Hi there,

This is me.

Don't worry, nothing's wrong with your monitor. The idea is to prevent small children from running away screaming their heads off at the sight - hence the "artistic filters". Probably at a later stage, after a series of preliminary tests on selected volunteers, I will get an FDA permit to remove the filters; i.e. after having proved no permanent damage to human, animal or plant life. So please, bear for now with me and my art nouveau head. As for the rest of the story - I will do it the easy way and plagiate myself. Having written already, as part of a book promotion exercise, a short "author's description" of myself, I will simply copy and paste here a few slices of it. Of course most of the bla is about the book and not about the author, after all also this site came to life as a (to start with, at least) PR window for this book of mine. But don't worry, or do so if you insist, I do have all the intentions in the world to develop it further into a more neutral direction. Unless if someone decides to throw me in jail for badmouthing some unsavoury characters, or give me a Pulitzer for same... And, yes - if you're curious about additional details, like the size of my shoes or similar, all you have to do is either mail me or contact the local CIA representative. So...

My real name is actually Ioji, and where I originally come from, the Far-East (of Europe, i.e. Romania), it’s not as uncommon as that. However, after moving on at the unripe age of 13 to the Middle-East (of Asia, i.e. Israel), some funny local official decided my name sounded too funny and re-baptised me (lucky he didn’t re-circumcise me) into the non funny sounding Joseph. Which, with the only other Joseph known me at that stage in my life being Joseph Stalin, wasn’t really funny at all in my eyes. Therefore I moved very fast into the realm of assorted nicknames and the native version of my Joseph being Yossi so Yossi it was. I won’t bore you with stories of my childhood, my hoodloomhood, my studenthood, my lovelifehood and the rest of the hoods. I won’t even tell you about my dogs and their hoods. It just so happened that at a certain stage in my life I suddenly woke up with a BSc in Electronic Engineering, a wife, two kids, and an insatiable desire for writing. But as all of you millions of seasoned readers of this note ("...optimistic the bastard, isn’t he...") out there know, it’s only the Stephen King’s of this world that have a right to quench this thirst. The rest of us have the unalienable right to queue up and wait. So I queued up and waited (I was number 223,451,093 - today there are an additional few billions following me which doesn’t bother me except for those that barge straight in the front). With absolutely no chance of reaching the ticket distribution window before I wither of old age and die I decided for a sideways move and let’s go self-publishing. You think that the bible scribes had a publisher? And look where they are. So let’s go and self-scribe. Ok, ok, enough of this book propaganda, let's go for some less artistic facts. Well, with the university degree in my hand I could choose to go several ways - commercial, managerial, educational... It so happened that I went a completely different way - I discovered, more or less by accident, that I have an incredible sense for technical troubleshooting. A real talent. Give me a problem, any problem on any machine, if I know the machine or not it doesn’t really matter, and either by myself or by working with someone that knows the machine perfectly but doesn’t know to solve the problem I would find the solution in 100% of the cases. And this is the job I was hired to do in Scitex, the company which is the subject of my book (book again??? you cannot stop, can you?...). And which sent me to Europe to do this job. It started as it always does - with a bang, enthusiasm, falling in love with the job, with the company, striving to improve. Then follows the growth period, you growing in importance, in achievements, the company growing in size, in power. Then there are some ups and downs but nobody gives up, all united in preserving the achievements, advancing further, and further. And then one day Nero pops on the scene, lights a match, and pooof - Rome is up in flames. The organization tumbles, the horses run away, and a few of the falling stones hit you on the head. And you die. Wondering with genuine incomprehension - how the hell did it come to that. Which is the long and short of my life in Scitex, and actually of most of my professional life, full point. The present? Life goes on. At a certain stage and age one just joins the stream, because there is unfortunately not enough time depth left to do it all again. Which I would if I could yet I can’t. I joined another similar company, I work in a similar job, I act in a similar way - it is all so similar. But it is only similar. It is not the same. And as I say at a certain stage in my book - Don Quixote is dead, long live Sancho Panza.