Tim Fogarty’s Blog

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Fifth, there’s Touch.
…
Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

because every line of code you write in HTML5, CSS and Javascript is available for all the world to see? Actionscript and MXML is compiled and the end user only has access to the binary. If you’re going to write an app that is thousands of lines long, isn’t this kind of important?

If you watched season two of Bravo’s Workout, you may remember Doug Blasdell training his ex Cheo. Cheo had kidney failure and was waiting for a transplant. Well, he never got it. Cheo died this past weekend.

I met Cheo through my roommate Ivan back in 1989 or so. A whole group of them came from Venezuela to attend graduate school at Northrup University. Not Cheo. He tagged along on a tourist visa. Funny thing is he was the first to get permanent residence.

In 1991 he was preparing to run in the LA Marathon, and wanted me to run with him. It was quickly apparent that I could never run the full 26 miles, so I said I’d run part of it. He said he didn’t need me help him run the first half, not to mention that I wouldn’t be able to keep up, so I ran the last half with him. Probably more like the last 10 miles. We both registered, got our bibs. I took him down to to the Coliseum, saw him off, then jumped into the car and drove to Crenshaw and Olympic, where I waited for him. A couple hours later we meet and I keep him company the rest of the way, well most of the way. Even after his 16 miles, it was hard keeping up with him. In fact as the Coliseum came into view, the entire field quickly picked up the pace and left me in the dust. Cheo’s time was about 4.5 hours.

Here are a few pics that I took. The first is from the day of the marathon. The second is from gay pride that same summer.

A year and a half since I’ve written! Had plenty to write about, some incredible stories, but one needs to respect other peoples privacy. Up to a point.

I’ve written many things over that time, all are unpublished. This story I need to tell. But it’s been three weeks now that I’ve been trying to create a narrative, trying to summarize the how and the why. Paragraphs ain’t going to happen , so let me try bullet points.

• New Years Eve, go to the Mayan, the big gay dance event downtown, with CCS and FAR. YEG was invited but doesn’t show up. We get in free (a savings of over $300!) because CCS is friends with someone at the theater’s property management company. Don’t have to stand in line or nothing. I’m the designated driver. A good time is had by all.
• We leave the club at 4:30 a.m., get home by 5, shower, eat something, get to bed by 6. Not bad for New Years Eve.
• I get woken up by a phone call at 9 a.m. BZE (or is it TZA?) calls. He woke up and found blood in his house. Oh and he has a gash on his arm. Can I come over?
• Thank God I did NYE completely sober. No way I’d be able to handle what’s to come hung over.
• BZE had been the victim of some violence in the recent past (d.r.). So I’m very concerned. I get over to his apartment and find blood splatter outside his door. I go in and am shocked. There is blood everywhere. On the floor, on the walls, on the furniture. I rush into the bedroom finding BZE laying in bed, awake, with a 4 inch gash on the back of his head, and an 8 inch gash on his arm, flayed open 4 inches wide. Surprisingly, both had stopped bleeding and there was little blood in the bed.
• I ask what happened. He doesn’t know. He had been out drinking and partying from about 7 p.m. New Years Eve, came home at 1 a.m., took an Adivan, and then remembers nothing.
• Since it can take forever to get through 911 in the big city, especially on a cell, and takes even longer for paramedics to arrive, and that BZE was stable and not currently bleeding, and that Cedars was just down the street, I grab a clean t-shirt, wrap it around his arm, and take him to my car.
• As we’re sitting in his driveway, just to show us how cruel life can be, we see a neighbor’s beautiful big ol’ house cat walk right into the path of a car going no more than 10 miles an hour, head being crushed, and flopping around until its dead.
• I get BZE to Cedars’ ER. Not surprisingly they take us right in. His pulse and blood pressure is normal, no evidence of major blood loss. Who’s blood is all over his living room and kitchen? (oh and why can’t we get a hold of the roommate?) I insist that we talk to the police.
• A few hours later a WeHo sheriff officer shows up. He tells her his story. I tell her mine. She goes over to the apartment, agrees it looks like a major crime scene and calls in the CSI unit. They’re there well into the evening, taking samples, interviewing everyone in the building.
• I watch the doc put 8 staples in BZE’s head, closing up that wound, staple, staple, staple. I leave Cedars at 3 when they roll BZE up for surgery on his arm, but the surgery gets delayed until 6. After a short nap, I come back at 9, stay with BZE until midnight.
• The next day they discharge him and I take him home. The police are finished with the apartment and we’re allowed to clean. (The roommate had finally checked in, had spent two nights at a friend’s place, not that they slept any, had no idea anything had happened.) I spend four hours cleaning up the blood. Once we start cleaning, it becomes apparent that this wasn’t a crime scene. There had been no one else in the apartment. BZE had been at the kitchen table, took a step back, tripping over the dog bed, fell backwards, breaking a big glass vase, slicing his arm on the vase, continued falling and hit the back of his head on a big wooden chair. All the rest, the soaked jeans in the middle of the room, all the towels soaked in blood, all the hand prints on the wall, the footprints, the trail of blood that goes out the front door, down the hall, turns around and goes back into the apartment, was BZE in his panic filled Adivan haze.
• A few days later, the police detective calls each of us for a final interview. The CSI found only BZE’s blood, and they conclude that no crime was committed. The detective comments to me that in his 30 years he has never seen anything like that. He was sure they were going to find a body near by.
• Before we started cleaning I took pictures. They are amazing. Kind of artistic. Email me if you want to see. No worse than what you’d see on Dexter.
• Which brings us to the next part of the story. I haven’t talked to BZE since Jan 6. He’s mad at me for violating his privacy.
• A little background: I met BZE this summer and had a torrid little affair. I really fell for him and he for me. But I’m not good with drinking, so I said call me when you get sober.
• And call me he did, in October, and again in early December, and then on New Years day. But not because he was sober, but because he was in trouble. All three events were major and could have cost him his life.
• So, this time I had a talk with his best friend, and in my opinion, his primary enabler. I made sure his friend knew how serious this event was. How had the cut been millimeters deeper, BZE would have cut an artery and would have died all alone in his apartment. That he has to stop being the enabler. This got back to BZE and now he won’t speak to me.
• I want to show those pics to every one of BZE’s 30-something WeHo pretty-boy friends, try to put the fear of God in them. But I’m told that would be a violation of his privacy.
• Some of CCS’s friends are also BZE’s friends. BZE’s birthday was just over a week ago. They had a big surprise party for him, lots of celebrating all around.

