happened with anyone from anywhere else.

I needed to talk with a person in a company we work with in Germany. Couldn’t catch him the at the office all day. Finally we got hold of his boss, who informed us that he isn’t in the office. He will be sick until Wednesday.

He’s sick, but there’s already a date set for him getting better and being back. What, are German germs and viruses really that more disciplined than the rest?!

Why do people keep coming up with these silly studies, don’t they have something better to do? And if not, can’t they at least make the same nonsense research in a proper way?!

• Teenagers who have a television in their bedrooms are more likely
  to use marijuana, smoke and have sex. I guess I’m a prime example of how accurate this research is. not. Or then again, maybe TV just totally reversed its effects sometime during the last 10 years. Tracing the cause would make a wonderful next research project, or a Ph.D. thesis for someone…

• A study reveals that college students watch an average of three
  hours, 41 minutes of television each day. Sure. No doubt. I’ve finished university myself a year ago. Most of my friends study, or recently finished studying, in a university or college. And I assure you, nobody came close to 4 hours of TV per day. Not only that, but most of the other students I met around campus, whether living alone, at home, or at the dorms, didn’t come close to so many viewing hours.

Just a tiny little blooper.

This looks like a nice and friendly shop for little children’s clothing.

Check the file name for the right-side image (Right click on the image, and choose "Properties").

Now, isn’t that very nice of them?

Hat tip to NTK.

PS. In case they found out about this and fix it, this is a nice picture of a cute young Asian girl, but the file name is chink.jpg

Mycroft provide a huge collection, the collection, of search plug-ins for Mozilla/FireFox. They have a very large repository, and since a basic plug-in is pretty easy to make, they make it simple for people to check their own search plug-ins and submit them.

And provide a warning that they’re swamped, so it may take a while until the submission is accepted.

I found a site I wanted to use, with no plug-in ready on the list, so I decided to make one of my own, and send it to them for inclusion. I sent it before mid-January. Today I got back an email, automated (or just sent in bulk as a pre-made form. It’s alright, since they claim to have too many submissions to be able to respond personally), letting me know that the submission is rejected, because they already have a plug-in for that site.

Which surprised me a bit, since in the passing months (That’s about 2.5 months) I checked occasionally and didn’t see anything.

And lo and behold, there was indeed such a search plug-in there. Which was listed as being entered today.

So if this went on a first-sender basis, it took even more time to get the plug-in by the other guy… And if there were two of us starting this that long ago, how many may have done the same in the past months?

I can see that they have other things to do, and that they are busy, and they really do provide a good service. But if updates takes so much time, maybe someone else should do it.

If not, at least I think they should provide some list of pending plug-ins. Make it automatic even, based on subject lines of submissions (which they request to include the name of the site) or something like that. Just to let people know.

I just can’t help imagining that what they should have really sent me was "Your plug-in, like 534 others for the same website, was rejected, because we just now added the 535th one to the list" …

I was discussion with Yahoo!’s customer support a problem causing my Yahoo! Messenger to be always marked as on-line from web pages and Yahoo! Groups. After a few days they managed to sort it out, and that was that.

Then I got an email asking me to take an on-line survey about their customer care. I took the survey. The survey was very badly designed, and had some serious flaws. They did provide an email address to send other comments about the survey, so I took the opportunity and emailed them (Satmetrix, which was running the survey for Yahoo!. I’m not sure why, Yahoo! are big enough to be able to make bad surveys by themselves. A good survey is something else, and may require previous practice, but this?) my main complaints.

First, They had a series of question of the rate between 1-5 the following aspects kind. One was for "Professionalism and courtesy of response". This is something I saw on several past surveys, and it always ticks me off. Courtesy and professionalism are two entirely different things when dealing with technical support. Courtesy is how nice and polite the person is. Professionalism is how much it seems like they have a clue what they’re talking about.

Yahoo! support emails are always very courteous. I dealt with them several times in the past, and I can’t fault their courtesy at all. But part of it is because they use pre-written responses, which were went over to assure they’re courteous. They are also usually entirely irrelevant. This specific incident was much better than previous ones, but still the level of professionalism was way below the level of courtesy.

