March 11, 2010

I'm a Bad Vacationer
2

VacationFor the past two weeks or so, I was on "vacation." My wife, daughter and I went to Israel. We were there for a family Bar Mitzvah.

Since I was coming in, I decided to run the SphinnCon Israel conference one of the days. I then also decided to hold some meetings with clients I have in Israel. And while I was at it, I scheduled some meetings and get togethers about SEO related topics.

The first week we arrived was a bit hectic. Two of the first 4 days, I spent in the hotel working. One day catching up from the flight and the second day doing the billing for the company. That wasn't the end of it. Every day, I spent about 2 hours in the morning, an hour in the middle of the day and 2 hours at night working on my laptop from the hotel. Of course, during this time, I had my iPhone and spent way too much time when I was out of the hotel responding to emails and mobile IMs.

I just don't manage vacation and business well.

Thankfully, I have a very understanding and patient wife. But as time goes on, I need to be able to manage this better.

I honestly think I was a bit more relaxed this time. Less nervous about being away. I did not get sick like I sometimes do and I think I was able to unplug at times, when I really did not want to. Overall, I probably spent 65% working and 35% not working, not including sleeping, on this vacation.

At the same time, I was not able to get together with many people who emailed me to meet up while in Israel. This includes both family, friends and business colleagues. So I am sorry if I did not get to spend time with you. Most of the business colleagues I saw at the conference, so that was nice. But there are some really good friends I did not see while I was there.

Anyway, it's something for me to work on.

Posted at 12:29 PM in Travels | |

March 9, 2010

SMX SphinnCon in Jerusalem Post
0

About to get on a plane back to NY, but I wanted to quickly share the write up on the Jerusalem Post (a very large Israeli paper) on the SphinnCon event that took place Sunday.

You can read it over here and here is a picture of it in my hand:

Me & SphinnCon in Jerusalem Post on March 9, 2010

Posted at 2:58 AM in Travels | |

March 2, 2010

My New Velvet Hebrew RustyBrick Kippah
6

Today I want to the ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhood named Geula and purchased some religious wear. One of the things we bought was a new kippah, a brown velvet one . I decided to have them sew on the name RustyBrick, but in Hebrew, on the Kippah.

Here is a picture:

Hebrew RustyBrick Velvet Kippah

Don't I already have a RustyBrick Kippah? Yes, I do, but that one was Suede.

Posted at 2:10 PM in RustyBrick , Shopping , Travels | |

February 26, 2010

Funny Bathroom Sign in Israel
3

I am in Israel now and I was at a cafe last night where I saw this funny bathroom sign. I thought I'd share it with everyone. Here it is:

Toilets Sign in Israel

Posted at 4:10 AM in Travels | |

February 22, 2010

Jewish Prayer Times While Flying
2

Pray on PlaneEver since building the Zmanim (Jewish times) feature in the iPhone Siddur I have been intrigued by the algorithms that go into calculating these times. For those of you who are programmers, there is an open source project on this at KosherJava where you can dig into that code.

I am flying to Israel soon and one topic that comes up when you fly at certain hours is when can you pray. In fact, there was a story recently about an emergency landing due to praying on a flight. But if you can get away with praying on a plane, the question for a Jew is when can you do so?

When you are standing in a single place, it is simple, because you are not streaming through time and space at 500 miles per hour. You are not jumping from one time zone to another and you are getting a full cycle of sunrise and sunset.

I was recently told about a web site that lets you plug in your departing airport and destination airport, the times, the airline and it then tells you, based on the standard flight path, what times you can pray. The web page is Chai Air Tables and it tells you, based on your take off time (if there is a delay, it accounts for it) when you can pray certain prayers.

This is pretty cool, in my opinion.

Posted at 2:07 PM in Religion | |

February 18, 2010

Confession: I Was Rude To The Barber
8

BarberI hate getting hair cuts, not cause I have a fear of getting stabbed with scissors but because I don't care much about appearances (better yet, my appearance) and it takes time.

When I go to get haircuts, they ask me, "How do you like it?" I typically say, "FAST, please." Typically, I am in and out of a haircut within 7 minutes.