WeHo is a small town and I’m sure I will run into him again. And when I do, I’ll tell him my offer from this summer still stands.

If you find this story interesting, you should hear the ones about SJC, BOG, and YEG. Well, maybe not.

When you live in small town, when anything out of the ordinary happens it get written up in the local paper. In the big city not so much.

A few weeks ago I was awaken at 4 am to a loud explosion. I could see out my window flames rising 20 feet into the air. It was the next street over, near the delivery truck entrance for the Ralph’s supermarket. The big 18 wheelers are always backing into that driveway (beep-beep-beep) so I thought maybe one of them hit a natural gas meter or something. The fire department quickly arrived and put out the flames. The next day I went over and could barely tell there had been a fire. A palm tree well down from the entrance had some burn marks. It must have been a car parked on the street that exploded. Not just burned, but exploded. Was it a mob killing? Check the papers the next few days…not a word.

Early yesterday morning I was driving home and I see a pickup truck sitting flat on its roof at the intersection of Fountain and LaBrea. Very nice truck, extended cab, black. Near by a small car showing signs that it had been clipped. Firemen and paramedics standing around. That one did make the news.

Martin, Nick and I spent the day swimming with theKid. Had bbq, played in WeHo park until sundown, then took theKid home. He was still going strong. We were completely exhausted.

TheKid has a new haircut, which seems to be the latest fad at his pre-school. (Don’t want to be nit picking.) Looks like my brother at that age.

Last year, he wouldn’t let go of the side of the pool. This year he loves to jump into the deep end (with his vest). He’ll even on occasion go in with me without the vest.

So McCain is proposing a $5000 tax credit to help people buy health insurance. “The goal is to move the health care industry away from job-based coverage toward competition among health insurance companies on the open market.”

a few thoughts:

• Tax credits only offset income tax that you pay. Most people without insurance are in low income jobs and don’t pay anywhere near $5000 in income tax. A tax credit will not give them any more money with which to buy insurance.
• Most people who have insurance receive it as part of a group plan from their employer. group plans have a harder time excluding people with pre-existing conditions. without reform, moving from employer based group plans to individual plans will result in more people being denied insurance.
• When an employer offers health insurance, especially when they pay for a good chunk of the cost, most employees sign up for it. That means that lots of young healthy people are contributing premiums but taking out few benefits. That means the healthy people are subsidizing the sick people. That’s how insurance is suppose to work. But move to individual plans, and many young healthy people will not bother to sign up. The total cost of health care will remain pretty much the same, but it will be spread out over fewer people.

