shabbat shalom 11.05.07

Hi everyone,

The hamsin weather seems to have finally broken; after several days peaking 34 or 35oC, we've gotten rain and a drop in temperature. I must say we don't suffer much from the hamsin (shirav, like a mistral, foehn, Santa Anna or chinook wind) here on the mountain. We freeze in winter, but it's seldom uncomfortable the rest of the year, with the breeze from the Mediterranean coming up the valley in the evening. We have a straight shot at the sea, and on a really clear day I am treated to watching the sun set in the Med. It's moments like that when I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world.

It's been a weird week, one where I had to go nose-to-nose with a rat at work. Not something I relished, but had no choice. We acquired a new computer services center and a new manager for it, mainly for political reasons, after muddling along for years on our own. The manager, a pint-size Yemenite, has been trouble for me since last autumn. Like many small men, he overcompensates with a towering ego, and unfortunately not much competence in his work. Meanwhile, I've got things to do.

I asked for a meeting to discuss work issues with him way last October, and he only came, reluctantly, to the table in March, essentially with our own division manager frog-marching him into the room. He put up a smokescreen worthy of WWI trench warfare, but our director finally extracted from him a promise to provide us with SQL-Server by summer so I can work on migrating our data, which are now half a million records and about to collapse in the current ACCESS database. We both heard him agree to this, I checked my understanding with our director.

So I went ahead and ordered instruction manuals to start learning SQL Server, figuring it can't take long to get the software. The books arrived this week so I asked about the software. At this point it emerged the rat in computer services didn't order it and had no intention of doing so. I of course went nuclear. This ended in the rat's office with him denying he ever said such a thing and further, I'm not to build databases. (Hell, I've been building them for 13 years, was hired to do that in 1994, and am in the midst of building more right now.)

I bit my tongue and had a professional talk with the rat in which I did extract from him permission to load some SQL-Server freeware to start learning the software (clearly he doesn't care what I actually do) and brought him up to date on how our databases got to where they are and where they are going, in words of one syllable. No trouble communicating in Hebrew. Funny, I become very fluent when I'm mad as hell and want to stuff somebody's genitals down his throat.

Although I didn't explode, I must have swelled up a bit because when I got back to my office, I found I had split the crotch in my pants. Enough said on that matter.

Okay, I will have to get the higher ups to fight it out on whether I build databases or not; that is a policy issue. One thing is sure, my department trusts me and they don't like the rat, so I suspect they want me to keep on doing my thing. I have made it clear that yes, I would like a little bit of programming help from outside sources if you want to do that, as long as I keep on top of it and the programmer satisifies me, but yank my databases away from me, and I will down tools. I've put a decade of my life on this stuff and if a pipsqueak from Yemen tries to put his hands on my work, he better count his fingers and stop the bleeding when he does, because I've got teeth. I think he figured that out already.

Aargh, life seems to be one turf war after another. I no sooner got our division head knocked into shape when this turkey appears on my radar screen. All I really want is to focus on my work, do a good job, maybe reward myself with some really neat cooperation in Europe to keep my brains healthy, and go home to my cats at night. I don't even expect gratitude from folks at work, that is blood from a stone. Just to let me do my thing, and since I'm dead serious about my work, they should be happy to let me do my thing.

Over the years, I had to sumo-wrestle a whole series of guys who tried to dominate me in some way or other. Some of them turned out well; in the last year I published articles with two coauthors who at different points in my history tried to lean on me and I got pretty hot with them. It's like they had to learn my boundaries and once I had taken a big bite out of their asses, they were just fine. The current department director is like that too--last year he was secretly trying to fire me, this year he is on a project I'm doing, under my supervision. Some men are like that, I guess--they will push until you whack 'em, and then they are fine. Good thing my teeth are still in perfect shape, including the pointy ones.

Something tells me the rat is just bad news, though. There is a difference between macho Israeli males testing my limits and rats, and from all I've heard from others, this one is a rat. What fun.

Speaking of animals, mine are doing okay. I have to give pills to a couple of them twice a day, and as a result have a pretty complete coverage of scar tissue on the backs of my hands right now. This too shall pass, but what with the scratches on my hands and the dueling scar on my cheek, I must look quite a specimen of feminine grace right now.

Bad timing too. I attende a conference of Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli ecologists who are cooperating on conservation of the Dead Sea, a workshop held by a joint project. About 200 people showed up, the largest gathering of academic liberals I've seen in Jerusalem in five years, at least. Saw some colleagues from the Palestinian side which I hadn't seen since 2003, caught up on news. We are all a little battered but hanging in there; the agreement to work on water issues in the Jordan river valley was the only MOU signed by Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians on the same piece of paper, and the scientists are still hanging tough when most other cooperative groups fell by the wayside. Proof, I guess, that physical scientists and environmentalists are an extremely stubborn bunch of people.

That was nice, reminded me of better days. I think others felt the same way. Seeing each other there and still active was somehow reassuring of a little sanity in our region.

So, this week was abnormally full of human interaction, by my standards, and I haven't quite digested it. I guess my own standard are simple--if you do an honest job with reasonable goodwill, I don't care if you come from Mars, I have no trouble accepting you. Start playing games or try to screw me over, and I will kill you. Simple Paleolitihic code of my (near) ancestors, and I guess it runs pretty deep in my veins. Maybe that's why I understand animals better than I do people??

shabbat shalom,
Linda