Category: work

  • The Israel Conference in LA

    I attended the Israel Conference in LA this past Thursday (it continued into Friday but I had other commitments), and wrote up this reflection for publication. I’ll be doing reviews of several of the startups that exhibited there in the coming days and weeks, and, as referenced below, I’ll also be reviewing The Unstoppables, a…

  • Remember ICQ?

    Do you remember ICQ, the first Internet-wide instant messaging service? Do you remember that it was invented by four young Israelis? You do? Well, I just met the guy who gave them the money to start the company – his name is Yossi Vardi, and he’s known as the Godfather of Israeli High-Tech. His son…

  • Twelve minutes of excellence

    Seth Godin is a guy whose work I’ve been meaning to read/browse/digest for a while. This was an easily consumable chunk I thought I could handle in the middle of the day, and I wasn’t disappointed. If you are at all interested in social networks (online and off), technology, and people reaching their potential, watch…

  • HMO = Hellacious Medical Offerings

    OK, that was a stretch, but I couldn’t come up with a good Kaiser joke. I just need to vent my frustration at the situation I encountered yesterday when I took Hadarya for a physical and vaccination appointment. Now, I’ll begin by saying that we love Hadarya’s pediatrician. Dr. S is a sweet, caring professional…

  • Professional development/putting myself out there

    Last week I participated in an IT Careers Panel organized by our colleagues across town at the UCSD Career Services Center. There were three other panelists (all UCSD alums), and a whopping TWO students attended. So, yeah, it wasn’t a resounding success in terms of attendance, but the two students who were there sure got…

  • Playing around online

    My buddy Avraham has provided a lot of great intellectual (kosher) meat for me to chew on ever since we met in grad school way back around the turn of the 21st century (can you believe it’s been that long, dude?). He challenged me again recently by asking how I keep up with news of…

  • Linking, reading, commenting, calendaring, working, relaxing

    I have to go back to my webcomics post from the other day to add links. I have to let my family and friends know I’m updating the blog regularly and I’d appreciate it if I got some readers and comments. I have an account with Gootodo, a terrific web-based to-do list application created by…

  • Quality time, and Spider-Man 3 pre-review

    We spent time tonight with E and S, good friends with whom we have a weekly dinner, rotating between our two houses. We were scheduled to go up to their house, but S called to let us know their laundry machine is on the fritz again, so we switched the date to our place, and…

  • THIS is how you spend Shabbat?!

    Well, not normally, no.. er… wait a minute! Why am I making excuses? This is MY blog! Yeah, well, I decided long ago that Shabbat observance for me was not going to look like the traditional, Orthodox version. The key elements in the concept and point of Shabbat for me were the separation from the…

  • Things that make me sad…

    Sad in a cosmic, global way, not a “boo-hoo” way: Evangelical/fundamentalist Christians who co-opt Hebrew, specifically Hebrew sacred texts and liturgy, without understanding or respecting their meanings. I was prompted to post this by an example I ran into today, which itself reminded me of another from a couple of years ago. Today I manned…