The simplest solution to our health care crisis is the one proposed by presidential candidate Matthew Santos: removing the age restriction on Medicare. You can keep your private insurance, or you can sign up for Medicare. Unless they’re very rich, people over 65 don’t have a choice. They’re pretty much forced onto Medicare. If it is good enough our elderly, then why isn’t it good enough for the rest of us?

For the fourth time in eight years, I had jury duty last week. Years ago, when you were called you had to go down to the court house every day for a week (or more) and sit in the jury room waiting to be called for a case. Now you call in the night before to see if you need to show up the next day. And after one day at the court house your service is done, if you’re not selected for a jury. In theory.

My previous services were in Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and downtown LA. This time it was at the Hollywood court house, 2 miles from my house. Easy commute and easy parking. But one thing about these satellite court houses is that they have to perform multiple court functions. Downtown, a courtroom is only used to try cases and other courtrooms are used for other things. So downtown, a court case will go 9-5 every day. In Hollywood, maybe 3-4 hours a day is available for the trial.

Downtown, the jury room will have a few hundred people available for jury pools, so only a fraction of the people will be sent to a specific courtroom at a time. In Hollywood, only 45 people are called in on a given day, so everyone goes to the courtroom.

So last week I called in Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, and wasn’t asked to come in until Thursday morning. One and a half hours of orientation, then a half hour of sitting there before being released for lunch, told to be back at 1:30. Sat there for another hour, then called into a courtroom. A misdemeanor case involving a mother-in-law brandishing a gun to keep her estranged son-in-law away from her daughter. Everyone is spanish speaking.

First 18 are called up, 1.5 hours of interviews. Four are very clearly going to be dismissed, but everyone is sent home at 4 and told to be back at 1 the next day. Arrive Friday at 1, wait a half hour, more interviews, people dismissed, 6 more called up, more dismissals. 4 pm everyone sent home and told to return on Monday at 11. Monday wait a half hour, then only a half hour of interviews, and everyone released for lunch, told to be back at 2. More interviews, more dismissals. I’m the 4 from the last to be called. The defense has used up all their dismissals. The prosecution uses his last dismissal on me. The guy to my left is by default the 12 juror and the two remaining in the audience are the alternates.

So it took 3 days to go through all 45 to seat 12. They didn’t want anyone with any gun violence in their past. One young girl had witnessed a gang shooting at age 8. A retired bank clerk had been robbed. One guy’s brother had been in an accidental shooting at a neighbor’s house when he was 12. Another guy had been mugged. a few other gang related stuff. But they also didn’t want anyone who had a gun collection. No one with domestic violence in their past. No one who left their spouse and moved back in with their parents. They didn’t want anyone who spoke spanish either.

It took 3 days in part because the judge dragged things out. Once the girl said she had witnessed a gang murder at 8, and the bank clerk said she had a gun pointed to her during a bank robbery, the judge should have just moved on, but he went on and on asking about the details. (both were clearly emotionally upset during the questioning)

But now my duty is complete, at least for another year.

Busy busy busy. Wish I could write more. Working very hard on my music website project. Working very hard helping Martin doing construction (seems I’m very good at getting PVC to align.)

A few videos representing the youth of America.

Jonas Brothers: When You Look Me In The Eyes, andSOS.

Soulja Boy Tell Em: Crank That, and Yahhh

I’m not sure which one scares me more.

But there is hope.

For you novices, Nigahiga is currently the number one subscribed comedy channel on youtube. You got to watch a half dozen or so of their videos to fully grasp their talent. Ryan and Sean are still in high school in Hawaii, and Ryan is this year’s state wrestling champion. (I believe that Ryan accentuates his pidgin accent for the videos, as it tends to disappear in the occasional outtake.)

Kevjumba has the second most popular comedy channel. He’s in high school in Texas.

Not a kid, but another comedy channel worth following is What the buck, although it’s more pop culture commentary. At 3 videos a week, he always has something to say, including about the Jonas Brothers.

While Trader Joe’s Reduce Fat Cilantro Salad Dressing tastes great, it is even better when you mix it 4 to 1 with Trader Joe’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil