requiem

this post is more for me than anyone else and thus won't be understood by anyone but me.
This post is a requiem to something amazing that might have been, but didn't happen. Something that even though that it didn't happen I still want __very__ much to happen. Something that if it would have happened I would have said that I am complete. That I'm happy beyond my wildest dreams (and they are sometimes wild ;-))
But it didn't. That even it if in the future it would materialize, not that it stands chance of happening, but never say never ;-) I'll say: no thank you. To late :-(

I know there is a contradiction in this post. It will always be there ...

mistaken identity

I was walking through a local mall. While I was walking around the dead sea cosmetics sales girl approached me and tried to woo me into buying their products. I initially didn't notice that she works for the dead sea cosmetics and just tried to ignore her. She asked me whether I know about their products. I initially told her no, but after noticing that it's the dead sea cosmetics I told her that I'm originally from Israel and started talking in Hebrew to her. She was stunned and kept saying that she didn't believe I was Israeli and that she always distinguishes between Israelis to non Israelis and that I didn't look like Israeli at all ... I found the whole situation very amusing :-)

each to his own

Hi have this nasty habit of taking known words or sentences and use them in new contexts. It confuses others and more of then not makes them go uh??? This serves 2 things: 1. People misunderstand me reach the wrong conclusion, which leads to me having a little bit more of privacy and mystery (yeah right ;-) and 2. People are left with a puzzled face and me amused by their reaction. Only people that really know me understand the deep (and more often than not :-() hidden humor. The Title of this post is no different. Sue me ;-)
A few years back DBW went on vacation and one of the most striking things she found out is that McDonald's serve as very good public toilets. I would never believe that DBW would go into a McDonalds (and if she wants she'll post a comment on why) and thus found it very amusing that she found a use for McDonalds that no one did/does/will think about.
I finally arrived to San Diego, after driving all night (with a couple of stops to rest). On the way my super cell phone (which I will post separately about some other time) drained its battery and my laptop having limited access (gave back my verizon card, also about it in a separate post). I looked for a Starbucks coffee shop for the following reasons: 1. They open as 6AM (which means I was guaranteed they would be open). 2. They have free WIFI (which is how I'm connected to type this post) 3. They definitely will give you access to their toilet rooms and 4. They have public power outlets which means I'm not draining the laptop's battery and able to charge my cell phone too. I think it's a worth trade for the price of a "grande latte" (which is the most expensive one I ever bought through out the US). I bought it only out of courtesy only ;-) So from being lost in San Diego with no access to the information superhighway (anyone still using this term???) I'm now able to retrieve all the information I need in order to go see the air race (which is the reason I traveled from San Francisco to San Diego to begin with).
Thank you DBW for a great idea and thank you Starbucks for the service.

to go or not to go ...

All my friends in south Florida observe Yom Kipur and fast. I don't so to escape the imposed boredom of having nothing to do because everyone around me are fasting and doing nothing I decided to fly to San Francisco for a long weekend (one that started on Wednesday night). On the way to San Francisco I learned that there's an air race sponsored by Red Bull in San Diego. Obviously it's the kind of events that one doesn't get much of a chance to see twice in his life, unless he makes plans for it and invests an arm and a leg in going somewhere around the world to see them ... So I'm sitting in my friends house contemplating how I'm getting from San Francisco to San Diego to see the air race. Actually I'm passed the point of contemplating weather I should go or not. I want to go, but the issue now is: cost: Flying is too expensive and renting a car to drive there is barely affordable. So the question at hand of to be or not to be (going) is up in the air and since it is a crazy idea to just go there (700 miles, ~1000 KM away) just for a few hours and 1 event. Time for decisions ... I'm not going to ask for yours because I know everyone I know would pass and answer: I wouldn't go. But there won't be another race in the US. The next one is in Perth Australia and I don't think Red Bull will sponsor one next year (they are notorious for stopping sponsorships the moment that they feel it has become mundane).

The decision has been made: I'm going. Anyone wants to join?

enermax

A few years back I bought a case for my desktop at home. I wanted the case with the most space, strongest power supply I could find. I ended buying a full tower case from a company called Enermax. It cost me a fortune. At the time an average case was about 100NIS or a little more. I paid for my case more than a 1000NIS. It was worth it. I was able to stick in all the SCSI hard drives that I collected over the years: while everyone were buying 80GB hard drives my system had 48GB total spread over 9 hard drives :-) I put the most capable motherboard I could find (and had to beg to get it from a friend that didn't have anything to do with it), lots of memory. Even though not liking windows and trying to stay away from it, I ended up installing windows XP as it's primary OS (boooo ;-)) I loved that box so much that even though it was built from old (and sometime obsolete) hardware it was a very capable computer. I wanted to give it to my neighbor's kids when I left Israel, but they found it hard to operate (the hard drives were prone to fail once in a while) so they gave it to a friend of theirs that declared it a piece of junk.
I went to buy a super computer last Friday for my new business. On the face of it the hardware specs were impressive. But when I saw the case I didn't care about the hardware specs inside (those can be replaced anyhow). It's the same case I had on my computer at home in Israel :-) The same Enermax case.

Sweet ;-)