Any and every excuse to sling propaganda. The press reported more about the kid in Germany that killed 12 students and then 2 more people in a shootout with police at a Volkswagon dealer before killing himself. The press said two things that annoy me:

• A teenage gunman who killed himself and 15 people on Wednesday in a rampage that began at his former school had apparently signaled his plans on an Internet chat room hours before embarking on the murderous spree, German officials said Thursday, as a portrait of a troubled and depressed youth began to emerge.

• Mr. Rech said Mr. Kretschmer had been treated for depression but had broken off his therapy. The Stuttgart chief prosecutor, Siegfried Mahler, said Mr. Kretschmer’s personal computer contained pornographic images. The teenager had also spent time playing violent computer games.

Regarding the first quote. He revealed his intentions in an Internet chat room. OOOOOOOh, he talked about it in a chat room. People talk about crazy stuff all the time, even in chat rooms. If you hunted down every single person that acted weird, crazy, suicidal or violent in public or on the Internet, 89% of the world would be arrested. Come on now people, the world is crazy, people are crazy, you’re crazy. There was no way to stop this kid ahead of time and saying that if our civil liberties were violated by the government tracking our Internet usage is pure propaganda. Fuck that. Better parenting will prevent murderous rampages from happening, not invasion of our privacy.

I don’t have much to say about the second paragraph than this. Every single kid out there that is 12 years old with a computer has seen a naked girl on it (porn) and every kid has blown some shit sky high playing Halo. The way the article above is written, it is setting you up for the governments final blow on your civil liberties. I can hear it now: You support the murder of young women, like in Germany, if you don’t vote to make violent video games and pornography illegal.

If you listen to everyone in the news and all the worry warts, the United States is in a recession…hell, the world is in a recession. Down here in Puerto Rico, all the local Inn’s and Hotels are complaining about a slow down in business but most of them are still doing well. I wonder if Rincon Puerto Rico is going to get more of the college spring break crowd with the lack of desire to go to Mexico…for fear of your life.

There have been more murders in Mexico in the past 18 months than in the Iraq war. That’s a lot of death. It makes me think that the drug cartels are really gaining power down there as the government looses power along with the rest of the world because of the recession. Recently, a retired army general hired to put together an elite squad of drug agents was kidnapped from the strip in Cancun and murdered. Analysts say that Cancun is less susceptible to the drug wars because it is a peninsula with only one way in and out allowing for the police and military to intercept any trouble makers. That is the reason they say that it is safe for spring breakers to go to Cancun Mexico, because it would be too hard for drug cartel hit men to get away after they kill someone or fill Senor Frogs up with a spray of bullets from one of their automatic weapons.

Just yesterday, five human heads were found in coolers in the Mexico state of Jalisco. The coolers all had messages etched into the outside with sayings like; “Like these, I’m going to finish you all” and “Here we go idiot”. Man, when did decapitations become so popular?

The US has issued a travel advisory on Mexico but mostly in the border towns like Tijuana. Tijuana has never been safe, but at least you only had to deal with corrupt cops and not kidnapping drug cartels.

My call, let Mexico work out their problems without US tourist money. Don’t be a hero, Mexico isn’t worth loosing your head.

The Rest clan finally made it down to Puerto Rico. We have been down here close to two years and no one has been able to make the visit. My dad, Susan and Skyler finally made it down last week and spent a couple of days with us. It was a lot of fun. Summer and I were both really busy with work but we passed time with them on the front porch over coffee, went snorkeling, drank Ron Cana (Puerto Rican moonshine) and went down to Villa Cofresi for a few of their famous Piratas. A Pirata is a rum cocktail served in a coconut…it’s a must have for every tourist here in Rincon Puerto Rico.

Villa Cofresí Hotel & Restaurant in Rincón Puerto Rico.

I was using Apple’s iWork program (as I always to) to edit a few lines in a .doc file that was sent to me. I guess I just figured that I could save my revisions, re-attach it to an email (web based gmail) and then ship it back off to the recipient. I guess I wasn’t really thinking straight because the guy that was supposed to receive the attachment has a PC and wouldn’t have been able to open a Pages file anyway…but I was very surprised when Google wouldn’t even send the pages file as an attachment!

I guess Google saved me the trouble of apologizing for sending a file that they couldn’t open..but if the recipient also had a Mac, I probably would have been really annoyed. Regardless, I still think it’s strange that Gmail won’t send Pages files as attachments. No warning, it just kept saying “still working”.

