Rabbi Wohlberg on Mechitza’s

The Wall Street Journal had a great article yesterday on Mechitza’s, the partition that separates men and women in shul.  I particularly enjoyed Rabbi Wohlberg’s take on the issue:

 Beth Tfiloh in Baltimore went in the other direction. Years back, when it relocated to the suburbs from downtown, the congregation decided on separate seating but no partition. The concern was that a divider might alienate young families lured by synagogues where everyone sat together. But the tide has turned, says Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, and a new, more observant, generation would have left if it were not for the partition. At the same time, he adds, congregants “didn’t want to see women move to the back of the bus.” The solution? A “tasteful” mehitzah made of glass, wood and brass.

Rabbi Wohlberg is impatient with complainers. “Many of the people who say they want to sit with their husbands and wives at services, they don’t play golf together, they don’t have weeknights together,” he remarks. “All of a sudden, they can’t live without each other when they come to service?”

Schedule for 3/21

Tomorrows schedule will include a stop at Dunkin Donuts for a free 16 oz. cup of iced coffee, followed by a stop at Rita’s Ices for a free Italian ice.  I can’t wait.

24 Hours in New York

In 24 hours in New York, I had the following experiences:

1. Mess up my signature on a kesuba, making the mesader kidushin write it all over again (how often do YOU sign your name in Hebrew?)
2. Get a $60 parking ticket for parking on the correct side of a No Standing sign. Is there a way of fighting this over the phone? I don’t want to do it in person. Also, the person who gave me the ticket put down some wrong information on the ticket, so I’m guessing there is a way of fighting it?
3. Figured out that it takes longer to find parking than it does to actually get to your destination, even if you’re destination is 30 minutes away.
4. Almost smashed into a car on the BQE who decided not to take off any snow from the top of their car. The woman braked, causing the snow to fall and cover the entire windshield, blinding her, which caused her to all out stop on the BQE.

Some good things:

1. Hungry-Man Special at Garden of Eat-In – $4.95 got me a big pancake, two scrambled eggs, home fries, two slices of toast, coffee, and a tiny cup of orange juice.
2. Krispy Kutlet’s at Subsational

Note that the only good things involved food. Maybe that’s why I keep going back.

Occupational Therapy blog

I decided to use my new domain (which I got for free, plus free hosting) to start a new blog on occupational therapy.  As of now, there are very few blogs at all that deal with occupational therapy, and as far as I know, none that deal with issues that OT students or new graduates may have.  So hopefully this will develop into a helpful resource for others who are in a similar situation to mine.

You can check it out at aishel.net

Rita’s Ices

Yet another season of wonderfully delicious Rita’s Ices is about to commence.  Here’s the link to the official countdown.

http://www.ritasice.com/springCountdown.cfm

Dry-Cleaned USB Drive

Over the last two days, I was wondering what had happened to my USB drive. It doesn’t have too many school things on it, but I do have some other random important things on it. Much to my dismay, my wife pulled it out of the dryer this evening. Apparently, it had gone through both the washer and dryer.

After cleaning off the lint and with much prayer (this thing retails for $80; I got it for $30 over Thanksgiving), I plugged it into my computer. Amazingly enough, it lit up right away. It took a second to load, but everything is exactly where it should be and the entire thing is intact! No files missing, nothing corrupt, it’s all good.

Wow.

On a totally irrelevant note, http://www.aishel.net now points to this blog.

Baltimore Signage

I saw a sign today while at the laundromat washing my comforters:

 NO CASH OR NARCOTICS ON PREMISES

Of course this was on the other side of Reisterstown Rd.

Firefox Extensions

There’s no question about it. I love Firefox. I’ve been using it since version 0.86 and haven’t looked back. I’ve tried using Opera and the latest version of Internet Explorer (IE), but I always found myself coming back to Firefox. Some of the benefits include increased security, tabbed windows, faster browsing, and more. One of my favorite reasons for using Firefox are the extensions that I can add to Firefox.

Extensions are little bits of software that add functionality to your browser. In my every-day online usage, I use at least 4-5 of my extensions within the first 2 minutes.

For example, when I open up my browser, I have the following showing up in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window: So right away, I know the weather, including the fact that there is a severe weather alert (flood watch), how many new Gmails I have (none), and a host of other things.

This list includes the extensions that I use, why I use them, and a link for where to get the extensions.

