Mar

31

Why it’s a good idea to write it down

Filed Under regular, tout le fromage | 1 Comment

Even veg-heads shouldn’t have to starve to death to get out of a crap hand. Yeah, I’m talking about Terri. I don’t often get too “current event”-sy on my blog, but I’ll be brief here. Terri died and I’m sorry I come from a country that won’t at least have the mercy to euthanise a person. Nope- for some reason it’s more “ethical” to starve and dehydrate a person to death. Just because she couldn’t pick up a damn spoon doesn’t mean she should’ve been let go that way. It’s barbaric and for a civilised nation, appallingly cruel.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Terri needed to die. I don’t like the way it was induced, but one likes to think that the doctors and judges were informed individuals. It was selfish and ridiculous for her family to want to keep their “pet” of a daughter alive. Let go people… it’s not right to prolong a life to such fruitless extremes for your own politically wrapped adorations and cause furthering.
I don’t believe she would’ve ever recovered. She was in the same state for nearly 14 years. She wasn’t exactly having an engaging and typical quality of life. Perhaps it’s not my place to say she should’ve been allowed to live or die, nor is that really why I’m commenting on the the Shiavo fiasco…
Nope- I found it a clear case of why euthanasia should be allowed and also why it’s so damn important to write down your final wishes. Even if you don’t have it notarised, stamped, sealed, witnessed, blessed or carved in stone- write it down. Sign and date it. It may go to court and get fought over, but at least if it’s your handwriting then it can be shown to a court and you’ll be in a marginally better position than to be without it. They may still not allow you to be humanely euthanised, but perhaps you’d get your wishes granted if you wanted to die. If it were me in Terri’s shoes, I’d have wanted to die years ago. (Of course, thanks to brain damage, she might’ve actually been having a great time… but in her previous state, would she have wanted such a life? I doubt it. That would be incredibly selfish and cruel to those around her. We’ll never really know though…)

I saw a comment on the family’s site by a woman who was in a coma for 70 days saying that Terri should’ve been allowed to live… that there could be hope. Perhaps. But hey lady- you were under for a mere 70 days. Terri was in a pseudo-veg state for 13+ years. The likelihood of recovery at that point is very slim to none. She should’ve been able to die with dignity, not forced to starve to death. A lethal injection or a gassing would’ve been entirely more humane, but the hardcore US Christian right-wingers would’ve stolen her listless body out of the hospice to prevent it. I can see the “Where’s Terri?” headlines now…

What a crappy way to go, but I’m glad she’s gone. She has peace now. The circus around her bed is over. Now, watch the sparks fly in court between the opposing sides… Jesus people- let her go and get on with your lives. Isn’t that what most of us would wish for our friends and families anyway?

smooches to Terri and here’s hoping patient’s rights see reform~
jEN

What I’m listening to right now:
Die, Die My Darling from the album “Misfits” by Misfits
(I know that was crass… but then, I can’t be totally serious for the whole post…)

Mar

30

Food page is up

Filed Under expat, tout le fromage | 4 Comments

Hello kitties!
The “Weird Stuff I’ve Eaten (as an expat)” page is up and ready for your immediate consumption.
Find it in the little “Pages” menu on the right… –>
Bon appetit!

smooches~
jEN

Mar

28

Indiana Jen & the Salisbury Stones…

Filed Under photos, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

Well it sounds interesting anyway… (and I am a Hoosier by birth.)

What does it really mean, you might ask. Well, I was enthusiastically shown around some southern English countryside over Easter weekend, stopping at a Hillfort and Medieval ruins. It was fabulous. I’ve got some photos that will be up on my dotmac page later today, but here’s a snippet of what I saw in my adventure:
1Ststop DaneburyhillfortDanebury Hillfort2Ndstop Salisbury

Salisbury EntranceSalisbury 3-4Salisbury 4

Old Sarum is the name of the Salisbury castle ruins in the last four shots and the first two are of Iron Age Hillfort, Danebury Ring. Both were loaded with Easter weekend tourists but I had a great time at both sites. Thanks to Neil and his family for taking me under wing and spending time and petrol touring this little American girl around. :)
smooches~
jEN

Mar

28

Nav bar in IE is poo… surprise surprise

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

I’m dinking with a general navigation bar in my header and noticed that on a PC in Internet Explorer, it looks like poo. (Like I should be surprised…)
I’ll work on a fix over the course of the day. I still get about 50% of my views from IE, so I’ll make it pretty for you.
(It’s always good practise to be able to troubleshoot these things on both major platforms anyway. It only bolsters my geek cred. :) )

Got a post about my adventures from yesterday in the works, with photos, so stay tuned. I plan on getting my “Weird Stuff I’ve Eaten” post worked on too… It’s a Bank Holiday here in the UK, so I’ll use my time to play geek for myself.

UPDATE:
Wanna know if your PC based website looks nice on Mac based platforms? Trust me, if you don’t know, it’ll probably surprise you. Internet Explorer is not fully compliant with W3C standards, meaning, the code you write for your site will likely not render properly on any other browser, (PC or Mac), other than IE. To at least check your code on a Mac, try this free tool I just found: iCapture
It requires a free registration, but for true web standards compliance and working code, isn’t it worth your time or at the very least, your curiosity satisfaction? I’m going to try it from the PC we use for development purposes… should be interesting. Enjoy!
Icapture
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Works great! I ended up downloading a png of my site from the Windows side of life… I know I’ve got Safari and a Mac already, but again, this may come in handy for PC based dev people. (I love you too.)

smooches~
jEN

Mar

26

Brakes & Clutches & Gears - Oh my!