So do I give a low mark, and risk them making the responses even more meaningless, yet friendly? Or do I give a high mark, and risk them thinking that quoting unhelpful pages, and telling me the problem was resolved when it wasn’t, is professional enough for me?

Second, they had a question about the "Time to receive a response after sending email to Yahoo!". This is again very unclear. I got a response straight away, but it was an automated response, copying the same help web page that didn’t help me a single bit originally (which is why I turned to support in the first place, after all). This response told me to reply to it if it wasn’t helpful, which I promptly did. The next reply, which is the first one I’d actually term a response, was fast, but took a little longer.

But which do they refer to here? Which do they call the first response? If I give a lower mark, would they think that they need to send the meaningless response even faster? If I give a high mark, would they think that the brain-dead automatic response was good?

Third, they had a field for free text commentary, but limited to "one" thing that Yahoo! Support needs to improve. Just one. This is silly, what if I have several comments? Heck, I did have several comments. But I didn’t say them, since they were asking for one.

Result? I was annoyed since I had things to say, I even took a survey which is supposed to let me say them, and then I wasn’t allowed to say them. And Yahoo! loses as well, since they got reviews from actual customers that they didn’t get. If this is the case with me, this is the case in aggregate. They lose valuable customer feedback, and annoy customers. Why?

So I sent my message. I wasn’t sure how much attention it would get, but I did my bit, and tried to help.

Guess what, I received a response. Is that a good thing? Well, considering the response, no! Satmetrix made themselves appear entirely unprofessional (and discourteous <g> ).

Of course the response was automated. That’s alright, I expected an automated response. But I expected one saying that the received my comments and will later review them, or something of the sort.

Anyone want to guess the method of automation used? An "Out of Office AutoReply". They just set the email address as a personal email address, with a setting used generally when someone is on vacation and want to notify people that they won’t be able to reply for a while.

Technically, it does the job, yes. But this is so unprofessional. It feels amateurish. It’s really not that difficult to send automatic replies that don’t look like that. When I get a response from a company after sending comments to an address they specified, I do not want to see the subject of the response message telling me that someone isn’t at the office. I sent it to an address meant to be a recipient of messages for further processing, not a personal one.

In addition, they had spam filters installed to monitor this address. How do I know? Because it added the word "[spam]" to the subject. You do not put automatic spam monitoring on an address set to autoreply to everything, or one meant to receive public comments. Yet they did.

So the spam filter thinks it’s spam, adds the word "[spam]" to the subject, and let the message go on.  Once past it, it gets caught be the Out of Office AutoReply mechanism, which replies to it with the pre-written text. And as a result I am told that they believe my message is spam. Good to know. That’s rude, people.

Either you don’t filter this address, or you don’t reply to messages you think are spam. But doing it like they really did it, bad, bad, bad.

All in all, if I had to fill a survey about my experience with Satmetrix, they would get very poor marks.

Microsoft intends to release a pack of six new fonts.

Yes, not all that exciting, I agree.

But some people in the fonts and design business apparently think otherwise, like this review of the fonts.

and the review is… well, here are some ways in which fonts are described there:

• It has a warm, friendly personality
• robust, all-purpose workhorse
• strong and sophisticated
• designed with function and flexibility in mind
• less cuddly, more assertive

And so on and so forth.

You’d think we were talking people, or something.

Fonts…

Again from the long line of people who have too much free time on their hands, so are wasting it doing idiotic research.

The latest one? Checking how much sexually explicit content is there on the MTV channel.

In 171 hours of MTV programming, PTC analysts found 1,548 sexual scenes containing 3,056 depictions of sex or various forms of nudity and 2,881 verbal sexual references

And they found a lot. So much so that it’s absolutely ridiculous.

And it is. I don’t really watch the MTV channel on television. But occasionally I do get to to tune in for a clip, or have it open for a little while in the background when I’m doing something else. And there really isn’t that much sex there. Seriously.

Heck, I doubt hard-core porn channels have so much sexual scenes on them. Makes me wonder what MTV channel they were watching, since it’s certainly not the one I have on TV…

Another month, another bunch of odd search queries that brought people here instead of some place useful. Well, for some of them, I doubt there is some place useful.

