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rabbi at a Yom Kippur break-fast
Monday, September 16 2002
Partly from all the examples of architectural rephotography in How Buildings Learn, I've decided that I'd like to do some time lapse photography of some of the more spectacular carpentry work undertaken at the Hurley house. The easiest way to do this will be to set up a computer and a webcam in a weatherproof box outdoors and then capture the images to a hard drive at a low frame rate. Once I perfect this system, I can use it for time lapse photography in all sorts of places. On a somewhat related note, I'll be very eager to see the multi-year time lapse photography of the rebuilding of Ground Zero once that is completed, if the United States doesn't become a third-rate pauper state first and abandon it as a ruin.
Tonight Gretchen hosted a little Yom Kippur "break-fast" at our place. The only people who came were David the Rabbi, Debra and Bill. Gretchen made all sorts of food, the most spectacular of which was an enormous snail-shaped challah. Unlike the rest of us, David actually had been fasting for the preceding 25 hours, and he was ravenous when he arrived. Yom Kippur is especially hard on rabbis, because not only are they cranky, irritable, tired, unwashed, and bored from a day spent denying themselves life's pleasures, but they also have to lead synagogue services while feeling this way. Soon enough, however, David had restored his blood glucose levels and was back to his usual cheerfully comic self, swearing like a sailor and recounting the miseries of his day of self-denial. I get the feeling that it's common practice at Yom Kippur break-fasts for attendees to compare notes on just how miserable they felt during the day. Gretchen and I didn't have much to complain about, since neither of us had been fasting. But I'd been careful to cultivate an enormous appetite prior to the break-fast, eating only one Bubbie's Pure Kosher Dill pickle during the course of the entire afternoon. By the way, for those of you who have never eaten a Bubbie's Pure Kosher Dill, I'd describe it as one of the most pleasantly sour experiences you can ever hope to have. If you're familiar with sweetness in your pickles of choice, you haven't really been eating pickles. For such people, Bubbie's Pure Kosher Dill will be something of an acquired taste. I've taken to describing it as "like eating varnish, but in a good way."
I was also drinking an Isræli beer called Maccabee, which, with its skunky qualities, tastes almost exactly like Becks.
Later on, while the others were all out on the back porch smoking celebratory cigarettes (David the Rabbi being the only actual smoker), Bill and I had a long conversation that eventually led to the topic of workplace scams. Back when he was a waiter, Bill and his buddies figured out that the difference between their plastic payment system access keys and the master keys of their managers was that their keys lacked a strategically-drilled hole. So they went and installed such holes in their keys and found they had complete control of transactions made by their customers. Someone would come in, order a $200 meal, and he and his buddies had the access to delete the payment from the system and then pocket the entire tab. The managers, who took their jobs very seriously, were none the wiser. They'd probably never even noticed the obvious difference that made their access keys so powerful. Invested in their impressive-sounding career choice, "Manager of a Manhattan Restaurant," they were completely outsmarted by their underlings, waiters who, career-wise, were "just passing through."
This demonstrated yet again that all systems, no matter how sophisticated, have easily-hackable backdoor access. This particular story reminded me of the days back in Harkness when I figured out how to modify standard room keys such that I'd have access to all sorts of locked utility rooms, one of which (a boiler room) I made into a personal office/bedroom for a period of time (in fact, Gretchen used to hang out with me down there back during the early phase of our pre-relationship).
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