It sounds terrible, I know, but I’ve kinda been waiting for this news for 30+ years.  He was almost 50 years old and had been abusing drugs since his teens.  I’m not surprised at all – kinda feel bad that I don’t feel bad, you know?

I don’t have many details:  He was at a party, went into the bathroom (to do something other than go to the bathroom), came out, took a couple steps and did a face plant – DEAD…

In the business I’m in, I’m the odd man out because I don’t do anything but drink a Guinness on occasion.  People often comment about it – let me make it real simple for you…

1)  My older sister was killed by a drunken driver when I was 10, literally on the way to her Senior Prom where she was literally the Prom Queen…

2)  My remaining brother and sister have been manufacturers, developers, distributors, users, and abusers since their teens.  Both started out as having the brains to be anything they wanted to be, both chose to be what they became, both have destroyed their children, neither have ever been to jail for anything serious (which probably would have done them some good).  My brother has three girls who are wacked, my little sister has a boy and girl who are wacked.  What these kids consider normal just ain’t normal.  It’s probably worth mentioning that my brother’s ex mother-in-law has had custody of his kids for a few years now, and my parents have custody of my sisters kids – unfortunately, both sets of grandparents got custody after the damage was done (all the kids are teenagers at this point)…

3)  Drugs killed my brother.  His body was actually 20 years older than his age…

4)  Drugs are going to kill my sister shortly.  Even if she stopped today, the damage to her body is already done.  She’s 38 and she is having the health problems of a 50 year old already…

5)  Drugs are going to kill at least two of my cousins – they are kinda already dead cause their brains are so far gone…

6)  Two of my uncles have destroyed their families due to drugs…

7)  America has been fighting the war on drugs since I was in Jr. High School.  Many men and women have lost their lives trying to keep that crap off the streets.  Good friends of mine.  People who are willing to fight and die for something bigger than themselves.  Every-time you light one up, every-time you shoot up, every-time you pop a pill, every-time you buy it, you are stomping on their graves – YOU!  I take offense to that…

So, not only will I not do drugs under any circumstances, I won’t be around those who do – that’s why I don’t go to your parties people.  Your behavior offends me…

As far as alcohol goes, don’t abuse it.  If I ever see you drunk and about to get into the drivers seat of a car, I will shove my knife through at least two of your sidewalls – you may have one spare, but you won’t have two…

Get it?!

Hey, all you guys who keep emailing me!  Get on facebook!  The GUI for the iPhone makes it really easy to “chat/IM” – so I can do it on the fly instead of sending emails back and forth every few minutes…

I love it.  I have two shows happening right now in two different parts of the property, so I just keep walking back and forth checking in with them.  Think I’ve walked a few miles by now and I’m only halfway through my night.  I love that I can post here to my blog and to my facebook as I walk to and fro!

Been hearing a lot about the North Koreans pointing a missile in our direction and getting ready to fire it on the 4th of July.  Everyone is really in disbelief around here and they can’t figure out why anyone would point a missile at Hawaii…

It’s simple people:

1)  If they shoot a missile at Hawaii and We don’t use the missile defense system to try to shoot it down we will look weak.  If we try to shoot it down we will look incompetent, because our missile defense system has never actually hit anything it has been aimed at.  I just love how they moved the missile defense system in here!  It’s totally a PR move!  Talk about a false sense of security!  The missile doesn’t have to make it to Hawaii at this point, it just has to be shot in our direction, and We Lose…

Some say that it has worked in testing.  Tell you what, go to your local trap shooting range and watch those guys.  They load their gun, point it, and when they are ready they yell “PULL!” – they know exactly where and when it is coming, and they have their guns loaded and pointing in that direction.  Now, wait till all the guys are sitting there eating lunch.  Their guns are unloaded and just within arms reach.  Now say “PULL!” and tell them all to hit the target before it hits the ground – TOTALLY DIFFERENT STORY PEOPLE!