Still, let see if I can help, in case they’ll come back again. So what have people been searching?

how to increase hotmail mailbox size
Easy, move to Puerto Rico. Or to the US. Then wait, and pretty quickly they’ll upgrade it to 250MB. And while we don’t condone this behaviour, rumours have reached us that it’s possible to lie to hotmail regarding your location. Or to put it differently, maybe you can feel like you live in the US in spirit…

On the other hand, Go open an account on Gmail to get 1GB today, or Yahoo! Mail, to get 250MB today, and be upgraded to 1GB pretty soon…

email address of business men in ghana 2005
I know it’s sad, but there are quite a lot of business men in Ghana. Lots and lots of them. And the most amazing thing is, they don’t all share the same email address! No, seriously! Not in 2005, not before, and probably not in the future.

download jag episodes
On some parts of the world this may be of questionable legality. I really cannot recommend doing it, well, not unless you want to see JAG and don’t happen to live where it’s broadcasted.
Rumour has it that there is quite a difference between looking for old JAG episodes, and getting brand new JAG episodes. For the old ones, try eMule, and just search for the episode name and number. For the new ones, you’ll want BitTorrent (Azureus is a good client). Then go to one of the sites offering listings of new TV episodes, and get the torrent file.

chauvinist behaviour blog
Hey, I may not be an avid feminist, but let’s not go to far with it, OK? Wrong address!

teenagers-behaviour
That’s easy. Mad, crazy, and uncontrollable. Nothing to it.

workhours of population in egypt
Morning till dusk, like the rest of us?

some people think driving is fun
Yes, some people do. I’m not one of them, but you’re right. If you want to search for them, however, may I recommend leaving the computer, and getting on the street?

math attention grabbers
How about:

Proof!!! 1+1=3 !!!!

glasses contacts weaken vision conspiracy
It’s not really a conspiracy you know. It’s also not always true.

• Up to the age of seven, anything that prevents you from seeing clearly can have terrible effects on your vision, since the brain is still learning to use the eyes. Put glasses, or contacts (for little kids?! Contacts?!) that you don’t need, and it will weaken your vision.
• Reading glasses will weaken your near vision. It’s like wearing a cast. The glasses reduce strain from the muscles contracting the lens, the muscles will become weaker, and you’ll need a higher correction for your next glasses. On the other hand, if you can’t read without the glasses, it doesn’t really matter, does it? So not much of a conspiracy.
• If you put contacts, and don’t clean them, or don’t take care of them and disinfect them, or let a foreign body come between the contact the and cornea without feeling it, you’ll damage the cornea, and maybe more. This will weaken your vision. But that’s not a conspiracy, that’s tissue damage. And you’ll only have yourself to blame, since you should have worn glasses instead of contacts.

legal issues of smoking
Too many of those to cover here. For some obscure reason it’s perfectly legal to smoke cigarettes on most countries. Go figure. Maybe the tobacco industry just has very strong political clout.
Smoking in public places is forbidden in many countries, but the definition of public varies, and most places circumvent it by designating special smoking areas, and expecting the smoke to stay in place just because it’s told to. The law for some reason accept that an imaginary border line can stop smoke. Maybe lawmakers were smoking something a bit stronger when coming up with those things.
And recently there have been legal fights over the ability to fire workers for smoking. For privately held companies, it’s probably legal.
Beyond all that, I wouldn’t know why hurting yourself, and the innocent bystanders around you, should be legal.

mckennitt loreena oops greensleeves lyrics
Oops?! I mean, the rest of this search is fine, but "oops" ?! Seriously?

pirate in malacca trait
Sadly enough, there is a trait for there being pirates in the Malacca straits. I don’t run the Indonesian navy, so don’t blame me. I suppose this trait comes from there being money in it. Make it too dangerous, and the trait will go away.

bullying neighbours windows privacy
If you want windows privacy, you don’t need to bully your neighbour, until they avoid looking. There is a new patent, state-of-the-art, recently imported from Japan, available in select electronics stores, called curtains. Buy curtains, put behind the windows, and there you have it. Windows privacy, and no need to bully the neighbours.

