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^{an article from the VincentClark newsletter
first published July 18th, 2006}

I was thirteen years old that summer. It was a rough summer—my aunt was really sick; I didn’t know how sick until later. There was something odd going on and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. One day my father yelled at me and said I didn’t know what it was like to have a sister dying of cancer. For some reason, I thought there was still a chance and my dad was overreacting. Looking back, I should have known what was going on, but back then all I could do was use my imagination to search for one lasting piece of hope, something that would save her.

Those summer nights we would all lie under the stars and watch for shooting stars. We did this almost every night; it was really cool. I remember wishing on every shooting star I saw that my aunt would be okay. I never prayed or wished so hard for anything in my life, and that is true even today.

I thought of everything that I could, and when I say everything that I could, I had the capacity to think of a lot. I was putting all my energy into swimming. For some dorky reason, I wanted to win first place and give that as a gift to my aunt. I had wanted to go see her for a while, but it seemed like there was always something else in the way.

It was July 12, 1988, around 6:50 pm. I thought I had plenty of time. I was waiting for my mother to pick me up—she was late but I thought nothing of it. I was in one of my daydreams, a complex fantasy on how to save my aunt. It was the ultimate story; back then I didn’t know that things like that couldn’t come true. I really did believe, even at age thirteen. I saw nothing to ever persuade me otherwise.

My grandmother had passed away and a classmate in the third grade; that was the extent of my tragedies. My grandmother had been dying of Alzheimer’s disease for a long time. She was old and did what grandparents do. It hurt, but it was like instinct knowing that this sort of thing was to be expected. Our parents are supposed to live forever. My aunt Cathy—my uncle Bill’s wife, Clark and Anna’s mother—was like my mom too. From ages four to eight (silly to think that was only four years—I have known you for almost that long) she was like my mother. That was half of my life. She lived down the street and our families were very close. We were almost always together, friends, family, it was the best.

I moved away when I was eight years old. It was March when we moved. That summer, they lived down at the beach house with our family, Donna and the Nicholas family, the Falgetter’s, and whoever else stopped by. It was arguably the best summer in my life. My family was still very close to the Morey’s.

I was in the sixth grade (1986) when I found out that my aunt Cathy had a brain tumor—cancer—and they tore her up. Radiation, chemo, surgeries…she looked so horrible. It was so painful to watch, even if it was at a distance. Perhaps that is what made it so painful. I was on the sidelines, there for her, but nobody really understood or still understands what this was like for me.

Every night I prayed. I tried so hard. I remember the Christmas when I saw her last. She was ill, and it took everything she had to make it up to Bakersfield for this family dinner. Bill knew it was to be her last, and it wasn’t until years later that I understood what that look in her eye meant. It’s funny that I remember vividly when she said goodbye. How was I to know that she knew it would be the last, and she that she was really saying goodbye?

If I knew then, I would have trapped myself in that moment forever. I always thought that I had more time, another month or two—one more week and I will write that letter. My mom was forty-five minutes late. An old friend must have called—with my family, this was always something that was expected and never really bothered anyone. I didn’t notice the look on my mothers face. I was finishing up the chapter of my story and reliving the moments in which I was to discover the answer, only to find out it was too late. We were leaving the pool, traveling north on Stow Street when she told me. Typically, when my mother delivers bad news is there is a lot of preamble to the story. I knew what was coming and did my best not to listen.

There was a pause. Seeing my aunt again, the one thing that I was pushing for all summer, the only thing that I wanted to do, the only thing I was hoping for, wishing for, would never happen. Everything that was my life to that point was now too late. She had slipped into a coma and had been taken to the hospital. The doctors didn’t think that she was going to wake up. She would die soon. There was another pause.

Then a tidal wave of grief as my world collapsed on me. I felt all the pain that my mother felt, my sisters, my aunts and uncles, my uncle Bill, my cousins—they were more like siblings. This was happening. It overwhelmed me. I burst into tears and fell into my mother’s lap. I wanted so much for someone to wake me, to tell me that the last two years had all been a dream. It was the most powerless I had ever felt to that point in time. There were a few people I would have traded my life for in order to save theirs, but she was the only one I would give my soul for. As the tears streamed down my face and in my uncontrollable sobs, I watched all that I was looking forward to, all of where I saw my life going, disappear like the world you create in your dreams as you wake up.