Stay tuned for my favorite clips from North Shore the movie.

I am on my cell phone a lot for work, and I am on my cell phone a lot because I am addicted to it. The technology aspect of cell phones these days has me checking my iPhone for emails, FaceBook and Twitter updates constantly. If I am bored, I will be playing Texas Hold ‘Em Poker or shuffling through pictures that I most recently taken. Hmmm…maybe there is something wrong with me. Why can’t I just sit in the hammock and chill out! :-)

The last time I went to San Diego with Summer, I spent a lot of time at Cafe 976 in Pacific Beach. I like their coffee, their food is healthy and very fresh and their Wi-Fi is fast. It’s a great place to people watch and get some work done. I loved this sign they had at the register so much, I took a picture of it with my iPhone so I could preserve it forever. Check it out. Classic.

Summer and I are 16 weeks into becoming a family of three. We had our ultrasound two weeks ago and could make out the babies head and body clearly, but hearing the heartbeat made it all very real. There is something growing inside of Summers stomach!

We are 95% done with the construction of the main level of our Rincon Puerto Rico Home which consists of two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a great room and the kitchen. The guest bedroom upstairs is going to become the nursery but we have sworn not to paint it pink or blue depending on the gender of the baby.

I haven’t gone golfing in at least 4 months. I have been surfing enough that when I am not surfing, I am working on either the house or business. There just hasn’t been time for golf.

I pulled some muscles in my back, so I am sidelined for at least today, but I’m looking forward to getting back in the water….and in a few months when the Caribbean swells die down, I’ll get back on golf course.

Golfing in Aguadilla Puerto Rico

Alternative fuels seem so logical, why haven’t we spent more money pushing this on people? With our oil reserves coming up short and the high oil producing countries treating the united states like their little strawberry, why hasn’t anyone with influence started pushing Bio Fuel yet?

Normal diesel vehicles can run off of hand filtered used fryer oil. Take out the ‘do it your-selfer’ and focus on the fact that these oils are absolutely renewable. Anyway, I am not going to write a term paper on this, do some google searches. I just saw this on cnn: Air New Zealand is starting to power some of their jets with Bio Fuel.

I have to admit, I was skeptical of the WordPress Upgrade Plugin. Upgrading WordPress is a constant because there are always more secure versions being released and because it is an Open Source project, people are always contributing to its development. Upgrading your WordPress blog shouldn’t be difficult because blogging is for EVERYONE on the web, not just programmers right? Wrong.

Upgrading WordPress calls for some webmaster knowledge, it’s not just for anybody. If you don’t agree with me, it’s because you probably already have webmaster knowledge. I know that I couldn’t just call a client and tell them they need to upgrade their blog.

Normally, you need to go to WordPress.org and download the newest version. Then, you need to go to your cPanel and back-up your database. The next step is to open an FTP client that has access to your server. Next, you line up your new WordPress files on your ‘computer’ side of the the FTP and pick and choose which files you need to overwrite on your live WordPress blog (don’t overwrite wp-content or your wp-config files/folders). This is always a little sketchy because there is a possibility of human error (high possibility for me).

The new version of WordPress (2.7) looks great! It has a new admin back end with a different layout (more like a gmail user account) and has many ajax powered extras and probably some more security fixes. Here in lies the problem…I don’t want to mess anything up, but I want to upgrade.

After a few searches and a discussion with Summer, I decided to try the WordPress Upgrade Plugin on one of my testing sites to see how it worked. I couldn’t believe how quick and easy it was. The Plugin backs-up all of your files and your database, goes to WordPress.org and downloads the newest version of WordPress, it disables all of your current Plugins, upgrades the correct files and then reactivates all of your Plugins.

After upgrading the test site, I went and upgraded all of my WordPress blogs using this SUPER EASY to use WordPress Upgrade Plugin. I really can’t say enough good things about it. I hope the guys over at WordPress decide to integrate this into their next build…it will save thousands of people a lot of trouble and headaches.

WordPress Upgrade Plugin UPDATE!

2/27/09: The new versions of WordPress, 2.7 and higher, are coming with an automatic upgrade built into the core. The problem is, it won’t work if you have your Automatic Plugin activated. Therefore, deactivate the plugin that you downloaded and use the new one that came with the core.

This is the error I got when I tried to update with the plugin in activated:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare pclziputilpathreduction() (previously declared in /home/dialecti/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/lib/pclzip.lib.php:5421) in /home/dialecti/public_html/wp-admin/includes/class-pclzip.php on line 5498