1. Adblock – I’ve had this for the longest time, and it is awesome. In short, it blocks ads. When browsing sites, I never see Google ads, I don’t get those annoying flash ads, and OnlySimchas only takes a second to load because it completely removes all the ads from the website. When all those image ads don’t load, it helps things run smoother and faster. If there’s a page that you do want to see ads, you’re able to whitelist websites. This extension is highly recommended.
2. All-in-one Gestures – This one is hard to explain, but basically, it saves you time by allowing you to make slight gestures with your mouse to control things in your browser. If I wanted to go back a page, instead of having to move my mouse to the back button, all I do is right click my mouse and move a 1/4 of an inch to the left and it goes back. If I want to close a tab, instead of finding the little ‘x’ all I do is right click and move a fraction of an inch down and then right. Once you get used to doing this, there’s no going back. When I’m at school using the computers there, I always end up trying to do my mouse gestures to no avail. The mouse gestures are fully customizable too.
3. Dictionary Search – This is pretty straight forward. If you’re browsing and you see a word you don’t know, just select the word, right click, and select ‘Dictionary Search’ and it will open up a new tab with the definition.
4. Download Statusbar – This keeps my downloads in a small and clean place that is easily accessible. You can see it in my image of the status bar above indicated by where it says 0:11.
5. Fasterfox – Makes Internet browsing speedy.
6. FireFTP – I don’t use this one very often anymore, but basically, it is an FTP client that is built into Firefox. Nice, fast, and secure.
7. Forecastfox – Tells you the weather in a small, easy to read area in my status bar. Very customizable. You can select if you just want the temperature, a picture, the forecast, severe weather alerts, multiple zip codes, etc.
8. Gmail Manager – Instead of always having to check my email, I set my Gmail manager to check my email every three minutes. This way, I always know when I have a new email. It supports multiple Gmail addresses, and you can set how often it checks your email for you (if you’re using dial-up, you may want to have it check less frequently). Also, if you mouse over the icon, it shows you who the email is from and the first several words of the email.
9. Googlebar – While there is a search engine built into the browser, I frequently use this for many of the other great tools that Google provides. For example, it can translate pages, search for backlinks, go up directories, and more.
10. Greasemonkey – I only found this one about a week or two ago, but I’m lovin’ it! (Get it? McDonalds and grease? Ok, I’m not sure if that’s really true). Basically, this extension has sub-extensions to it that change and customize the looks of websites to your choosing. This was very confusing to me at first, but once I figured it out, it became really cool and functional. Here are some of the Greasemonkey scripts I have installed. As you see, they mostly involve Gmail:
    • Gmail Conversation Preview – This script allows me to right click on a message in my Gmail, and it will show a preview of what is contained in that email. Great if you’re trying to find a specific email, but not sure which one it is. It saves you time because then you don’t have to open up each and every message.
    • Gmail + Google Reader -This script integrates Google Reader into Gmail. I used to use the Sage extension to check all my RSS feeds, but that still meant actively clicking on the Sage button and refreshing all my feeds. With this script, I don’t have to do anything. I always check my email anyway, and now I can see right away if I have new feeds to look at. I don’t have to refresh anything whatsoever, it just shows up. Here’s a small screenshot (that second to last one says Cocktails):
      
    • Gmail Label Colors – This simply turns my labels into colors, which make it easier to identify in a whole list of things. So important stuff like information on graduation is now red, and not-so-important stuff are other colors, like blue or green.
    • YouTube embed – Often times, I visit forums, blogs, and other websites that have links to YouTube video’s. Personally, I find it annoying to always have to visit the YouTube site just to view the video. With this script, it automatically embeds YouTube video’s in the page you’re currently watching so that you can stay in the same page.
    • Tinfoil hat – I love the name on this one. For ease of use, many people will convert long links to links from TinyURL. The problem is that now when I mouse over the link, I don’t know where it is taking me. With this script, mousing over the link tells me the ultimate destination of the TinyURL link.
11. IEtab -Unfortunately, some sites out there only work in Internet Explorer. Instead of having to open up a whole new browser, I can just use this extension to make everything function exactly as if it were in IE, and then it will work just fine.

So that is pretty much it. These extensions will obviously only work on the computer that they are all installed in. But using these extensions really make browsing so much easier and faster. If you have some you want to add to the list, feel free to do so in the comments!