Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-04-07
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
"Sembri stanco." The voice comes from someone near the other coffee machine in the office kitchen. "Sembri stanco? That means you look tired, I think. I'm learning Italian. Duolingo and listening to a podcast driving to and from my house."
I guess I do look tired. I often do. I don't think I fell asleep at my desk today, though. I was actually getting things done -- but when I asked somewhat what part of a program actually did, they looked deeply into the code and discovered that all three commands that I had just documented were obsolete and never called. They pulled them from the product. Oh, well.
I think that's what I'm mostly useful for. I meticulously go through the menus and command lists and find the weird little things that had been sitting unnoticed in the code for decades.
The day starts off tiring. I get out the door earlier than usual and walk to an eye doctor appointment that I have on my calendar. When I get to the office, about twice as far from my house as my usual clinic, they have no record of the appointment.
I walk on to work, passing the usual stuff that happens in the morning downtown. At the entrance to the Heart of the City, workmen are pulling up bricks. They bang on them with mallets and dig under them with crowbars. A wall has large, new graffiti, with English letters saying "safe!" or perhaps "saeco", whatever that would mean.
During the day, I have a conversation on Facebook about further upgrading my NAS. One person is particularly helpful. Like me, he is prone to posts and comments of epic length.
When I get home, I plop down in my big chair, turn on the TV, and flip passively through YouTube recommendations. I am dumbstruck to encounter a video called, "Plex - Help Joseph decide on replacing his Syno DS223j with a DS224+ as his Plex server."1 It's quite detailed, with information that I wouldn't have known. For example, it turns out that many TVs, such as mine, have terrible Ethernet connectors, significantly worse than just using WiFi.
I also realize that parts of my home network are needlessly complicated. I poke at some things that I might be able to simplify. It helps that I still remember a password from five years ago.
Writing this, I look up at the clock and realize that it's almost 1 AM. I have another early appointment tomorrow. I may end up staring in the mirror tomorrow and muttering, "Sembri stanco."
Feel free to forward the newsletter to other people who might be interested.
Here’s an archive of past newsletters.
You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me at that Las Vegas address, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)
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L'hitraot.