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I know both Dovster and Mrp Alert and am good friends with the latter and his family. Dovster & I exchanged books/dvds during the the big war about a decade or so ago, and met IRL at the FT Prague Do. Mrp Alert and his family have stayed at my home before. You all are in my thoughts & prayers [mod edit]

Stay safe my friends.

indeed we are all having positive thoughts and prayers for our FT friends in Israel and indeed not like the T&P as shared in Omni/PR.
now I’m reading about missile debris falling over The West Bank. Yikes.

I'm thinking of all my FT friends I've met over the years, please keep us updated and stay safe!

About 15 minutes ago, I received a warning from the Home Command that my kibbutz may be attacked shortly and I should go into my shelter. Then, about 5 minutes later I got another message: "Color Red" which means I should buy a life insurance policy ASAP. A couple of minutes after that, I was told that the missile missed me, hence disappointing thousands of women throughout the world.

Your women throughout the world will miss you should anything happen....now, how about all those possible children??? ;-D

My naughty....

Even without the war, yesterday would have been a miserable one for me. The war was simply ill-tasting icing on the cake.

The small television I have in my shelter has not been working since the war began. The larger one I have in my living room had incredibly bad reception. I finally got the tech guy from my cable company to show up, he spent about 30 seconds here and announced that the cable service is fine but both TVs are broken and I have to buy new ones. Stupidly, I believed him and got into my car and drove to an electrical appliance shop in Kiryat Shmona to buy new TVs.

While I was there, the sirens wailed and everyone in the shop had to crowd into its shelter for about 15 minutes before we got the all-clear. I was able to take the small one home with me and the shop delivered the larger one in the early evening. I tried hooking up the smaller one and had the same problem as the one I replaced. I had no luck but a friend who knows more about these things than I do, told me that the HDMI cable connecting the cable box to the TV was no good. Fortunately, I had a spare one, used it to replace the old cable, and the TV worked.

The delivery guy showed up with the other television and I immediately saw that it was much to large to fit on the table. This really bugged me as I had measured the table before going to the shop and told the salesman that the TV had to have legs no more than 60 cms apart to be able to go on the table. I refused to accept it, the delivery guy called the store, they told him to bring it back and for me to come into the shop. When I got there, the salesman tried to get me to change my mind, but I refused. He finally showed me a TV which was the same size but instead of having legs, rested on a base which would fit on my table. It cost $400 more than the original one. He told me that it was more expensive because it is a Samsung, "which is best one we sell". I pointed out that he had said the exact same thing about the Metz television he originally sold to me. The whole process was delayed by another air raid siren, sending us back to the shelter. While we were in the shelter, I continued to argue about the price. He gave in, knocked off $100, and provided me with a free set of two HDMI cables, so I would not have the same problem again.

Oh, I forgot to mention that when I arrived back home I was happy that I had the small TV in my shelter, because minutes after I arrived, the sirens went off again.

All of this sounds frustrating as heck, Dov. I would have lost my patience at several points. You are much more polite than I suspect I would have been.

I hope that the tv situation is now much more improved.

The small TV in my shelter works perfectly. The big one was supposed to be delivered to me on Wednesday afternoon, but yesterday (BEFORE THE US ATTACK) we were warned that everything will be shut down for a week.

At around 4 am I was woken by a phone call from an FTer (whose name I will not reveal in order to protect her reputation) to tell me about the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and that Trump would be speaking in roughly 30 minutes. I went back into my shelter and saw Fox's praise of Trump, CNN taking a middle road, and Rachel Madcow condemning Trump. Then the sirens began screaming again, sending us back to our shelters, and this was followed by a number of explosions. Most of these were from Israeli anti-aircraft systems but a few Iranian missiles missed their destinations and landed across the border in south Lebanon.

Thank you Dovster and stay safe. Ideally you’re able to communicate with your children and other friends.

Go into the shelter immediately and stay safe! You be careful out there and don’t let anyone else get in the way of your life. You must evacuate the house and get in the shelter. Please take care of yourself and stay well, my friend.

I'm curious if there's any FT'ers based in Iran who can update us from their side? (like we had with BEYflyer from Lebanon)

If there are, I would be happy to have them join in the conversation, but to tell us about their own lives/experiences during the war. If they want to make it a political debate, they should do it in Omni/PR.

I'm not sure if it's possible to easily access FT in Iran. I know when I was in Iraq for two years in the mid 2010's it was difficult sometimes even with a VPN to get access. Just a thought

For the past three hours I have felt like a ping-pong ball with Home Command sending me conflicting messages, telling me to stay in my bomb shelter and, minutes later telling me it is safe to leave it. These messages are not sent nation-wide, each municipality gets its own updates.