A friend emailed me today to ask me what she should buy? Should she wait for the price of the iPad to come down or buy a Kindle?

Now, knowing that most ( and she) knows that a Kindle is not an iPad, but an iPad CAN be a Kindle, and as a long time iPad owner, I say get the best deal you can when you are ready, and buy the damned iPad.

People ask me this stuff all the time. It is like they want me to validate their own phobias about spending money. You are asking the wrong guy. I believe that people innately KNOW what they want, but for some bullshit reason, won’t allow themselves the freedom to buy the thing they covet. An iPad is not a NEED thing. It is a WANT thing. No one NEEDS an iPad. You need food, shelter, transportation, but you can live totally happily without an iPad. So, when the time comes to lay down your cash or charge it whatever, haggling with yourself over $200 seems silly to me. We piss through $200 now like nothing. It is one weeks worth of food for a family. When you are down in this price range, I say, you OWE it too yourself to get what you want when you want it IF you have the means and it is not going to impact your life or the lives of people who depend on you. I know it is popular to say money and possessions do not buy happiness. People who have never been happy when they bought something they wanted don’t exist. Everyone has bought something at some point that actually changed their mood, made them happier. If you can do it, do it.

The next thing I get asked about all the time are laptops. Ugh.

Buy a macbook, whichever you can afford. The cheapest Macbook is better than 99% of the PC laptops out there. Most of the PC laptops are junk with a 2 years life span TOPS. I typically will replace my laptop once every year or so by selling my current macbook and buying another. I had posted last year that I calculated my cost to own a macbook at $14 per month. It might not have been 100% accurate, but ballpark, I lose about $150-200 on my Macbooks. When I sell them, they are in perfect condition, I upgrade to the next model, max the Ram out and use it. This year is the first year I have not done that, and that is primarily due to my layoff this summer. So, if you are looking for a laptop, and want the best experience you can have IMHO, get a low end Macbook. The $300-500 PC’s are ok, but they are very much disposable.

The bottom line is, if you can get what you want, DO get what you want. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us.

The pepper spray incident at University of California Davis really has me pissed. Over the past few years, I have seen an increasing amount of police doing disproportionally violent things to either people being stopped, searched, questioned, etc. Now, people sitting down, in quiet protest have had their mouths held open and pepper spray shot down them. This on the heels of images from all over of Occupy people sitting with police dragging them off, kneeling on necks. This after the murders of citizens post Katrina. This after numerous squad car camera taped beatings. This after squad car camera video of one cop telling a guy he should have drawn his 40 and executed him right there.

The PROTECT and SERVE. When did it turn into To Judge and Punish?

I am not that good at staying calm when stuff like this happens. I start think of retaliation, eye for an eye vengeance.I have said before, multiple times, that I think being a cop is an almost impossible job, but, they are trained to stay calm, to NOT lose their cool, to NOT act in the manner that a minority of them are acting in. The police can only save them selves from being distrusted by an entire demographic of people if they start weeding out these hot heads. If they do not, sooner or later, it is going to get ugly. Cops will start getting shot, beaten or killed. Most will not deserve (and yes, I do believe that some of them deserve a taste of their own medicine so to speak) it one bit. But, if the police who protect their police brothers DO NOT act to get these neanderthals out of the police force, they are as good as guilty themselves. So, police, get control of these crazies. Get them out. If that was my kid whose mouth was held open and pepper spray was put down, there is not much that could keep me from coming after the individual who did it to my child. When you see one of the people you work with brutalize another human being, remember, there are limits as to what the normal folks will stand for. You are approaching that limit now. Stop it before it goes powderkeg. I am very pro police, and think most of them are good guys doing a great service in a crazy world, but, they are supposed to be above doing the things they are doing. I for one am sick of watching the near daily incidents. I just don’t think the country needs a civil war, or riots, but that is what I feel coming if a few more of these things happen.

In working on a side project just started, I was faced with a new acronym. EDI. Electronic Data interchange. A ‘secret’ way of saying ‘we conform to a file format of “x”. I have since found that there are two BIG versions. The fact that there are ‘versions’ to me means the entire thing is STUPID and FUBAR, because if there are versions, there is no STANDARD! AHHHH! But, the ones I need to be concerned with are UN/EDIFACT and X12. I want to find the PHD IT person who did this and step on their piggy toe hard while wearing skates. Why can’t you just send a damn file with a delimiter? Really….

