Felyne: just a glitch in your matrix

I've moved over...

To Wordpress.   This is the old stuff, and all the pictures have sadly disappeared.  I managed to get an enormous directory file on my harddrive with them but to have them connected with the words here is somehow beyond me.   

Anyway - if you want the more updated version of the life and times of me,  please kindly redirect yourself to:

 

www.felyne.com  

 

There are cookies (but no milk, what are you, Santa?). 

Let's do a deal

So last Friday a good friend of mine sent me an IM to say they weren't sure how they felt about the Amanda Knox verdict and included a link to a news article.  

This was the first I'd ever heard about anyone named Amanda Knox, and from the article it sounded like a guilty person had been found so in an Italian court of law.  A bit of teenage teenagerness gone horribly wrong.  Still, my good friend is very sane and rational (for the most part) so I was curious as to why they would be so unsure about something which was written so clear cut.

So I did what I do.

And now I'm just even more aggravated with the modern day media than I was before.  Has journalism really died?  Personally I gave up watching news years ago because of the blatant subjectivity, but a small part of me still hoped there was at least a basis of truth left.  So much for that.

So anyway, it become very clear very quickly that the only reporting on the Amanda Knox case is purely subjective.   Even those who claim to be objective are confused with the concept - let me clear that up:  removing the important facts that make your subjective article appear objective is not actually being objective, it only looks that way.

I keep digressing, sorry.

So there are two distinct sides to the Amanda Knox case:   The For and The Against.   The For will subjectively tell you that there is not a shred of evidence to tie her to the crime scene.   The Against will tell you the evidence is overwhelming.   Both post very convincing arguments because they only tell you the information that supports their argument.  Let me give you an example:

The For will argue that there is no evidence to tie her to the crime scene, without telling you the police interrupted her cleaning her apartment with bleach the morning after the murder.   That's a pretty key point to conveniently leave out.

The Against will argue that she and her boyfriend were high on drugs the night of the murder, without telling you the drug she had smoked was marijuana.   I be specific on that point because reports of a person being violent under the influence of it are all but non-existant.  

The For will argue that there was absolutely no DNA from Amanda Knox found at the crime scene, without telling you the crime scene was the victim's room in an apartment that she shared with five other girls.  It seems particularly odd to me that none of her DNA was found in the room.  Having lived with roommates in the past it is incredibly hard not to get your DNA everywhere.

The Against will argue that Amanda Knox's DNA was found on a knife handle, with the victim's DNA found on the tip, without telling you that knife blade is not consistent with the reported wounds and the victim's DNA sample is marginal.

The list is extensive.

I'm not claiming the above are facts, it is only the information I've gathered from various reports on the net.  The facts, from initial searching, elude me.

So now that we've ascertained that the reporting on the case is terribly subjective, the second and more important point to note is that regardless of any evidence (or lack thereof) this has all happened in Italy and their law applies.  If they do not require evidence, they do not require evidence.   If they wish to hold a person for two years without trial, they will hold a person for two years without trial.  It is naive to expect the laws of her home country to apply... but on that note, that brings me to my post title..

LET'S DO A DEAL.

There is a man, Roman Polanski, and his home country laws are a little different to the laws of a country he committed a crime in, and that country wants him back so they can sentence him accordingly, but his home country doesn't want to give him up.

There is a girl, Amanda Knox, and her home country laws are a little different to the laws of a country she committed a crime in, and that country has sentenced her accordingly, and her home country wants her back.

Both home countries argue that crime was not committed.  Both offended countries argue it was.  And it just so happens that his home country and her offended country, and his offended country and her home country are almost the same, so I propose that the two home countries do a swap.  Him for Her.

Deal?  Can we shake hands now and call it square?

A day in the life of Felyne and Taubin

This is what we're like, and although Taubin's isn't quite that furry and keeps his whiskers a little shorter, he's still my sweet little white fluffy little ball.

Hat tip to Wildrun!

Hark! A Blog!

Look!   There goes another one!    

Now the more curious of you will have clicked that link and fallen right into my trap.... mwahaha.   Alright, not so much a trap as "my new blog that I'm test driving".   See, that doesn't have the same exciting connotation as Trap at all.  

So, after five years of being here on Typepad, I'm considering upping my stakes and moving on over to Wordpress.  "Why?" *gasp* I hear you exclaim in shock and awe, well let me tell you (yeah, like I wasn't going to give you an essay about this)...