Yes, it’s true.

The devil does no longer lurk in the hearts of men. It has some entirely new tricks up its sleeves.

Like, er, drawing self-portraits on turtle-shells apparently.

Nice craftsmanship, though the style seems like an odd blend of ancient Egyptian and post-modern. But who am I to play art critic for the devil?

Self denfence trick…
Painful self defence trick.

From the text on the lower-left corner:

Followers of the Iron Hand styles immediately clench their fists tightly, with a crushing grip, and jerk the hand sharply back to the near hip, effectively ripping away the genitals

Brr…

Original image taken from here. Hat tip to Monkey Methods.

[Update: I got a message from someone claiming that:

I am Jewish, I'm American and I take deep offense at what, in my opinion is a blasphemous misinterpretation of the holiday of Purim. It is not only a misinterpretation but such irresponsible explanations engender anti-Semitism.

If you want to give explanations of holidays, I'd suggest giving straight ones.

So, just to make it absoloutly obvious for the extra obtuse, this is supposed to be homour. Yes, it's closely based on the actual Scroll of Esther and the holiday customs, but the tone, and the interpretations, are pure satire/comedy. OK? CLEAR?]

This being the Jewish holiday of Purim now, you might have asked yourself what is this Purim all about, where does it come from, and what does it mean. Right?

Well, wonder no longer, here is the full explanation. First, we’ll go over the story from the scroll of Esther, which details the whole thing, and when we’re done, we’ll cover the ways it’s currently celebrated.

Now, the scroll of Esther leaves a lot of important details out, but have no fear, in here, for the first time, you’ll get a behind-the-scene and honest look.

Who is this Esther you ask, and why is the scroll named after her? Well, Esther is the dumb Jewish blonde which through sheer stupidity and incompetence managed to nearly fail in every opportunity presented to her to prevent a great war. But she’s a beautiful blonde, so as often happen when men write the history, she’s considered one of the heroes of the tale, and gets a lot of the credit.

Now, onward to the story.

It all supposedly took place a long long time ago, in ancient Persia. The king of Persia at the time was called Achashverosh (Yes, it’s a funny name, but nobody told him after he executed the first few). And he had a very beautiful wife (Funny how this is the main criteria for all these ancient kings in choosing wives, isn’t it?) called Vashti.

If this was an episode of the original Star-Trek series, Vashti would be the ensign expendable… Achashverosh was having a large feast, inviting all his important friends from all over. And after a few days of celebrating he thought it may be a good idea to bring in the little misses, to show off to his guests. So he sent for her. Alas, Vashti wasn’t really a party person, and was having a bit of a headache, so she said no. After much discussion with all the advisers, they reached the inevitable conclusion, and he had her executed. No, seriously. He also passed a law that women should do what their husbands tell them, so some would say it wasn’t all bad.

And so started the search for a new queen. Obviously, this time he wanted someone smart, intelligent, and a good conversationalist, to make for a good marriage. No, no, kidding! Got you there for a moment, didn’t I? He wanted someone beautiful. So agents were sent to scour the country, looking for beautiful women. Then these women were pampered for a whole year to make them look pretty, and presented to the king.

Now, you’d expect this to be a huge hit, with everyone sending their cross-eyed daughter as well, in case they’ll get lucky and score the king as a husband. And mostly, that what happened. Kings are always considered a good catch. Now, remember Esther? Well, Esther was different. Maybe her mum dropped her on the head when she was little, or maybe it’s just the blonde thing. In any case, she spent something like four years trying to run away and not get found by the agents. Yes, this also mean the king was so picky that he didn’t find anyone pretty enough for all those years, I guess those Persian women weren’t something to behold…

Well, eventually Esther was caught. In comes the next actor is our story Mordecai. Mordecai was a relative of Esther, and the guy who raised her. Mordecai was also one of those paranoid Jews, who were sure everyone were out to get the Jews, even though at this time nobody really was. So the main advice he had to give Esther was to not tell anyone she’s a Jew. Seriously.