Many of you don’t know I sing. Many of you don’t know I play a variety of musical things with varying degrees of skill. One of my goals for the last year is to ‘do’ more music. Play more. Sing more. Write more. I write this post with the intent of uploading a stupid little back ground song idea I am working on that I really like, only to find that wordpress

things PPT is an audio extension. Someone should lose a job over this really…PPT= audio? I think not…but, I am going to make a go at getting some audio out and uploaded and sold. We will see. I have been a musician all my life, and am getting tired of people being surprised by this fact, but it is my own fault.

Can’t find my charger, but I am sure it will turn up. Or maybe it will Rutabaga. Took a hundred or so pics, nothing exciting. Watched the Tigers get totally out pitched by Texas. I thought a lot about a lot of heavy, big things. Not like trucks or elephants, but like love, and respect, history, time. I did actually have one chunk o fmy day today where I was daydreaming about this buttery French organic Goat Cheese based Feta I had in Tucson….but most other things were heavy. I have no idea why any of this compelled me to make a blog entry..maybe just to get back to trying to post. Returned the POS Speck ipad case I bought in Tucson last week. The elastic binder on it snapped after one week. The thing was $40.00! The one I had for my iPad 1 was $10 bucks on Amazon, was leather, and other than being worn, it works perfectly. I am all for buying the ‘right’ thing once, and maybe spending a little more, but it is nice to find something that is undervalued and get a great deal on it once in a blue monday.

So much going on…kids, job, family, etc. I hit FB, and daily, it is so easy to drop a line, a link, etc.

This week..well…Steve died. I returned from a trip to Tucson to see a dear someone I consider the closest thing to a brother I have, and it went poorly, and I barely saw him so to speak.

For some reason, I really missed my kids, more than normal, even though I was only at work.

Sometimes, and I am sure everyone gets this at some point if they live long enough, it just hits you that you might be half way DONE, IF you are lucky. Your final grandparent dies. A hero dies. A friendship hits a bump. Your relationship crashes into something hard. Your mom, whom you realize you are BLESSED to still have right near by, says something that angers you and distances you. Your Aunt, whom you love and trust, is 3,000 fucking miles away, and you ache just to see her and laugh for 10 minutes. You go to work, populated by people who are basically strangers, and feel HOME. My new job is populated by beautiful, imperfect people who appreciate me. This feels GOOD. How. Odd. Life, if nothing else, is NOT dull, never boring, never predictable. You can pin many things on it, but life is a variable mother fucker. I miss Steve and I never shared a room with him. I miss Peg, and I am surprised how much. I miss Marion and wish I had more time with her, and realize that that was mostly due to Peg. I miss Jan, but I am happy she is not near, because for the most part, I encouraged her to be immersed in the joy she is up to her neck in. I miss Ram, yet I want to smack him. This is how I know we are brothers. I miss Sue, and she is right upstairs. I miss Pooh, yet in spirit, he is right next to me in Finn. I miss Jaqi, because she is not in her little room where I went to get grounded and feed off her beauty, purity of intent and clarity of hope. I miss Vickie, yet she won’t pick up the phone. In essence, I guess the culmination of life, at least in part, is having been fortunate enough to have enough things and people you loved to have them to miss. For that, I am thankful, but sometimes, thankful hurts. Today, and in fact, this week, has been sometimes.

There is so much in my head right now, but on Gruber’s site, he said what I was thinking- He would find a way to beat this. Cancer sucks. Death sucks. iMiss Steve already. Yes he gave us the cheesy ‘i’ thing, but I use it with respect. Gizmodo put together a nice little video.

If you are like me, I can count those people on a single hand. But how frequently have you taken a moment and really thought about it? Do it now. A few minutes from now might be too late. PS-, while your dog counts, he/she does not count.

Today we held the funeral for my 2nd generation Scottish grandmother, Margaret ( she went by Peg or Peggy) Massalsky. . I said a few words and sang a brief song that I had written for her years ago after the death of my grandfather, written from the perspective of him waiting for her in the afterlife. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but, I was happy I did it and made it through without melting down. The picture here is her and I at my wedding, 22 ish years ago..What follows is my Eulogy and the lyrics to the song.

(Thanked everyone for coming)

Writing this was tricky
I remember great
I remember good
I remember bad.