Well you see.    The reason why I'm here on the NotFree version is because I wanted the ability to customise the look of the blog however I saw fit, and Wordpress doesn't have that same ability, as much as their "1400 different designs to choose from' would lead you to believe.  No, it appears that this extremely simple yet surprising elusive design is a particular level of cool that manages to evade those 1400 designer's grasp.    See, I'm a type of cool that you just can't learn from a text book (it takes years of mental instability).   

Typepad has been extremely good to me during my quaint little blog's life.   It's been there, through the hard times and the fun times, through the flying fur and the contented purring (referring to Oliver and Booti and in that order).   But I'm not the blogger I once was (appropriate blame should be passed to Taubin for that), and I can't now justify the hosting fee for something I just don't get the same amount of pleasure out of, and the customised design no longer hold that value for me.    Also, they're constantly changing their layout and format and well, as much as I like change, I don't and it's annoying me.   And it doesn't play nice with the iphone so I can't 'blog on the go' like all the cool kids are doing.

So it's over to Freebie Wordpress for me.  Please don't hate on the rubber stamped design too much, it's beyond my control.  I did the best with what I had.  And you'll hurt it's feelings.

And, that's the story.  Shall I read you another?

Is $500 too much to pay for straight hair?

My hair, or more specifically the curls in my hair, are annoying me.

Today I found out about the Brazilian treatment, which involves putting formaldehyde in your hair to straighten it, and the Japanese Straighting which is putting some other, probably equally as nasty, chemical in your hair.   Supposedly it's permanent, well, for the life of that part of the hair anyway.

So it takes a bloody long time, like 4 hours or something, and costs a phenomenal amount of cash.  But, if I don't have to pay any attention to my hair for 6 to 8 months, that's pretty appealing.

Out Damn Curls!   Out I say!    How did Lady MacBeth solve her problems?

Paragraphist

Ah, I see Mr iPhone and Typepad still haven't worked out their whole 'paragraph' issue. Is it really that hard to put a paragraph break in? Really?

Portableness

So Taubin says to me "Felyne, you're an idiot, you can blog from you iPhone using the Typepad iPhone app". Apparently they have one. So he sent me the link to it and, well, here we all are. I guess it's kinda cute, but iPhones spell check bugs me. Greatly. Can I turn that off? Apparently I can't turn off the repeat message notification beep, so every txt message I get it beeps at me repetitively until I check it. Now that's just obnoxious.

The Presidential Debate

And by "Presidential" I mean Weather.

Thank you for tuning in tonight to listen to this important presidential debate.   On my left is California (typical) represented by the very bright and cheerful San Diego, and to my right is Michigan, who have chosen their capital city of Lansing as their representative.   Tonight, these two great states will be debating the very socially aware topic of weather.   So without further ado, let us begin.

The first important item for discussion is that of temperature.   Lansing, across the year, what is your average temperature?

Lansing:  48 F

Thank you Lansing, and you San Diego?

San Diego:  64 F

Well that's relatively close, only 16 degrees of separation.   Not as good as Kevin Bacon, but still relative.   Sticking with temperatures, let's talk Highs and Lows.   Lansing, what is your balanced High and what do you see as your average low?

Lansing:  High is 57, Low is 37

A nice even 20 points between the two figures there Lansing, very nicely presented.   I now turn this to San Diego.

San Diego:  71 and 57

A much closer gap of only 14 declared by San Diego.  Interesting point they make as well that their low is Lansing's high.   We'll see how that's reflected in the polls.

Moving on to our next topic, this is one that sees both sides with very contrasting views.   It is without a doubt the biggest differentiator between these two and will arguably be the deciding factor for voters.  It is of course Downfall.  Lansing, in the twelve calendar months of the year tell us what your precipitation is, on average of course.

Lansing:  30.8 inches

I see, and you San Diego?

San Diego:  9.9

How about snow;  Lansing?

Lansing:  48.9 inches

That's quite a number.   San Diego?

San Diego:  I don't understand the question.

Okay, interesting tact there from San Diego, choosing to deny any knowledge of snow.  We will see how that affects their snowboarding contingency.   Well we're running out of time so a few quick fire questions before we wrap up:   

Average of Clear Days:

Lansing:  71

San Diego:  147

Average of Cloudy Days:

Lansing:  190

San Diego:  102

Average of Rainy Days:

Lansing:  140

San Diego:  42

Average Days Above 90F:

Lansing:  10

San Diego:  4

Average Days Above 65F:

Lansing:  157

San Diego:  201

Average Days Below 32F:

Lansing:  149

San Diego:  I'm sorry, did you say "below"?

Average Days Below 5F:

Lansing:  20

San Diego:  Oh that's just inhumane.  Isn't there a law to protect against that?

