It is with great sadness that I post this. James Kim, formerly of TechTV and most currently working at CNet has passed away. For those who didn’t hear the news, he and his family were missing in the northwest wilderness for a little over a week. Rescuers found his wife and two daughters a couple days ago but James had gone out a couple days previous to try and find help.

While I did not personally know James Kim, I still feel like I did from watching him on tv, reading his articles and listening to him on podcasts, and I feel like even know I never actually met him, that I’ve lost a friend.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the Kim family, it’s hard enough losing a loved one, but losing one so young, and during this time of year must be especially difficult.

There is a guest book online if you’d like to give condolences to the family which you can here.

Also, if you’d like to make a donation to the family you can find information on how to do so here.

Well, we arrived at Costa Maya this morning but were unable to dock. The weather was so bad there they actually closed the pier. So all the shore excursions there were cancelled and will be refunded. I was a little bummed since I would have liked to go diving again, but at least I got to go in Cozumel. The other people in our group were more bummed since this was the port they were going to swim with the dolphins. I’m making the most of it tho, got a small nap earlier so I’m feeling refreshed, tho the sunburn I got earlier in the week still stings.

Well, I’m not going to go into details here, though some of my readers I talk to online know what’s going on, but anyway, I’d like to ask that you keep me and my family in your thoughts and prayers in the coming days.. weeks.. months.. not sure how long this will be going on.

Sorry to be so vague but I just don’t feel like sharing the details with the entire world.

Have some rather sad news to report, earlier this week when I went to check on and feed my chinchillas I found Oberon dead in a corner. We’ll still not sure what happened as when I’d checked on him earlier he seemed fine. Worf and Goliath seem fine though thankfully.

Well, put another nail in the casket folks, the <sarcasm>brilliant</sarcasm> powers that be over at G4TechTV have decided to fire some of their best people after making most of them move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Yesterday Alex, Yoshi, Dan and an unknown amount of behind the scenes people who unfortunately I don’t know their names but they helped make the show great.

I have to wonder what was going through the heads of the person(s) who made this decision. Yoshi was cool, the mods he did were awesome and inspiring. Dan was funny and also cool. And Alex, they didn’t even really give him time to find his “place.” I’ll admit when he first started I was apprehensive since I’d gotten used to Patrick, but after a while he really began to grow on me. I’m not sure if any of them will read this, but I just want to tell the people G4 let go yesterday that I know you’ll find a better job with a boss that appreciates you.

As far as I can tell Kevin and Sarah are the only people left on The Screen Savers from the TechTV days and I’ll check them out after the “revamp” which should be after the Thanksgiving break, but I’m not too confident with the way things are going that it’ll be an improvement. You don’t try and fix things that aren’t broken, but unfortuantly executives don’t always see it that way.

I just have to say if they get rid of Kevin and Sarah as well the channel will lose the few people they haven’t already run off from all their boneheaded decisions.

Well, I made it home safely, although I kind of still wish I was back in Lake Tahoe, would have liked to get a chance to do some exploring and photo taking. Got to do some more talking with a friend I made at conference while we waited for the flight from Reno to Chicago, very nice guy, you can find his blog here if you’re interested in reading his thoughts on Gnomedex 4.0.

The first leg of the trip was OK, although I had a difficult time getting comfortable enough to sleep, when I finally did get in a somewhat decent position the plane was descending.

The second leg was a bit more stressful, when we landed in Chicago we were told to go to concourse H, which we did, however our flight was moved to concourse K (which is where we got off) but the people working at where we told to do were in such a bad mood due to some other people they apparently decided they weren’t going to annonce the change and by time we found out we had to pretty much run all the way to the other end of the airport to catch our flight, not fun.

But anyway, I’m home now and the adventure is over, can’t wait for next years conference.