2)  If, by some strange happening, this turns out to be “The Real Deal” – if they actually send a missile, with a payload, to Hawaii and it hits one of the islands – it would be very effective as a rope-a-dope.  First, they would take out a chunk of the Pacific Fleet.  Second, what would the rest of the Pac Fleet (that is not in the Middle East right now) be sent to do?  Would they be sent to N. Korea, or sent to Hawaii to help out?  This is another lose-lose situation.  If they send the fleet to N. Korea, everyone will rip them apart for not helping the civilian population here in Hawaii.  If they send the fleet to Hawaii, they will get ripped apart for being “cowards”…

3)  We are the perfect target.  The administration will have no choice but to go with the humanitarian effort and send the fleet here to the islands (which leaves the West Coast vulnerable to attack).  Not just because of the help needed over here – but because they can’t send the fleet to N. Korea.  Why?  One Word: China…

4)  China is N. Korea’s Big Brother.  We simply do not have the capability to take on an Army which is larger than our population.  Consider this, about 2-5% of all Americans have served in the Armed Forces (Yes, I know, incredibly sad, but true).  There’s only 300 Million Americans.  That’s 15 Million Veterans and Active Duty Military personnel in the entire United States (at best).  China has more soldiers than we do people!  For every one trained soldier/veteran we have, they have approximately 20-25…

Another thing to consider when talking about China, they are buying much of our national debt right now.  If things ever got serious with them, they could kill our economy in a heart beat.  We think times are tough now?  It’s nothing compared to what would happen if they pulled their money…

5)  We would not retaliate with our own missiles to protect such a small contained population (Hawaii) – if we ever launch, everyone else would launch theirs within minutes out of panic.  It simply would not happen – no one would end the world for such a small population in the middle of the Pacific Ocean…

Basically, having a small population of Americans out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean makes us a great target for the Bad Guys.  If N. Korea (or anyone else) were to send a missile to the mainland the possible casualty rate would be so high that it would demand an immediate response – before the Bad Guys missiles got halfway to the shoreline our missiles would be in the air.  Not so here…

Hawaii is contained, and we have a relatively small population.  Meaning, the fallout, in the case of nuclear attack, would be contained; and the chance of spread, in the case of biological weapons, would be contained as well.  Immediate response not required because all can be contained – no chance of spread in either case…

And finally, If someone were to shoot a missile to the mainland, it would be much easier for the government to respond to both the humanitarian effort and the military effort.  Hitting us would spread everything out – humanitarian and military efforts would be too spread out…

Hope that covers it…

I’ve had this thing for 5+ years and it’s really been a work horse for me- it has burned over 500 movies and 25 seasons of various TV shows from DVD to mp4 (I digitize everything so I can watch it on my iPhone/iTouch), so I have no room for complaint as far as overall performance (any other computer would have been dead after a year). It’s the last 17″ G4 Powerbook made before they went Intel. I’m really bummed that it’s on it’s last legs…

Ever try to start a car when the battery is about to die? That what it’s like starting this thing up now. Always takes a few times to get it going. And when I finally get it running, the processor runs above 70% constantly…

I love this thing! It is kinda big to tote around though – I had a 15″ before this one and totally loved the size. I got the 17″ so I could edit video on the fly (with the larger screen), but have found that I always use an external (large) monitor to do that anyway – so I kinda found out the hard way that smaller is better (I can use the external monitor with any size laptop)…

My first issue started with the OS (and Final Cut) upgrade about 2 years ago, suddenly I could not capture video from my old Hi-8 video camera because I have a PPC processor. I tried the same exact setup with the intel processor (a friends computer) and it works fine. So this really put a hamper on my life – I have a ton of footage that I can’t download to my laptop to edit – STUPID! I have tons of family stuff that I need to digitize!

Second issue was that I really want to start developing programs for the iPhone. I downloaded the SDK when it first came out and found that the iPhone SDK does not work with the PPC processor. So I need an intel processor to develop iPhone apps…

My third issue is that iCal hasn’t opened in 3 months – just sits there wanting to open – until I “Force Quit” it. I have to do all my updates to my Calendar on my iPhone or online – it’s more of a “put out” than you would think in my case…

My fourth issue just occured when I found that the new Safari update crashes constantly, and it won’t let me delete it and reinstall the old version. I should have stuck with the Beta version – it was solid, and I liked how the tab bar was on top…

So, basically, I can’t download video from my old camera to edit it, I can’t make iPhone apps, my iCal doesn’t open, Safari crashes constantly, and no amount of uninstalling and reinstalling anything has worked in any of the cases above…

Fifth Issue would be that there are a few other programs which I really want to be able to run that only work on the intel processor as well..

The sixth issue is the dual boot that you get with Intel – I would love to be able to do that on my Mac. When using programs such as LD Assistant (which only runs on Windows) doing things virtually just doesn’t cut it when your rendering – it totally doubles/triples the render times..

The new 13″ MacBook Pro really caught my eye – and I have a buddy who works at Apple who has nothing but good stuff to say about it, so…

We’ll see what comes up here – and if I do something (like buy a new Mac), I’ll definitely write about it so you can learn from my mistakes – AS ALWAYS…