Fast forward a year later. Esther is finally to be presented before the king. Being a petulant girl, she refused to wear the standard perfume and make-up. Luckily, this otherwise pretty stupid act was actually a good move, since after seeing hundreds of heavily perfumed and more heavily made up women, Achashverosh was probably just very happy to see someone with a normal skin tone, and who didn’t stank of myrrh. So he married Esther and made her queen.

She didn’t tell him she was a Jew, of course, so I suppose the marriage wasn’t Jewish. Terrible.

One thing you need to know, is about Mordecai. According to the scroll, the guy was constantly at the palace gate, and wandering around the palace. Most critics take it to mean he was important and respected. A more sensible outlook would be that he was a beggar hobo, but one of those odd characters which goes everywhere, and which everybody knows. This would fit the facts perfectly. Now, at some point during the following years these two servants decided to try and kill Achashverosh. Maybe they were blonde too, but in any case they talked about it at great length, without paying attention to their surrounding, so Mordecai was walking by, and heard them speaking. Being a good citizen, and probably hoping for a warm meal, he reported it. The two servants were caught, and, as you probably guessed, went to meet their makers. Now Esther made sure that the king be aware the credit belongs to Mordecai, and it was even written in the annals of the kingdom. What further did the king do about it? Nothing! Who cares if some hobo saves your life? It’s his duty, after all, no?

Fast forward a little more, and introduce our new actor, Haman. Haman was one of those egotist and ambitious persons, who have enough charisma to make people like and trust them. So he became one of Achashverosh’s advisers, and at some point the head advisor. This is like head vizier, and anyone who have ever watched a Disney movie know how they come out, right? Evil, scheming, and full of himself. Haman fit the bill perfectly. And, as is always the case, the king really listened to him and gave him nearly free reign.

One of the first things Haman did was arrange for a law forcing everyone to bow down to him. It made him feel all important inside. Which takes us back to Mordecai. As we already mentioned, the guy had some odd notions about what being a Jew meant, and decided he won’t be bowing his head to anyone except to god. This annoyed Haman a great deal, but being all important he couldn’t really complain, since people would laugh at him, so he just let it simmer inside, and took it all on his wife.

Well, not entirely. He wanted to get rid of Mordecai. But how do you do it without admitting the hobo gets to you? A problem, indeed. Here comes in the character which isn’t mentioned in scroll, or in any other place. Yes, you get here an exclusive first tale of what really happened. There was a witch involved, you see. An evil witch, scheming mischief throughout the kingdom. She noticed Haman’s malice (Witches are good at that), and knew exactly what to do. So she came over, and suggested a solution. Get rid of all the Jews. All of them, to the last. Since Mordecai is a Jew, that would neatly take care of the problem.

Haman of course liked the idea, and went about it. Now, he didn’t want it to happen too soon, so if anyone saw him talking with the witch, it won’t be apparent. So he decided to cast a random lot. In Hebrew, this can be called a "Pur", and this is why the holiday is called "Purim". Yes, seriously! Absurd, isn’t it? Anyway, he picked a date, and went to the king.

Now the king might refuse if he was told "Listen, I wanna get rid of the Jews, what do you say?", so Haman put a spin on it. He told the king that there are people in his country who plot against him and do not obey his rules. He got the king so worked up about them, that when he offered the customary bribe, the king refused. He gave Haman his signet, and told him to deal with it however he wants to. Remember the signet, it will be important later.

Haman, being like all great viziers too fond of overly elaborate and complex plans, wrote and order for the Jews to be attacked and destroyed on the given date, and sent it throughout the realm.

The Jews heard about it, and were bewildered. It really did came out of nowhere, since nobody had a problem with Jews. Remember, this was not a release of old cultural angers, but rather a revenge against Mordecai that was manipulated and blown out of proportion.

In typical Jewish fashion, Mordecai did what any intelligent men would do when hearing such news. He tore off his clothes, and wore sackcloth and ashes (Probably got them at a sale, and was looking for a good excuse to use them. Who knows?). And this being a grand gesture, the other bewildered Jews followed suit.

