Doug MacIvor doesn’t understand — why him?

The terrifying message crossed out the baby’s name and date and wrote in MacIvor’s with a death date of 5/14/12.

Going blind hasn’t stopped Doug from living a good life. “Just because you lose your sight doesn’t mean you can’t do whatever you want,” he said.

Now it seems someone wants that life to end.

“Never had anything like this occur before in my life,” Doug said in an interview in Sacramento, where he works for Caltrans.

Doug got an unnerving call from his neighbor on Tuesday.

“He says, ‘I know Doug because you’re blind you didn’t see it, but we found it out in your front yard.”

It was a morbid message, an actual gravestone with Doug’s full name scrawled in marker complete with his birth date and a death date three days ago.

“Somebody is pretty screwed up that would think that this is a great joke or is some way to send a message,” he said.

Doug, who is active in church, says he has no clue who would want to send him such a chilling threat.

“I have no enemies that I’m aware of, but apparently someone really doesn’t like me,” he said.

Sutter County sheriff’s deputies say they are taking the incident very seriously and still trying to figure out from where the headstone was stolen. The nearby Marysville city and Catholic cemeteries were recently vandalized.

But they may know who it belongs to, a baby who died the day he was born almost 57 years ago to the day. The granite 16 inch-by-24-inch gravestone bears the name Dale Johnson, born and died on May 12, 1955.

“I really hope they find the individual that had the audacity to go and desecrate some little child’s grave,” a neighbor said. “It’s scary especially for some people, especially around here.”

Neighbors are now left on edge, but Doug says the death threat won’t stop him from living his normal life.

“If I were to crawl up in a ball and say I’m not going to do anything, I’d let the lousy SOB win,” he said. “That’s not going to happen with me.”

The looming cuts cited by Bloomberg News and the technology blog All Things D would trim as much as 9 percent of HP’s workforce, based on the 349,600 people employed by the Palo Alto, Calif., company as of last October. A breakdown on HP’s website listed 324,600 employees, but company spokesman Michael Thacker said the information was wrong. He pointed to the October figure listed in HP’s annual report as the most accurate head count.

Bloomberg News says HP is mulling 25,000 job cuts. All Things D, which is affiliated with The Wall Street Journal, estimates the purge will jettison 30,000 jobs. Both reports cited unnamed people familiar with HP’s plans.

Thacker declined to comment on the reports.

The job cuts could be announced next Wednesday, when HP is scheduled to report its quarterly earnings.

Those results are expected to show that HP, the world’s largest maker of PCs and printers, is still struggling to adapt to a technological shift that is enabling more computing tasks to be completed on smartphones and tablet computers such as Apple Inc.’s hot-selling iPad.

The trend has been crimping HP’s sales. Analysts predict HP’s revenue for its current fiscal year ending in October will total $122 billion, down 4 percent from $127 billion last year.

If HP trims its payroll by at least 18,000 workers, the company could save more than $1 billion annually, according to ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall.

If it occurs, the purge would be the most dramatic step taken so far by HP CEO Meg Whitman, who took the job last September after the company abruptly ended the 11-month reign of her predecessor, Leo Apotheker.

Whitman told analysts that she inherited such a messy situation that it may take several years for the company to bounce back. HP is trying to lift its stock price back to where it was nearly two years ago before the company demanded the resignation of another CEO, Mark Hurd, who was widely respected on Wall Street. Hurd stepped down in August 2010 amid questions about his relationship with an HP marketing contractor.

HP’s shares are worth half as much as they were before Hurd’s departure. The stock gained 3 cents Thursday to close at $22.03.

Whitman has said she is also trying to fix some problems that she blames on Hurd. In particular, she says Hurd crippled HP’s ability to innovate by imposing deep reductions in the company’s research and development budget. Whitman has indicated that she would reduce expenses in other areas so she can funnel more money into research and development.

(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.)

The Democratic governor signed a compact in March with the 1,300-member Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, which intends to build on 254 acres in Sonoma County.

The Senate and Assembly voted by wide margins earlier this month to pass a bill ratifying the compact, and Brown signed it into law Thursday. The agreement allows for 3,000 slot machines and card games.

The tribe would pay the state $1.4 million a year for costs related to regulating gambling and assisting problem gamblers. A portion of the winnings also would go to the city and county.

The plan now goes to the U.S. Department of Interior for approval.

(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.)

The 150 riders were clipped in and geared up and taking off for a ride around Northern California to raise money for HIV and AIDs research.

Last year they raised about $250,000 and they’ve raised more than $1 million for Sacramento and Northern California non-profits since starting the fundraising ride in 2005.

“I’m a nurse practitioner for HIV. I’m an HIV specialist, and I never thought we’d still be doing this 20 years later,” said Emily Tsuchida, president of the NorCal AIDS Cycle. “So I have gotta stick it out until the end, until we get a cure. My advice is to go get and HIV test and wear a condom.”

Riders will be stopping in places such as Oroville, Lincoln, Cache Creek, heading into Woodland and eventually ending at the west stops of the Capitol on Sunday.

Riders will be camping and were only allowed to take a 50-pound bag with them.

Each cyclist pledges to raise at least $1,500 but many raise much more than that. “Team Cares” signed up about 50 riders this year and has raised nearly $80,000.