Thinking of moving to Flickr

One of the ideas I'm thinking of, seeing as all but one last inane drop of enthusiasm to blog has left me, is to move to flickr and have a photo blog.

I bet you didn't even know I had Agent Double One Nine.  She even has her own album over there now (now you're wondering what you're missing out on, aren't you?  Huh? huh?  Yeah, I know it.

Flickr and the iphone seem to get along quite and play well together.   Sadly I can't say the same for typepad and Mr iPhone, those two have never seen eye to eye, especially with that whole "allowing paragraphs breaks" situation.   I just can't accept not having paragraphs, blame my strict secretarial training (and whatever you do, don't give me a big red marker and ask me to check your email).

So if you're wondering where I've been and what I've been up to .... who the hell am I trying to fool, okay I'm on vacation over at Flickr.   And I hate that I'm giving them advertising airtime on my blog.

Mac Users have so much money they don't care about their finances

That is the only logical conclusion I find myself at.

After several weeks of grueling internet searches and downloaded trials, that is my now-expert answer to the often-asked-but-never-answered question of accounting software for a Mac.   There is a smorgasbord to choose from, but disappointingly they are all little pretty show ponies with colourful graphs and cool little icons and that's about it. 

The one I've decided to give the biggest shot to is called quite simply Money, and is made by the company Jumsoft.  Their support has been outstanding and they seem open to suggestion.  The few things I don't like I've found a workaround for, but it still needs a widget.

The other conclusion that I came to is that Quicken for Mac is the angriest of all software applications ever created by the coding fingers of man.   I'm not sure why it's such an angry little application, but for the entire month trial the only way I could coerce it into accepting my transactions and not crashing after three entries was to not look directly at it while I was doing so.   I found if I sat side on to the laptop and pretended to read a book, using a mirror and a pencil to enter the details on the keyboard, it didn't realise I was using it. 

Unfortunately it finally realised it had been tricked all this while.  On the 27th of July, with almost a month of transactions across eight accounts entered and a mere four days until the end of the month, it discovered my cunning plan and in a show of absolutely defiance and finality, reared it's angry head and with a storming flame of burning hatred error message, proclaimed 'CANNOT LOAD FILE'.  

There was no reasoning with it.   There was no possibility of negotiation or compromise.   The tribe had spoken, and my transaction file was banished from the island.

My my, it's been a long time

I blame Taubin, so if you're most unhappy with the apparent lack of blogging, I say gather up your pitchforks and let's have a good old fashioned angry village mobbing!

So I went to visit Taubin up there in Michigan for a weekend, which was filled with much fun and merriment and joy.   And we went to an airshow, which compounded the fun, joy and merriment.  Did you know Taubin had never been to an airshow before in his life?   Incredible.   I've been around aircraft since the day I was born (not that my recollection of that is as vivid as it used to be) so for him to have never seen an airshow was quite hard for me to fathom.  

So I stole his Airshow Virginity (although I still maintain he gave it willingly) and Pierre was a very excited  tour guide for Taubin the whole day, dancing around like the little spaz he is, dragging poor Taubin from exhibit to exhibit like some sugar junked up eight year old.   Then we got to the piece de la resistance of the show, and poor little Pierre almost lost his mind, not only was it a Lancaster bomber, but it was a Canadian Lancaster bomber.

As soon as we were near it Pierre was all "TAKE MY PICTURE, TAKE MY PICTURE, LIFT ME UP, PUT ME ON THE TAIL, TAKE MY PICTURE, TAKE MY PICTURE!!"   Dear god, it was painful.   But, the little guy had a point.

The Avro Lancaster was a seven crew bomber, probably the most successful night bomber used by the allies in World War II:

"Lancasters flew 156,000 sorties and dropped 608,612 tons of bombs between 1942 and 1945." 

But it was not without cost:

"Just 35 Lancasters completed more than 100 successful operations each, and 3,249 were lost in action."

Today there are only two Lancasters which are still flying, there are only 17 which are in restored/mostly whole state.   Lucky for Pierre, this one was one of the two that are still flying.   And we got to see her fly.   She was incredible.  I'm not sure it's something I will ever have the pleasure of seeing again.  Of course the Blue Angels were there, an F4 Phantom did a display, an F16 and a P51 did a legacy flight - of which their grande finale was a roll split - now that was something else.  There were harvards, hueys and hercs, you know, the usual.  I did see some Bird Dogs flying, and they were pretty cool.    A B2 stealth bomber did a fly over, as did a B52.  

But that Lancaster.   She was a beauty.