What was once a vivid memory was then only a fragment of a thought, then nothing. I never felt so let down in my life. God had failed me. Shooting stars had failed me. My imagination and my stories were the only things that I had left, and I tried so hard to understand the one thing that was missing that was separating me from finding out how to save her. I still had time. My father went up to see her first, then my mother, leaving us at home. We would have only gotten in the way. I would have got in the way.

A sinking feeling of common sense was the only thing that prevented me from walking up there.

And every day since then, I have regretted not trying

That week I went mad; I would stand on my bed and cry at the top of my lungs. My dad was losing a sister, my mom a friend, and me so much more, but how was anyone to know that? I was one of sixteen nephews and nieces on one side of a large family. I was a cousin, a supporter. I was so lost, and to this day there is a piece of me that was never found—a piece of me searching for that one thing that will make sense of it all.

On July 18th, 1988, I was in that state between a good dream and the optimism of the day. It was the first time I had had a decent night’s sleep in a week. My mother woke me up and told me that my aunt had passed away. I already knew; my mind was in a place where it could see the obvious, the span of life and death. There were no complications, no thoughts of the future or the past. This was what was and I was at peace. As I gently woke up, a sense of closure was coming over me.

My room was by the door and I could hear the soft words of a family friend telling my sister what had happened. I was expecting her to find the calm feeling that I had. Finally, all the suffering was coming to an end. Then I heard her belt out a “No!” and begin to cry. It was at that moment that my world ended and the one I live in today began.

I have never been the same since. I will never forget how painful the July 19th was for us..how long that drive was to San Jose…how quiet we all were. All of us were in our own little worlds—everyone but me. There was no more world for me and I drifted in a void of reality. I didn’t understand how the sun could be out, why there were people on the road, how strangers were laughing like nothing had happened. To them, nothing had happened, but to me a world had ended; I never felt so alienated in my life.

It has been eighteen years since that day. I have tried so hard to prevent it from becoming a childhood memory. I have long since forgiven God; it was only five years of intense hatred and anger towards him. Today it seems trivial; it was more than half a lifetime ago. This world I am in today has been here longer than the world of before, but I keep the pain as real as I can. This was the one thing in my life I swore to never get over, to never forget, to never stop crying about. Some years are better than others. Some years I see it coming, sometimes it sneaks up on me, but every year is the same—a preservation of pain needing to be felt to assure me that she will never leave who I am. Sometimes people can see this glimmer of the old world in my eye. They ask me what is wrong and I say, “Nothing.” Every night when I say my prayers, I say goodnight. At the end of every prayer I speak a silent, “Say hi to my aunt Cathy.” There is no one alive today or will be born that can understand; they can try, and they can feel for me and try to put themselves in my spot, but nobody was there to hear what was said that evening on December 24th, 1987 when she told me goodbye. I am the only one, and that is my treasure.

It has been 20 years to the day since my Aunt Cathy passed. The loss still hurts me as much as it did last year, the year before when this newsletter was written, and every year since that day that forever changed me.  Though today I am incredibly sad I know that is a good thing.

I am not sure when I began to see the difference between good and evil. As a life long Star Wars fan my initial exposure to the two was the struggle between the light and dark side of the force. Until twenty minutes ago I could never fully understand why the dark side had the advantage.

While walking to my car I was wondering why evil always seem to have the underhand. Naturally my thoughts turned to the struggle between the Jedi and the Sith. I remember Yoda saying that the dark side was not more powerful, however, I was still lost to why the “good side” of the force was no match for the “dark side.”

My thoughts then drifted to more earthly representations of good and evil. I then had an epiphany, good offers restraint where as evil did not.

In a parallel illustration we will look at the approach two different forces of equal strength would take while attempting to take and maintain control of the city of Chicago.

The two forces will be representation of good and evil.¹The two forces are completely equal in strength. There is little doubt that the evil force could take control far quicker than that of the good force. The evil force would also spend far less energy and resources in maintain control of the city.

The advantage that evil has is that there is no restraint in evil, which is a classic separation between evil and good. Good would take into account the civilians of the city. Though good needs to take control of the city this should not come at the expense of the people that reside inside it. The good force needs to spend far more time in calculating its strikes as to not occur casualties of the cities inhabitants. When controlling the city the force would need to squash any uprisings. To address any uprising the evil force can oppress the citizens, make public examples in the form of torture or executions, and withholding vital necessities such as food and medicine. This is something that a good force could not do. Since the good force operates within the constraints of caring for the people as their own arbitrary executions are seen as an act of murder and deemed a war crime. Withholding food and medicine is seen as a human rights violation and therefor cannot be used as weponds in the struggle for control.