This week, I went to get a haircut and it was a distaster! It may have been one of the best haircuts I ever got - but it took forever! I think it took at least 40 minutes, 40 minutes I'll never get back. And many of you know how obsessed with time I can be.

The whole time, this barber was talking to me. I was being nice the whole time, responding and so on. Trust me, it was hard - he was talking about things that I found to be incredibly inappropriate. For example, he was telling me about how he does wedding parties and what extra stuff he does at those wedding parties. Now, I don't need to hear that from a guy I just met. In any event, I talked to this guy about how many hair cuts he did, all his girlfriends, his girlfriend's fathers, his schooling, education, and so on - heck, I even talked to him about his computer virus.

He then wanted to shave my face. I put my foot down. I said, no thanks. He said, "you really need it." I said, I know, but no thank you. He then cleaned me up, continued chatting and finished up.

I asked him how much. He said $12. I gave him a $20 and said, "keep the change, goodbye." I just walked out and didn't give him a goodbye hug or anything. Heck, I know all about this guys personal life, from his girlfriends, childhood and even his computer viruses and all I said was "keep the change!"

I was rude - but ugh, 40 minutes!

Posted at 1:29 PM in Daily Grind | |

February 18, 2010

Get Your Updated iPhone Megillah
0

iPhone Megillah AppApple approved a semi-large update to our FREE iPhone App for Purim, the Megillas Esther iPhone App. We made some big improvements to this holiday app, just in time for Purim, which is just about a week away.

First change we made was to add the brachos (blessings) before and after the reading. Here is a picture of the bracha before:

iPhone Megillah App

We also bolded the sections the congregation repeats:

iPhone Megillah App

Also, we added the ability to add 6 more sounds for 99 cents. We wanted to play with in-app purchases, so for only 99 cents, you get 6 additional sounds. The additional sounds include a telephone ringing, a car crashing, guns, bombs, air raid horn and a whistle.

There are some other small changes we made to the app, so I hope you like it. You can download it for free by clicking here.

Also, we released a new Siddur update today, which I will talk more about when it goes live.

This is a cross post with the RustyBrick Blog.

Posted at 12:55 PM in Religion , iPhone | |

February 17, 2010

Yep, AIM Down For Many, Including Me
0

AIM logoYes, AIM is down for me. My primary mode of communication with everyone and anyone.

AIM being down is much worse, to me, than Twitter being down. Not as bad as email or phone being down, though.

At first, I thought it was just me. But I checked Twitter and it is many others.

AIM Down

Posted at 10:16 AM in Computers | |

February 16, 2010

The Winning iTunes Song Will Be Next Tuesday
1

I am making a bold prediction that the winning iTunes song, where you can win a $10,000 iTunes gift card for downloading the 10 billionth song, will take place on February 23rd, Tuesday, in the morning.

Why am I so confident? Well, the geeks at RustyBrick built an algorithm to predict when exactly the 10 billionth iTunes song will be downloaded. In fact, they built a widget countdown that is updated every hour. We are constantly collecting data to make our predication better, every hour.

Our current best guess is on Tuesday, February 23rd at 11:00:10 AM (EST). That means there are 126.8881 songs downloaded from iTunes every second!

Here is the widget:

10 Billionth iTunes Song Countdown!
00 days 00 hours
00 minutes 00 seconds


Powered By RustyBrick.com

Do you think it is about right? I do.

To get the widget on your site, go to the RustyBrick blog and copy the code.

Posted at 10:31 AM in RustyBrick | |

February 15, 2010

"My Friend" - Should It Be Used So Freely?
3

FriendsThere are certain people and cultures that use the word "friend" too loosely, at least - I think they do. People who call or email you and say, "my friend." Hey - I never met you.

There are people I grew up with and people I spend a lot of time that I would not call a friend. Calling someone a friend, means to me that they are indeed someone you trust, that you share stuff with and that you can talk to about personal stuff.

Random people who email me or meet me once or pick me up in a cab to drive me somewhere - for a fee- are not my friends. They may be nice and we may have a nice conversation for the time we speak - but they are not people I would share my deep dark evil secrets with.

Again, I know it is mostly a cultural thing - where certain cultures use the word "friend" instead of saying "hello." But it still bothers me when I hear it.

Am I totally off here?

Posted at 9:56 AM in Buddies | |