But Mordecai wasn’t a complete idiot. He knew the queen is a relative, and as a queen may have an effect on the king. So he approached her, and asked her to talk to the king. Esther, being an excitable blonde, reacted even more dramatically, and in a fit responded that she’ll first go on a fast, and that she won’t (imagine much stomping of feet) talk to the king unless all the Jews do likewise. So they did.

Actually, there was another reason she didn’t want to talk to the kind directly. See, Achashverosh, being an important king, was not to be disturbed. If you approached him without being invited, well, off with your head! Now, a normal beautiful queen would probably have been able to figure out that just wandering near him scantily clothed may get her an invite. If not, it was always possible to send a message. The king was seeing people, like all his advisers, and many servants. But, you know, blonde.

So she fasted three days, to make sure she’ll look haggard instead of beautifully radiant, and then just walked over to him. Luckily, he noticed her before she quite reached him, and invited her to come over. The king was still besotted, so she asked her what she wanted, up to half his kingdom (They always do that, did you notice? No wonder there were all those tiny kingdoms around, everyone getting anything from any king ever was always offered half the kingdom, odd).

What would you have done? Asked to spare the Jews, of course. They weren’t close to being half the kingdom. But Esther, well, blonde. It has been three days, so she didn’t really remember what she wanted, only that she really needed to ask the king for something, and that Haman was somehow involved. Also, she hadn’t eaten for three days, so was thinking about food. So what boon did she ask? That the king and Haman will drop over for dinner. Yes, seriously.

They came for dinner, had lots of wonderful small talk, and at the end of the evening the king again asked her if she wants anything. But she still wasn’t able to really remember, so she just invited the both of them to come again tomorrow evening.

Now, flash back to the undocumented story of the witch. She got her nefarious plot in place, but had one problem. Witnesses. She knew of the trouble brewing, and needed to find a way to make sure Haman would die when everything will fall into place. Come in Haman’s wife Zeresh, which according to the scroll is going to be introduced in the scene later that evening. But this is a little flash back for background. You See, according to the scroll, she was a pompous women as well, who desired the glory and advancement of her husband. This could not be further from the truth. They had ten kids, which she had to raise by herself while he was having fun at the palace. She had to take care of the house. She had to do whatever silly thing her husband demanded, by law. And worst, she had to bow to him all the time, even if she was doing the dishes. She hated the guy’s guts. So a few weeks before this evening she went to look for someone to help her get rid of him. An apothecary to sell her poison, or some such. And the witch found her, and promised to help, without evidence that Zeresh had something to do with it, provided at the right time Zeresh would do as she tells her to.

Back to the scroll time line and documented plot. Haman is just leaving dinner, more full of himself than ever, on account of being invited to eat with the king and queen. And he passes the ever lurking Mordecai, who doesn’t bow. Haman knows what is going to happen to him pretty soon, but he still fumes, especially this night.

The witch makes her move, goes to Zeresh, and instructs her. When Haman comes home, instead of patiently ignoring his usual whines and fuming, she pretends to really care, and suggests a solution. She tells Haman to build a huge gallows, and that later he would find a reason to hang Mordecai there. He was so astounded that his wide suddenly gave him the appreciation he deserved, that it seemed to him like a good idea, instead of as a totally silly one, and promptly arranged for a gallows to be built.

Now, at this night, like many others, Achashverosh couldn’t sleep. So he asked for the annals to be read to him. Usually the parts were selected in random (seriously. Maybe it helped keep him interested). This time, we can say that a certain meddling witch passed certain bribed, and among the randomly selected bits was the not so randomly selected story about how Mordecai saved his life.

And, as expected, he decided that maybe he should do something about it. He was in a good mood himself, after all, and felt magnanimous. But as you may have noticed, he was more accustomed to killing people than in having them honoured, so the next day he called his trusted assistant Haman for consultation.

Now, everyone of you who worked with pompous bosses, or with clients, will agree that they are usually very bad at saying what they really want and need. Achashverosh was no different. Instead of saying "Remember that Mordecai guy who saved my life once? What do you think would be a nice way to show my appreciation, and to make sure that the rest of the population see how magnanimous I am?", he just said "So, Haman, what do you think I should do with a person that I like really want to honour?" . And so, understandably, Haman thought it was all about him, and suggested the should be dressed in all the kings regalia, and paraded throughout the city on the king’s horse by one of the king’s trusted officers.

To which, to Haman’s chagrin, the king replied "Cool, so go do that to Mordecai, will you?". And poor Haman had no choice, and had to parade Mordecai throughout the city. But he knew what was going to happen to Mordecai soon, so this must have been great comfort to him throughout.

Forward to the evening. Another dinner with Esther, Achashverosh, and Haman. This time, Esther nearly managed to collect her wits together, and when the king again asked what is it that she wanted, she asked to spare the lives of her and her people that are being destroyed by an evil person. Now, you all remember that Mordecai told her not to say she was a Jew, so up to this point it never occurred to her it could be a good idea to change that. Ergo, the king looked at her totally stunned, and asked what the heck she was talking about. Esther, being ever vigilant about her priorities, told the king it was Haman, but didn’t quite paid enough attention to mention the whole being a Jew thing and that there is already a decree  against the Jews. As the furious king was wondering what to do about Haman, Haman tried to beg the queen for forgiveness. The king was apparently insanely Jealous, since when he saw Haman holding the queen, he assumed Haman was assaulting her, and got even madder.

At this point another servant, previously primed and prompted no doubt by the witch, mentioned the gallows which were just finished. This seemed perfect to the king, and Haman was hanged. Knowledge of the witch’s involvement went to the grave with him, not to surface again until now.

The next day Mordecai noticed that something is still missing, so he dragged Esther, and they went to talk to the king about that decree. This is where you needed to remember the signet for. Apparently, anything signed with the royal signet cannot be revoked. yes, again, seriously.
I mean, how stupid is that? The king cannot change his mind if he signed something with the signet? And this king? I want to see how long will someone stay alive after telling the king "No frigging way, your highness, your signet is on it, forget about it!"… Not to mention the possibility for conflicting edicts. But in any case, that’s the way it was.

This was all too complicated for poor Achashverosh, who has just lost his head advisor so couldn’t even consult him. Can you guess what he did? Gave the signet to Mordecai, and told him to deal with it in whatever way he wants. Very free and loose with his signet, this Achashverosh dude…

Now, given that much power, many things could have been done. The previous edict, while not revoked, could have been altered. Even something silly like "but you can only try to kill Jews for the first five minutes, and don’t try too hard", or something like that.

Instead, Mordecai chose differently. He arranged for a law allowing the Jews to defend themselves against anyone who would attack them. And notified all the Jews throughout the land about it.

Yes, seriously. Because, of course, otherwise being good citizens, the Jews would have certainly just rolled over nicely and turned the other cheek, no doubt. The entire thing is very unclear. What’s important is that on the day there were fighting throughout the land, many houses were razed, and many people died, both Jews and otherwise. Fun all around.

But Jews survived mostly, so officially they won. The scroll even mentioned that they were generous, and didn’t take spoils from the war. Well, duh! The queen pretty much took care of this for them, in a frenzy for being a nice Jew and giving away to the needy. Trust me, after a little civil war, they were all needy. why object to the spoils going to the crown, if the crown will give them back, eh? In fact, this was so blatant, that tons of gifts were sent, and many delicacies and food items were distributed in the days of wild feasting afterwards.

Oh, yes, and Haman’s sons were hanged as well. Why not, right? I don’t think the daughters were, but nobody paid much attention to daughters anyway these days…

Mordecai was made an advisor to the king (and hopefully gave back the signet, though it’s not explicitly stated), and is remembered as one taking good care of his people. Today we’d say he was robbing the kingdom in the favour of his own constituency, but then he was just a good Jewish guy.

And there concludes the story. On to the customs of the holiday.

The first one is of course lots and lots of partying. You’re supposed to party madly and get so drunk you won’t even be able to tell Mordecai and Haman apart (pretty easy, they both probably look like specks of dust these days). Probably to symbolize the crazy drunkard victory celebrations and non-looting that went after winning, and the victims be damned.