While good needs to prefect the aim of their weapons the evil force can focus on effectiveness. The side of good must adhere to internationally agreed upon rules which limits the type of weapons that are available for use. Deploying chemical weapons would be an ideal tactic in urban warfare, however, conflicts with the contraints of good. If the goal is to control the city and there is no need for the inhabitents of the city it would be far easier for the forces of evil to develop wepondry to exterminate the population than it would to develop wepons to spare the population.

“good is restraint”

A chief separation between good and evil is that good operates within the context of rules. While there is no pure good the same is true for pure evil.

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Is Vincent Clark, general secretary of the VincentClark network the much revered 5th and final Cylon in Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica? Has Ron Moore officially jumped the shark? Is this an X-Files ending to one of the greatest space operas of all time? The answer might shake the very foundation of your understanding of the internet and science fiction. Click here for the answer that you can’t find anywhere else.

Sunday afternoon after dealing with a massive headache all week my wife Jennifer took me to Los Angele’s Kaiser Sunset Urgent Care. After running the normal blood tests a horrified nurse came in and said that my liver functions were very abnormal and that they needed to take me to get a cat scan of my liver and brain. They told me that this might be serious and that they were going to call in a consul. Long story short the doctors found that my liver was failing and that the functions were over 100 times the amount that they should be. Never in my life have I had a feeling that I would not leave a hospital. I couldn’t help but think that out of all that I have done and gone through my end might be in this hospital because of liver failure. They were also concerned about a brain tumor as well, and figured that they should get that checked out as well.

I was finally admitted to my room fifteen hours after arriving I was going to be prodded, tested, scanned, and grilled to figure out why my liver is on strike, my hormone levels were uneven, and I had a splitting headache and brown urine. Not to give away the ending, but as always I make a miraculous recovery, stun the doctors, and still not a clear idea of what exactly is wrong with me. I will go more into this in my faith articles. This one is about what pulled me through.

Having a splitting headache I was taken to have an MRI of my brain. If you have ever need to have an MRI of the brain make sure that you are loaded up before they put you in that thing. Unfortunately this machine was available now, but no doctor to put me under, so I had to suck it up. I have a better description of the MRI that may be added latter. For now, just image thousands of pounds of copper and magnets whirl around your head with intermittent bangs against the side. You are encased in a tube with a plastic shield covering your face. You try to control your breathing, but the breath heats up the small space where you need to be. After thirty minutes I was ready to crack. The an image came into my had. It was a photo taken a few years ago of my now wife, standing with her Jen pose and tourist grin. I smiled. I tried not to laugh. I can see her in the goofy pictures that we take. In this hell of misery I found my self lost in her smiles, pouts, sticking her tounge out at me, shaking her but and exposing her arm pits in the ultimate act of defiance, “mister, mister.”

When it ended, I kind of wanted it to last a little longer.

I often get annoyed when I am done commenting on a post I am then told you need to register. It saddens me to have to impose that tactic on my sites. The world shouldn’t have to work this way, unfortunately it needs to. People who write spam software are the worst of the worst. They are the trashy people that make beautiful parks a place where you don’t want your children to go to. They are like those thugs that cripple the inner city and cause people to further withdraw from their surroundings. They are those people that would go into a “Christian Youth” chat room and constantly type, “I love Satan.” This handful of people pollute the Internet and forces us to constantly adapt to fend them off. While they are continuously finding new and clever ways to bypass spam filters we find that a large amount of our time and funding is spent on repelling these Internet mosquitoes.

I am taking a new approach. I am collecting IP addresses, monitoring key words, studying how this web trash does what they do, and I am going to go after them. Even if I can only reach a small number of those responsible for that, spammers are here by on noticed, that starting sometime soon the hunt will be on and they will not be safe. I intend to target them personally and on a very personal level. This will be the last warning. The time my be tomorrow or two years from now.

I know reading this post are not responsible. Spammers never read the area in which they target. It is software without guidance or a conscious. I do hope those reading this join the fight in tracking down those responsible for this and perhaps together we can put an end to this virtual abuse.

I don’t get it, I am watching Top Chef and I just don’t get it. My brain hurts, it seriously hurts, it is like watching a train wreck, or even better like how when your finger hurts you just keep pressing on it. I knew I had to pull away. I wanted to see the finish, but I knew that if I got to the ending I would be lost. Is this the end? Is this it, the best we can do? I can’t smell or taste the food, so I am I watching. I would not mind living this experience, well not me, I don’t life non-plain dishes, but for people that like the taste. How could they watch this. I don’t understand. I think we are lost when you vote off your least favorite chef.

