Brad Barrish

The first internship I had was with the ACLU. Of course dad had everything to do with that, as he was Director for Western Kansas and Eastern Missouri. Dad was always very involved in politics, as a citizen of the United States. He might have complained about the state of things from time to time, but most of all if there was something he didn’t like, he took action. We all came together as a family to call constituents during elections, urging people to go to the polls. He was always fighting for what he believed in and it was a value that I embraced. Whether it was planning my high school’s Earth Day celebration, writing letters to the editor of the Overland Park Sun and Kansas City Star or ultimately making the decision to start praciticing Buddhism, I’ve tried to remain active in the community and fight like dad did for things he believed in.

Dad was my hero and has always been a tremendous force in my life, long before he got sick. Since he passed, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ways in which I can honor him. One of the ideas that I came up with the other day was to start a blog dedicated to taking action. The site is called Action for Everyone. Its purpose is to motivate people to take action and get involved. It will show people that doing simple things, often taking less than a few minutes, can make a difference. No matter what your beliefs are, Action for Everyone will encourage people to get involved.

I want your help. If there’s an issue that you feel strongly about, be it consumer oriented, poltical, social or whatever, I want to hear about it. Tell me what you’re doing to support the issues, people and beliefs you hold. Perhaps you can contribute if you’ve been looking for an opportunity to take action. Get involved. Take Action.

The site launched very quietly yesterday and is in beta now (hey, what isn’t). My goal is to write an entry each day and over the coming weeks start getting other people involved. We’ll have guest editorials, contests and cool features on people that are taking action all over the world. Feel free to email me with your thoughts and ideas.

The first internship I had was with the ACLU. Of course dad had everything to do with that, as he was Director for Western Kansas and Eastern Missouri. Dad was always very involved in politics, as a citizen of the United States. He might have complained about the state of things from time to time, but most of all if there was something he didn’t like, he took action. We all came together as a family to call constituents during elections, urging people to go to the polls. He was always fighting for what he believed in and it was a value that I embraced. Whether it was planning my high school’s Earth Day celebration, writing letters to the editor of the Overland Park Sun and Kansas City Star or ultimately making the decision to start praciticing Buddhism, I’ve tried to remain active in the community and fight like dad did for things he believed in.

Dad was my hero and has always been a tremendous force in my life, long before he got sick. Since he passed, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ways in which I can honor him. One of the ideas that I came up with the other day was to start a blog dedicated to taking action. The site is called Action for Everyone. Its purpose is to motivate people to take action and get involved. It will show people that doing simple things, often taking less than a few minutes, can make a difference. No matter what your beliefs are, Action for Everyone will encourage people to get involved.

If you’re reading this, chances are we’re friends. I want your help. If there’s an issue that you feel strongly about, be it consumer oriented, poltical, social or whatever, I want to hear about it. Tell me what you’re doing to support the issues, people and beliefs you hold. Perhaps you can contribute if you’ve been looking for an opportunity to take action. Get involved. Take Action.

The site launched very quietly yesterday. My goal is to write an entry each day and over the coming weeks start getting other people involved. We’ll have guest editorials, contests and cool features on people that are taking action all over the world. Feel free to email me with your thoughts and ideas.

You can find something more complicated on MacFixIt, but I almost never have system problems with my Macs. I’ve owned them for years, fixed other people’s for years and rarely have problems due to system updates. Before you run another update on your machine, go download AppleJack and install it.

1. Before you run that update, run Disk Utility and repair permissions on your internal drive.
2. Run the update (NOTE: If it's an OS update, i.e. 10.4.x then run the Combo installer, which you can grab from VersionTracker, MacUpdate or directly from Apple)
3. Wait for your computer to restart and don't touch anything until you see your desktop come up.
4. Now, restart your machine again and after the screen goes blank, hold one finger on the apple key and another on the S key. You'll see a bunch of stuff on your screen that will make you think you've done something wrong. Don't worry.
5. Type 'applejack auto restart' and don't touch your machine until yur machine restarts and you see your desktop again.

If you follow these 5 simple steps, you're much less likely to experience issues following system updates. I do this after any system update, no matter how minor.

I was having a conversation with someone today. They also lost a parent to pancreatic cancer. We check in with each other every once in a while. I was telling this friend about how I couldn’t get some images out of my head. I have this image of his body being taken away. He…it… had been laying on the bed we set up for hours. We were getting all of his leftover meds together for hospice. We were all picking things up around him, getting rid of trash and he was just laying still, lifeless. His mouth was hanging open and it literally looked like someone had sucked the life out of him.