Filed Under expat, tout le fromage | 4 Comments

So I used to live in the typical insular American world of learning to drive when you’re 15, getting license through a high school driver’s education program, and proceeding to drive though life with a car performing the duties of another blood-fed limb on the body. I had driven all but two weeks of my life since obtaining that treasured wallet card. It proved I was of legal age and skill level to drive a vehicle, as well as proving my height and weight would go unquestioned by all who saw it during 50 lbs of fluctuation, (about 3.5 stone) for years and years. :D

I had a license, a car at my disposal, and the lust for driving in my veins.
I had but one obstacle to haunt me later in life… I was never taught to drive a manual transmission.

Now, in America, that’s not a big deal. Most of the cars I’d been exposed to were automatic transmissions. Rather than taking me under her wing and instructing me on the ballroom artistry required to manoeuvre three pedals with two clumsy feet, my mother sold her sporty manual transmission car before I got beyond my learner’s permit at age 15. Oh well. I could just have automatics forever and not worry about it, right?

Leap forward to 2004. I moved to England last November. Nearly every car I’ve encountered here is a manual. I have gone almost 20 years with driving nothing but automatics. I drive automatics really well. I’m an efficient and skilled driver. (no matter what my mother says… :) ) Now I find that my comfortable and nourished additional “limb”- a car- has been amputated and I’m offered only overly complex and seemingly inefficient alternatives- none of which I have the skill set required to operate. I feel like someone has asked me to install a Satellite dish for them but instead of a ladder, they’ve given me a crane…

Today I had my first lesson in the symphonic art of manual transmission manipulation. I learned when a clutch “bites” and where revs turn to forward propulsion. I stalled, killed and irritated that clutch. It let out a smell by the end of the lesson. But, to my surprise, I did manage to get a few good laps around a small industrial estate and a level of confidence crept up to meet me from cellar it had been locked up in. There was one rather unexpected emotional bit when I first started and killed the car: I’d forgotten the fear and helpless panic I felt when I had my motorcycle accident last year. It was my deer-in-the-headlights realisation that I was responsible for making a potentially harmful/deadly machine move and stop under my control that brought back a flood of buried emotions that I was not prepared for. I wept briefly, remembering what it was like to freeze, panic and ultimately jump off of a motorcycle going around 25 miles per hour- landing me bleeding into a hospital emergency room doped up on morphine. I dried the few tears from my eyes and drove the fucking car. I made a substantial confidence shift from fear to just being new at something within a quarter hour or so. I will drive a manual transmission. I will.

If I don’t… (you may be wondering why I don’t just get an automatic here)… then the UK will not license me to drive anything but an automatic. If there’s one thing I hate more than being new at something, it’s being restricted.

Vroom, vroom… next week, I drive some more. :)
smooches~
jEN

Mar

26

A Really Well Written & Interesting Review:

Filed Under creative stuff, tout le fromage | 4 Comments

Y’all know how obsessed I am with Queens of the Stone Age. Well, just because I love them doesn’t mean that you do… however, there is a really stand out review of the latest record that has a written style I’ve not previously encountered in the commonplace mill-churnings of self-appreciating record aficionados out there…

This is actually a well written example of how a record review doesn’t have to be typical, predictable or commonly constructed. It tells me everything I want to know about the product without either alienating me with PR/A&R jargon or pissing me off over the lack of attention given to the subject.

This is just fun writing… and it happens to be about my favourite band. Read it for it’s content and style, not it’s subject and enjoy.
Here it is.

smooches~
jEN

Mar

23

Sitemeter referrals are weird sometimes…

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

Ok, so I’ve just finished a majorly geeky static page regarding resetting your Mac’s NVRAM. You can find it in the sidebar to your right… —> (edit: link is on the left now…)
I wrote it due to popular search engine referrals relating to that topic, within my blog stats tracked by my freebie Sitemeter. I can see where and what people are searching for when my blog turns up as a hit. It’s sometimes obvious that folks are looking for Googled images of me, (No need folks! Go to my dotmac or flickr for tonnes of pics or see my FAQ page for a link to some other photos), or for geeky keywords that have appeared in some of my posts, or sometimes weird shit completely unrelated to me… Like this one, for which I proudly take the MSN top spot for: “population in japan like tea”
Msnsearch
That’s just strange, but worse than that… I’m oddly honoured to be number one in such a surreal search!

I get referrals from other less savoury search terms too. Examples include:

-one hour orgasm
-list of regular and irregular shape
-deja vu showgirls
-nvram reset
-girls taking shit online
-how a person can pick the perfect tattoo for them
-MouthMeat
-female pants wetting
-photos of grandmas with big tits
-What happen to Aaron Darks?
-whatchamacalit dresses
-advantages prepress technician

Now, I can’t be bothered to look all of these referring URLs up just to see how they somehow found me, (though the curiosity is burning me up for a few of them), but if it’s as scattered as the japanese tea search above, then I need not worry that I may have accidentally posted about MouthMeat or busty grannies.

I see what you pervs are up to when you find my blog… heh heh. Oh, incidentally, the geeky searches are usually done on Google whilst the naughty ones are typically from MSN. Hmmm… I think that’s a social statement in some way.

smooches~
jEN

Mar

23

Unknown Hiccup… Comments Down… Now Up… Really

Filed Under me so g33ky, regular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

Hi there!

I thought everything went smoothly with the WordPress 1.5 upgrade, however, I seem to have a broken Comments page…

My team of salivating code monkeys is working dutifully without food or water to correct this issue and will be forced to listen to Geri Halliwell cds until they reach a perfect fix.

Update: A Fix is Achieved!
The monkeys… (erm, ok, it’s just me and Neil, and no, ears were not harmed with Geri Halliwell in the creation of this fix), have found it to be a plugin file missing it’s Javascript mate that caused the disruption in comments posting…

Resume Comment posting my dears. Please… Are you there? Helllooooo?

smooches~
jEN

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