I am ready, I have my umbrella, bring it on.

I find the news hallow and pointless. Analysis is forsaken in order for us to be presented network gosip by failed models.

After reading yet another article praising Leopard and punishing Vista I am going to offer a rather unique parallel.This post is in response to an article written by PC World.

Leopard Beats Vista for Corporate Satisfaction

People need to understand that Mac’s are much like people of the Jewish faith. Being Jewish, in most cases, means both an ethnic heritage and a religion. One can be Jewish in faith and not in ancestry and vice-versa, however, for the sake of this example we are going to say that being Jewish is both an ethnicity and a religion. If we compare the ethnicity to hardware and the religion to software then we can see how the Mac computer fits into the technological world.

During the onset of the common era the people of Israel saw two types of people, Jews and Gentiles or Jews and everyone else. Gentiles parallel PC computers. No two PC’s are alike.

If we want to properly compare a Windows and an OSX we need to limit the field to only laptops. Both PC laptops and Mac laptops have the most in common and the same set of challenges which makes them the ideal candidates for comparisons. For OSX we have the MacBook Pro and about a billion other PC laptops to choose from. Laptops in PC land vary quite a bit. My work offered me a PC laptop made by IBM or a MacBook Pro. After looking at the specifications and design the MacBook Pro was the obvious choice. My little sister’s place of work gave her an HP laptop which was stellar in design and is quite a bit faster than the MacBook pro. However, I found the MacBook Pro’s layout far better for left-handers than the HP laptop. With laptops we look at the display, keyboard layout, and performance.

I admit that I installed Vista on my MacBook Pro and eventually removed it. Despite what has been said, a Mac does not run Vista very well. People might point out a MacBook Pro will out-peform a PC laptop when running Vista. For that argument please see all the above paragraphs. A huge point was the fact that the MacBook maps the delete key to the backspace and has no specific delete key of its own. For what I do, this makes running Vista very difficult. Since I needed to flop between Vista and OSX I found the mapping of the apple key and the control key to be too confusing so I needed to pick one operating system. Apple still has not been able to have their video cards work well with Vista or XP. Despite it being better with the newer hardware it still sinks my Vista ranking which causes me some headaches. The MacBook’s wireless under Vista is constantly disconnecting, which is a showstopper. Really, any of the above issues would have called for a removal of Vista.

Even when running the same hardware you are still trapped between apples and oranges. Comparing satisfaction between Leopard and Vista as far too many variable to make a viable tests. The examples given by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld in his article were embarassingly poor. With this kind of shoddy technology journalism undergoes the cloak of an independent look to a flat out bias article which serves more as an advertisment for OSX than anything else.

For the most part, I find the critics of Windows Vista much like the Star War fans that hyped up the prequels until they were released, and then did nothing but dump on them until this very day. One of my favorite moments is when a Star Wars fan tells me about how cheesy the acting was, and the how thin the story line was. My current record for not commenting on these rehashed arguments is nine minutes and thirty one seconds. Since the second day of release of Episode One, I have not heard an original critique of the movie. This is how I feel towards Vista critics. When I hear people in IT repeat the same argument against upgrading to Vista that my mom gives me, who usually is repeating what someone else has said too. Sadly, a majority of the people that put down Vista and call it “a blunder in technology” uses a Mac or XP, I have yet to meet someone that has used Vista continuously for a month say anything negative about it. The only really problem - it seems - that people have with Vista is the security warning.

Instead of going on and on about Vista and its features, I am going to take a different approach by attacking the arguments and the people that recycle them. I have been working with Vista since it was Longhorn and Alpha 1. I installed virtually every release of the operating system on Athlon, Intel, Laptop tops, desktops, Pentium D, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Xeron, Core 2 Quad, iMac, and MacBook Pro, with both flavors of video cards and too many different combinations to mention. The bottom line, Vista is a great operating system, and far better than XP. The Mac proponent introduces the argument of having to upgrade the hardware to make it run. I find that particularly funny as I try to install Mac OS X 10.1 on my Intel MacBook Pro or when I tried to put Leopard on a G4. Since that line is directed to Mac users, your PC users that bought into that argument is left scratching their heads. That is ok. Mac users know that if you want to advance your operating system you need to limit your need for backwards compatibility. There is a point in which software developers need to stop supporting outdated hardware. One of the biggest problems with Windows is that it needs to, sometimes by law, support outdated hardware. The DirectX 10 api is stunning. The difference is unbelievable.