Another one is using a loud and annoying rattler (called gragger in English for some reason I don’t fathom) whenever the name of Haman is mentioned. Officially he is "The Evil Haman", and this is so that we won’t have to hear his name. Yep, Jewish logic again, instead of not saying it, make more noise so it won’t be heard. Of course you have to know when it is said to do that, so you don’t really lose any information. Very bright.

The most important of all is the wearing of costumes. Everybody dresses up. Traditionally there are many Mordecai and Esther outfits, but everything goes. As the years go by, it becomes as commercialized as Halloween, only without the morbid undertones. Whatever is popular for kid’s books and TV shows, or movies, goes.

Then there are the special cookies, called Hamantashen in English. In Hebrew it’s "Ozney Haman", which means Ears of Haman. Someone at some point, maybe after drinking enough alcohol, decided those triangular cookies look like ears. I don’t see it. You make it by making a round thin layer of dough, put filling in the middle, and fold it from three direction so that you get an open triangle with the filling showing in the middle. Poppy seeds are the common filling, but variations abound.

Gifts to the poor are officially another holiday custom. Practically, you don’t see it so much on a personal level. This is of course to celebrate the plunder that was divided after the fighting subsided.

And the "sending gifts of food", in Hebrew it’s "Mishloach Manot", which is like Sending Rations or something of the sort. Basically, you take a bunch of cookies, candies, and small toys, pack them with pretty ribbons, and give them as gifts to friends, or strangers (not much of that going on, except for schools where you sometimes randomly switch between class members). Sadly, the custom is being ruined in recent years by modern and healthy versions of those gift baskets.

And that’s about it. Happy Purim everyone!

On Saturday evening I went to a performance by Shlomit Aharon. A terrific singer, with a wonderful voice (She has been at it for a number of years now, and a friend asked me if she isn’t too old by now, so to make it absolutely clear, she’s far from it).
Also accompanying were:

• Peter Wertheimer on a saxophone. He was excellent, and it’s not the first time I get to hear him play in some capacity. He usually plays (at least the bit I got to hear) Jazz, as was also evident when in some of the songs in this show he did a little solo parts and slight improvs. He’s a good player, and has a good sound. Also seemed like a nice person, but that could have just been a little stage persona, hard to tell.
• Michal Rahat on the drums. Don’t think I heard her before. She played alright. But a bass drum was set to a resonant frequency for something most people carry inside their chests, which made all the bass strokes very uncomfortable. I know that music that touches your heart is supposed to be good, but I think that sentence really did not intend for it to be taken literally…
• Dror Alexander on the keyboards. Didn’t hear him before as well, and I may have misspelled the name here, not sure. Also did good enough a job, if there were any big glitches, I missed them. He ran some small banter with Shlomit, as a part of the show, and managed to sound almost like it’s all fresh, even though the conversations were apparently nearly identical to previous shows of them together.

Anyway, the show was excellent, I like her music, and love her singing.

The show took place in the hall at our city country-club. Tickets for members were at a ridiculously low price, as usual.

This was also the night of some big sport game (soccer?), between an Israeli team and Ireland (I think). As you may sense, I’m not that much into sports…

But plenty of other people are. Enough so that the country-club also had, in their second large hall, a huge-screen cast of the game, starting at 19:30 (Local time, that’s GMT+2).

The performance was supposed to start at 21:00, but at some point they realized the game won’t be over, and many people are in the same target audience, so they delayed it to 21:30. This only took place at Thursday, two days in advance, so some people missed the notice and arrived for 21:00, but better late than never.

Of course, sport games never end on time, or so I’m told. We arrived in plenty to time to 21:30… Plenty of chair occupied by jackets and bags, but the people were all in the other room watching the game.

The performance itself started only at about 22:00. But at least people seemed happy, apparently the game was 1:0 against us (I use us for Israel here, though I don’t particularly feel for any side in this matter) from about 3 minutes after the game started, and changed to 1:1 at about 3 minutes before the game ended. Personally, it doesn’t strike me as a huge victory, but what do I know?

It was interesting to see that Shlomit isn’t more of a sports buff than I am. She mentioned the game, and seemed just as puzzled over the whole thing. I’ll hazard a guess she wasn’t too thrilled about having to sit and wait for an extra half an hour, but if that’s true, she certainly didn’t show it.