We were there when he passed, which was good. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. They came and got his body and I watched from across the room as they moved his body off the bed and on to a gurney. His frail legs knocked together and I could see that rigor mortis had set in. His legs didn’t bend. They were so stiff.

All that was left was the bed and soon that was gone too. We put the table back in the room, where it was before the bed was placed there. And then it was as though nothing had happened. The room looked like it did before the cancer came, but it was so quiet and empty. He was already missing. It happened so fast.

I was having a conversation with someone today. They also lost a parent to pancreatic cancer. We check in with each other every once in a while. I was telling this friend about how I couldn’t get some images out of my head. I have this image of his body being taken away. He…it… had been laying on the bed we set up for hours. We were getting all of his leftover meds together for hospice. We were all picking things up around him, getting rid of trash and he was just laying still, lifeless. His mouth was hanging open and it literally looked like someone had sucked the life out of him.

We were there when he passed, which was good. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. They came and got his body and I watched from across the room as they moved his body off the bed and on to a gurney. His frail legs knocked together and I could see that rigor mortis had set in. His legs didn’t bend. They were so stiff.

All that was left was the bed and soon that was gone too. We put the table back in the room, where it was before the bed was placed there. And then it was as though nothing had happened. The room looked like it did before the cancer came, but it was so quiet and empty. He was already missing. It happened so fast.

I have to turn the comments off. The amount of comments spam that I’m having to deal with is unbelievable. If you want to get in touch with me, please email me directly at brad [at] bradbarrish [dot] com.

I’ve come home to find Apocalypse now on TV a few times in the last week. It’s one of my favorite films. It was also one of dad’s favorites. He liked Platoon a lot as well. For a guy who liked such violent and disturbing films, he was peaceful. I was just thinking about how it didn’t make much sense to me. When I see films we’ve watched together, I have memories. They may be faint, but they’re there. I didn’t do that much when he was alive. I notice things I do that are like him as well. They way I chew reminds me of him. I think as humans we make connections where there are none, so sometimes when I’m thinking about a connection we had, I dismiss it. I’m reaching for connections because I want him to be alive. And I’m not saying we didn’t have a connection. We did. One that runs very deep. Part of the process of letting go means that I’m just going to be sad. I’m going to wish he was alive again and he’s never going to be. I’ll never see him again. Mom won’t change the outgoing message on the voicemail. It’s dad’s voice. And it’s really weird to hear him speak like that, because I don’t leave messages for him anymore.

I’ve come home to find Apocalypse now on TV a few times in the last week. It’s one of my favorite films. It was also one of dad’s favorites. He liked Platoon a lot as well. For a guy who liked such violent and disturbing films, he was peaceful. I was just thinking about how it didn’t make much sense to me. When I see films we’ve watched together, I have memories. They may be faint, but they’re there. I didn’t do that much when he was alive. I notice things I do that are like him as well. They way I chew reminds me of him. I think as humans we make connections where there are none, so sometimes when I’m thinking about a connection we had, I dismiss it. I’m reaching for connections because I want him to be alive. And I’m not saying we didn’t have a connection. We did. One that runs very deep. Part of the process of letting go means that I’m just going to be sad. I’m going to wish he was alive again and he’s never going to be. I’ll never see him again. Mom won’t change the outgoing message on the voicemail. It’s dad’s voice. And it’s really weird to hear him speak like that, because I don’t leave messages for him anymore.

WIRED has an interview with Scott MacGregor, Thunderbird’s lead engineer, about webmail vs desktop email. It got me thinking, but I really believe I’ve finally found the best solution for me. Historically, I switch email clients and MX records a lot. I’m always trying out what I think is the ultimate solution and as soon as I discover a show stopper, I switch again. Back in February I moved whatevernevermind.com over to Google Apps and then upgraded to the Premier Edition. I tend to keep a lot of email and I didn’t want to have to worry about running out of space. I’ve been really happy with Gmail and don’t plan on switching back to a desktop application. As much as I love Apple Mail, Gmail’s functionality makes things a lot easier for me and I’m more productive. The only problem I have with Gmail is that my email isn’t available to me when I’m offline. It doesn’t happen often enough for me to switch back to a desktop solution. I use my Fastmail account as a backup, should something happen to my Gmail. I think I’ve finally found the perfect email solution for me. And the best part is that I can use Outlook 2007 under Vista for my work email. It works so much better than Outlook 2003 under XP.

We made some more announcements today about the US and UK shows. Check out liveearth.org for all of the details. Things are really heating up at the office. We have a lot of Live Earth people wandering around with new ones coming in all the time. The phones are ringing off the hook with people that want to be involved. I’ve even received a few emails from friends of friends. It’s gong to be a really massive and amazing event. Stay tuned.