i think i got it.
while the forum here was downgrading, i read about 20 articles and found out how to search for the large files and folders using that my problem was the console log. apparently i was having a problem with a tiff file loading in firefox and it get posting errors to the log...
Could it be a var/spool problem?
I have a powerbook g4, 60 GB. OSX 10.3.9
I have about 15GB in music and usually had about 30GB of free space on the HD when i looked in finder. (I dont remember when the last time i looked, but it was within a few months).
New applications that I am using are...