All right. I’m coming down to the wire for my adult bat mitzvah preparations. I have to cut back on time-wasting activities, which includes taping but not watching my favorite shows (I’m about to cut out my soap opera completely), and, well, blogging. I have to cut back.

Through a series of circumstances (that include a change of rabbis in my synagogue, which resulted in several of the children moving up their bar/bat mitzvah dates and leaving the rabbi with no time for me), I am rather far behind in my haftorah and Torah readings. So the time I would have spent watching TV and blogging is going to be spent practicing. Judith Weiss has kindly offered to help, as has Rahel. I work better with a person than I do with a computer or practicing on my own.

Blogging, as a result, must be light over the next few weeks. Soccer Dad and Snoopy will be posting, and I’m very grateful to them for that. But I have to cut back to one or two posts a day. So here’s your chance.

If you’ve been dying to write a post about Jewish and Israeli issues, email it to me. You can write it straight or funny. If it’s well-written and makes its point clearly, I will put it up as a guest post with whatever name or pseudonym you wish. If it isn’t up to the quality of writing I’d like to see on my site, I will send you a polite rejection letter. Don’t take it personally. I have very high standards.

If you already are a blogger, and think you have a post you’d like to get more attention here, that’s fine. Send it over, and you’ll get a link to your blog inside the post. Cross-posting is fine, too.

I’m looking to keep this site up to date while I’m busy over the next four weeks. After that, we’ll see what happens. I’m of the opinion that you can never have too much to read, only too little time in which to read it.

Ew, Jew Cooties: The Iranian ambassador to Chile showed up at an Israeli book party about a Zionist youth group. And he talked to the Israeli ambassador. Expect this guy to be recalled.

This better not be true: Jordan will take control of the Temple Mount.

Israel and the Palestinians have agreed that the Temple Mount as well as other parts of the Old City in Jerusalem will be under Jordanian control as part of a future peace deal, a Palestinian daily reported on Monday.

The London-based al-Quds al-Arabi reported that President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reached the agreement during recent talks in Jerusalem. Under the arrangement, the Old City’s Arab residents will be granted Jordanian citizenship.

The newspaper did not say whether Israel would keep control of Jewish holy sites and neighborhoods in the Old City.

When Jordan controlled the complex, Jews were not allowed on it, and the Mount and the mosques were in disrepair. I’m not buying it. And Olmert denied it.

I’ll believe it when I see it: Abbas says he’s going to dismantle Force 17, the supposed “bodyguards” of the president that always seem to have their hands in the terrorist pie.

A Palestinian security official told Ynet Monday that in the coming days President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to order the dismantling of Force 17 and its incorporation into the Presidential Guard.

The status of Force 17, which served as Fatah’s special operations unit in the 1970s and ’80s and was responsible for the protection of Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, declined following the establishment of the Palestinian Authority and the formation of the Presidential Guard.

Uh-huh. Sure. I don’t think Abbas can dismantle a Lego toy.

The terror continues: Molotov cocktails, check. Shooting at soldiers, check. Seven thwarted suicide bombings in the last six weeks: Check.

The security forces thwarted seven suicide bombings in Israel in the last month-and-a-half, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told the cabinet Sunday. Diskin said that the ongoing efforts of the IDF, the Shin Bet and the police were behind the apparent calm in the country recently.

Diskin told the ministers that an IDF operation in the Beit Ilma village near Nablus prevented a large suicide bombing set to be carried out in Tel Aviv during the holidays. However, he added that the Shin Bet was concerned about the fact that the explosive belt was passed through several checkpoints undetected.

Rocket attacks, smuggling of weapons and explosives, double check:

According to Diskin, a significant drop has been registered in the number of rockets launched from Gaza, from 110 Qassams in August to 85 in September. The Shin Bet attributes the decrease to Hamas’ decision not to fire rockets.

On the other hand, the smuggling of weapons into Gaza has increased since Hamas rose to power, said Diskin, making Gaza “a barrel of explosives.”

They better hope nobody throws a match and runs.

I can finally call Rob by his name when referring to his online persona.

Something that only my very long-time readers know is that the blogosphere would have caught up with Rob eventually no matter what—the man is talented, smart, personable, and innovative—but when Rob first arrived in the blogosphere, the only person he knew online was yours truly. He emailed me to let me know that he had started blogging. I linked to his first efforts, and emailed Glenn Reynolds that there was a new kid in town, and he was one to watch.

There’s a new kid in town. And I know him, so I’m throwing him some link-love. Go have a look at The Truth Laid Bear, a man who is finding his blog voice. (And the fact that he has blackmail pictures of me has nothing to do with my recommendation, I swear.) He has some interesting things to say about Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan. Okay, and me, too. (But that has nothing to do with my having blackmail pictures of him, I swear.)

Glenn agreed with me. Rob’s star rose in the blogosphere quickly, and he wrote an article about BBSes that was published by Salon and widely disseminated before the bits were dry on his first blog.

I met Rob in 1986, when we were both BBSing at several sites in New Jersey. He was friends with a programmer that wrote BBS software and ran his own BBS that my friends had all found and liked. My friends talked me into buying a modem and the rest, as they say, is history.

Programming Guy was your typical unsocialized programmer whose only friends at that time were other programmers at work, and some really smart kids like Rob. (Side note about Programming Guy: He’s now happily married. My friends and I left a trail of socialized programming geeks behind us in the late 80s and 90s. We helped them see that there is life outside of computers.)

So although Rob was just a cub when we met, that was over 20 years ago, and he’s not a cub any longer. And I’m nearing a milestone birthday next month, which is as close as I will come to admitting my age online until the weekend of my bat mitzvah.

But back to the subject at hand: Rob took his opportunity and ran with it. He was smart enough to invent and develop the TTLB ecosystem, and then all of the great things that grew out of his contacts and ingenuity. And now he’s off and running with a new company, because the money people discovered what I knew years ago: Rob is a great and talented guy, and he’s going to go places.

It’s true that he has a blackmail photo of me and a man who is now in the CIA. (Come to think of it, the blackmail is on the CIA guy, not me.) But hey, who doesn’t have a picture of themselves from the 80s that could be misconstrued by the casual viewer? I lost contact with CIA guy. I’ll never lose contact with Rob. And now, he’s out in the open as a regular guy with a real name. No more pseudonyms!

I don’t really have any blackmail photos of Rob, but I have a great picture of me sitting between Rob and Citizen Smash at a restaurant near the Pentagon in January. That was the day I drove up to have lunch with Rob and Scott after hearing that Rob was in DC for the week. That’s also the day I met the CIO of Company in Northern Virginia, which started me on the path toward my current employment. So in a way, Rob is responsible for my landing my current job. He got me to get my butt up to Northern VA. And a couple of weeks after the meeting, Company landed a contract that needed a web person, fast—and there I was, with my mad web skilz going unused.

Which is a roundabout way of saying, all this, and he helped me get a job, too—without even realizing it. The man is talented and lucky.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Rob Neppell, my old friend. Glad to finally be able to call you by name in a post. Mazel tov on the new company, and continued good luck and prosperity. And nu, you could call me once in a while… I have to find out from Hot Air that you’re no longer using a pseudonym?

Okay, that’s enough guilt. I’m so proud of him.