insults

Today I insulted someone at work accidentally. His computer wasn't working and my technician reported it was because of viruses. In the follow-up email I sent him, I said that his computer was full of viruses and that he should use the anti-virus software (that he should have been using the whole time) from now on. I also included a damage report which , because there was no other damage just included the time that everyone who worked on it had to put in.

Apparently, when you tell an engineer that his computer is full of viruses that is one of the worst insults that you can lay on him. It says that he doesn't know anything about simple computer use and that he is a complete idiot for downloading all types of garbage without a thought for computer security. I found all this out because he went to my boss and told him how insulted he was and how he was upset because I said that everyone wasted all of that time because of him.

I apologized for saying it was full of viruses, I should have been more precise and mentioned that there were only 2 viruses. I also explained that the purpose of a damage report is to explain that even though he didn't lose any information and there did not seem to be any real damage, we still consider time to be very valuable. By the end of the conversation, he was much happier that we had talked and that I had explained myself. Sometimes I hate email, but I always prefer to have the written record.

I was thinking about Jews and Judaism recently. One of the things that slavery in Egypt was supposed to have done to us was forge us into a nation. Looking at non-religious Jews being proud of their Judaism, while hating the religion, makes me think that the Holocaust may have reinforced that. I think Jews were at a point where if they didn't want to be Jews anymore they were just slipping away. Judaism was a religion in Europe, not a nation. There were no secular Jews, Jews who didn't want to follow the religion just faded into society or joined other religions. Today secular Jews blast the country for the few religious institutions that are part of modern society (read weddings and no chametz on pesach). These Jews would never consider giving up their Judaism, rather they want to be Jews without Judaism, in other words a nation with no religion.

Apparently this is a good thing from a religious perspective, though without the religious aspects of our nation we would just fade away as history has proven time and again.