To understand this argument better you need to know that Windows 2000 is Windows 5.0 built on New Technology (NT) Windows XP 5.1, Windows XP 64 bit is Windows 5.2x the same as Windows 2003 server SP1. Windows Vista is Windows 6.0, a completely new version of windows from the ground up. Nowhere in Mac history have I seen Mac hardware survive a full version bump. That is not a bad thing by any means. If one wants to advance their operating system by a full version, you should upgrade your computer as a whole. If someone upgraded to XP from Windows 98 se, they should not expect that same computer to run Vista at all.

“Hardware says that it is Vista compatible, but only for Windows Basic.” That is true, some hardware says that. I recommend not buying “quality goods” from the back of someones truck either. Since Microsoft opened its operating system to far more than its competitors your scams increase along the same ration as well.

“The security warning, it asks me all the time.” If you are using this argument you have to ask yourself, why are you getting this warning so many times? When I install Office on my computer I am prompted only once. When I install Garage Band on my Mac I am asked for the password, once. That goes the same for any quality software. The ported over software however I get the question quite a few times. The reason why you see this so many times is by no means the fault of the makers, however if it bugs you that much simply type the following phrase into Google. Turn off security warning Vista.

Finally my favorite argument, “Windows Vista Ultimate is 500 bucks, what!!!” Followed by pointing out that Leopard is only $150. Tiger, OSX (10.4) was $150 too, I am guessing so were 10.3, 10.2, 10.1, and 10.0. I am going to let you do the math while I finish this post by saying this.

People can no more put down Windows than they can OSX while armed with a lack of knowledge. Anyone that has used only Vista for a period greater than a month, please tell me what you think.

Over the past 10 days I have been noting when and why one of my computers had crashed.

Currently the score is OSX 10.5: 6 and Windows Vista: 0. (Unintended Crashes)

Does this prove that Window’s Vista is a far more stable operating system? is this proof of the superiority of a PC over its Mac counterpart? Absolutely not!  The only thing that this statistic proves is that I have been using my MacBook far more than I have my Window’s machine. One of the best ways for me to crash an operating system is trying to use two or more programs that are competing for the same hardware resources. If the software I am using is cousins, like using Adobe Premiere and Adobe Soundbooth at the same time I have no problem. If I am using Premier and Sony’s Soundforge I don’t immediately get a problem, however the more intense the work gets and more I am maxing out my hardware the greater a chance for a crash occurs. On my Window’s machine I have learned not to use certain applications at the same time as other applications. Is this a problem inherentt to Microsoft’s Windows? No, how do you think I am causing my Mac to crash? A crash is more likely. The best way for me to get my Mac to crash is trying to use Garageband at the same time as Adobe’s Soundbooth. I am not trying to pass myself off as a hardware guru, however, it doesn’t take one long to figure out that both applications are competing for the same hardware at the same time. Another great way to crash a Mac is to overburden it. You know you have achieved this step when you hear the fan going and it feels like you can fry an egg on the bottom of the computer. I am well informed on computer hardware, however, by no means a master. I think it is safe to say, having your computer run that hot for an extended period of time is never wise, especially if you are dealing with the restricted space of a laptop. Still unfamiliar with my Mac Book, I do not know the limits of the hardware just yet, however, I do know that a crash while under this kind of stress most likely came from the hardware not the Operating System. Doing so would be as foolish as someone blaming windows for their blue screen, nine times out of ten, it is hardware failure or misconfiguration. This by design will happen more to PC’s with cheap hardware. Remember when you by a $600.00 computer, you get a $600.00 computer.

Finally, the number one reason that my Mac Book has crashed more than my Window’s desktop is the amount of time that I have been using my Mac. I use it more frequently than my Window’s machine.

I strongly believe that Mac and OS X will follow Window’s as it mature, and that is by no means a bad thing, but the nature of the world we live in. Even now with Leopard there are uninstall procedures for more professional software and the days of just dragging it into the trash can are coming to a close. Enviably inviting third party development will expand the Mac software library, but you will also get a bunch of poorly written software that will drain your systems resources, monopolize the hardware, and cause your computer to crash. For my Mac friends not yet familiar with this, talk to your PC friends, they have been dealing with this for years.