No matter who it is, all these apply. They apply to me, to you. All people

We are all born, and we will all die.
If we are lucky, we live a long life.
If we are healthy through our lives, we are blessed
As we are blessed, we are loved throughout it.
If we are smart, or learn to be smart, we try to love, more than we are loved.
If we are successful at this, when our lives end, we are missed

My grandmother, Margaret (Peg) will be missed greatly.

When I reflect on my Grandma Peg, I remember and feel laughter.
When we spoke or spent time together the predominant feeling was of humor,
Sometimes blue and inappropriate.
Many times loud.
Almost always a little profane.
There are certain curse words, which,
relax, I shan’t invoke here,
Joanie and I believe she receives a percentage royalty when they are used.

“They are just words” she used to tell me.
From this I learned that while words are powerful, it is how you act that counts.
I carry this lesson forward to this day with my sons.
Be mindful of what you say, but be more mindful of how you act and how you treat others. As was she, I am imperfect at this.

Peg treated me as her own flesh and blood, but I was not.
Peg loved me unconditionally
Peg was the crazy, wacky, funny grandma to me
Moving forward through life without her
While I won’t hear her cackling, crazy laugh, I can still feel it in our hearts and
I carry the lesson that
You do not have to be blood to be family.

Prayer for Peg story (song)
“Even if you do not believe in the prayer, the prayer believes in you”

Prayer for Peg

High above
Where I am
All the world
Within my vision
I can see
Across the land
And into your heart
I never meant to leave you
Or cause you so much pain
But I guess God never looked in your eyes
So when your end is near
I’ll be waiting here
On the bonnie, bonnie banks
Of Loch Lomon

My sons are Type 1 Diabetic. This means, for the duration of their lives until a cure is found, they need insulin to live. Insulin, to them, is life support. Insulin is not a cure, but a means of keeping them alive until a cure is found.

Why then, do they (or I) need to see a doctor OR get a prescription to buy insulin? The fact that they need it has been established. The word NEED means it is not optional, i.e. they WILL die without it. The federal government is tracking how much Claritin D I buy with my drivers license. Why can they not establish permanent ‘right to buy’ for insulin? Here is the scenario- I go in to refill a script for Novalog. The pharmacy cannot dispense it because the prescription is out of refills. They call the doctor. The Doctor says ‘we will give you a refill, but we need to see them soon”. Why?” I understand that a doctor wants to check on your insulin therapy, to correct dosages, etc, but why the dependency on the visit to GET the drug? It is FUCKED.

The older I get, the less patient I am becoming regarding the lame ass excuses I hear from politicians and people on ‘why’ we do not have universal health care. The reason is, for both my question on prescriptions AND universal health care is that the lobbyist for ‘insurance’ agencies own Washington. At some point, and we are very close to it now, the system is going to break, and people are going to demand logical, even application of basic domestic social policies. Health care should be a RIGHT given the United States’ position as the richest country in the world, a ‘nation builder’, and the worlds (if sometimes unwanted) police force. Many people do not even realize that the health care given to our soldiers SUCKS, and the health care they get if they are the spouses of soldiers sucks. All this is easily fixable. We need lobbyists OUT of Washington, the dissolution (yes, that means END) to private insurance, and the BEST coverage for all Americans, be they here or deployed overseas OR left home to raise the family while their S/O fights, even if we agree with the motives for the war, we need to protect and support the warriors.

This is a bit rambling, but point being, once diagnosed, an insulin dependent diabetic should be able to purchase insulin (which should also be subsidized, like Chicken and MILK are) OTC without a script. This drug should be bought in such quantities by the government as to render it affordable to ALL within America based on the lowest common denominator of income, i.e. perhaps a percentage of taxable income. I am not talking about Viagra, or birth control, or cholesterol meds. I am talking about the classification of medication that are LIFE SUSTAINING. Can’t get it up? Tough. Hi Cholesterol? Tough (although this COULD be considered life sustaining, you will not die for sure within 2 weeks if you stop taking it). Birth control? Tough. Condoms, or buy it out of pocket, cause you ain’t gonna die if you don’t get laid, although for some it might seem this way.

My children will DIE if they do not have insulin. There is little I would not do to provide it. I should not even have to THINK about this. Let’s get it done. Call/write/think. National Healthcare NOW!