A Curious Instrument

I missed the beginning of Hanukkah yet again. My connection to Judaism is rather on the light side, as it is through my paternal line and Jewish ethnicity runs through maternal lines (as far as Jews define such). so I suppose I simply have a Jewish heritage. I could always blame my Kohen forefathers for marrying gentile girls, but what can be done at this point - things are as they are... My oldest daughter has really been into her Jewish heritage when she was younger. She even got reasonably conversant in Hebrew and, thanks to the Internet, had a chance to use her ability! My mother (you know, "the gentile") is so nice about bringing up my father's family background, even after being divorced for about thirty years and she brought over a paper menorah as part of a lesson she was giving for Family Home Evening . The interesting part was that I was searching on the 'net for LED menorahs just before she started her lesson!  Coincidence?  I think not! The paper one...

My first computers were the Texas Instruments 99/4 and /4A . I bought mine as an adult friend was an engineer at TI and my first computer mentor who also offered me the employee discount. Sadly, though the first 16-bit home computers, these were probably the most proprietary, shackled, and closed home computers in the universe. I wrote many an Extended Basic program with them, but I longed for a bit more open of a box to play with. I was an early reader of Byte and Computer Shopper magazines (back when they were far more interesting in the early 1980s. I always had a hankering for CP/M computers, but those were sadly far beyond my means as a teenager. When I saw some of the amazing things being done with the Timex/Sinclair 1000 , always considered a "toy" computer , I was intrigued.  These were so stunning simple and cheap that even a kid like me could acquire one and, more importantly, it was so simple that expansion was wide open. The most amazing thi...

UPDATE! The Psychic Proximity Principle is all grown up now, rendered as a Kindle booklet, and even fools around on the altar of Steve Jobs! Check out Feeding the Soul of Steve Jobs today! From Fiddler on the Roof : Tevye :  [ to Cha va ]   As the good book says 'Each shall seek his own kind'. In other words a bird may love a fish but where would they build a home together?  The Psychic Proximity Principle: You will gravitate toward a place and circumstance that actually fit you and your nature. So, if you are unhappy: You might be in the wrong place. You might be in the wrong circumstance. You might be ignoring your true nature. You might like fighting gravity or inertia a little too much. Hey, I believe in God and I believe that God wants us to reach our potential and find happiness. I also believe that God knows how to accomplish these goals better than we do. Therefore, we have a really secular-sounding thing called "The Psychic Proximit...

I remember watching television re-runs of the television cartoon "The Jetsons" as a child. I actually liked it for its social commentary, for which I don't recall that it was known for. Honestly, I found the whole idea that George Jetson's job, that he was often complaining about and desiring a deserved pay-raise, was pressing a button. I don't remember him having to press that button very often, but it seemed vital to things, for the constant threat of a firing always seemed to dissolve away in the twenty or so minutes of any episode that featured his boss' angst. This was my first exposure to "monkey-work", which I define as paid work that trained monkeys could easily do. On "The Jetsons", George's "monkey-work" was a funny running gag that probably would be a little embarrassing in today's world as almost all of us just press occasional buttons as employment these days. Monkey-work is everywhere. In my first job at a ...