Bright Eyes

Is it a kind of dream,
Floating out on the tide,
Following the river of death downstream?
Oh, is it a dream?

There's a fog along the horizon,
A strange glow in the sky,
And nobody seems to know where you go,
And what does it mean?
Oh, is it a dream?

Bright eyes,
Burning like fire.
Bright eyes,
How can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Bright eyes.

Is it a kind of shadow,
Reaching into the night,
Wandering over the hills unseen,
Or is it a dream?

There's a high wind in the trees,
A cold sound in the air,
And nobody ever knows when you go,
And where do you start,
Oh, oh, into the dark.

Bright eyes,
burning like fire.
Bright eyes,
how can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
bright eyes.

Bright eyes,
burning like fire.
Bright eyes,
how can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Bright eyes.

Lyrics by Mike Batt

Posted by Me, for Taubin

My 401K is a bucket of Feijoas

(and for the nonAmerican readers, a 401K is a retirement plan - I'm not exactly sure why, maybe $401,000 is the magic number you need to have before you can click through the turnstyle of the magical roundabout that is retirement).

Remember the Three US Dollars Each Feijoa Incident?   Well the last trip back to New Zealand was during feijoa season (yes, it has it's own season) and there were more feijoas than you could shake a stick at (and not just any small twig either, I'm talking a decent spur-away-a-bear size stick).    Don't believe me?  I knew you wouldn't, so I prepared some supporting photographic evidence.  May it please the court, I present.... Exhibit A: 

An orchestrated feast of tender green tastiness.   And much like the Tui bird, I gorged myself on feijoa until I couldn't physically walk, my mind bouncing off the walls of my skull in a vain effort to escape, not so much enjoying as enduring the fruit sugar rush.

So anyway, after the sugar rush died down and the feijoas were digested to a point where I could walk again, it struck me that I was staring down the barrel of a lot of Three US Dollars.  Or, down the barrels of a lot of three dollars.   Whichever makes the most sense in your mind.   At any rate it's irrelevant as to whether it's one barrel or a lot of barrels, that's not the point.   No my point is, somehow, I need to get those feijoas from there to here at no expense so I have a zero cost and 100% profit, so I can retire when I hit 401 Thousand (hopefully that's not an age level).

So my question to you is, would you like to buy some organically grown 100% natural feijoas?  They're only $3.25* each (come on, a girl's gotta count inflation, what, you want me to go backwards???).

Felyne's Feijoa Farm.  100% Grown.

*Feijoas will be mailed in a standard envelope from New Zealand at some point in the future which has not as yet been determined.  Please add $4.95 per feijoa for postage.

Visiting the Mouse

Little Pierre has been badgering me for quite a while about Disneyland.   "We're only an hour's drive away, why haven't we been yet" and "I want to go to Disneyland, take me to Disneyland" and "everyone else gets to go to Disneyland but me, why don't you love me enough to take me to Disneyland" and then it turned to threats;  "Take me to Disneyland or I'm going to mix your coloured laundry in with your whites and turn your shirts pink".     Knowing my extreme dislike for pink (the colour, not the singer) I succumbed and last weekend we went.

Remember this gal?  Well ExMarineBadassCopGuy isn't out handcuffing the masses at the moment, so she and he tagged along.   Actually they were our bodyguard protection;  Pierre is quite the little celebrity (in his own mind) so he talked them into being our armoured escort for the weekend.  We got to stay at March Airforce Base overnight which was pretty cool, until the 7:30am reveille a-la PA system.  And on a Sunday morning too, don't these people have any damn decency?  The fact that we didn't get to our rooms until 2:30am and had only a few hours sleep by then is beside the point.

And Disneyland was awesome.   Man, do they know how to move some people.   And I have never seen that much merchandise in my whole entire life.   But, the rides were awesome.   Haunted House was a scream, and so very me, I felt right at home.   

The Pirates of the Caribbean was also fun but the best ride would have to be Peter Pan.   Even though it's a kids ride, and only 30 seconds long, it is worth the half hour wait.  You fly high up in the sky looking down through the stars onto Never Neverland, complete with pirates ship in the bay.   Total.Awesomeness.

The Alice in Wonderland ride, well I don't know what severely mentally unstable person decided that ride needed to be created but I feel for every small child that has been put through that catatonic-inducing worst minute and thirty seconds of their small yet hugely impressionable lives.   Grotesquely vibrant over-sized and over-volumised singing flowers.  I still shudder at the recollection.

Still, Pierre had fun.   And I may or may not have an addiction to Disney Pin Trading now (and if I do, and I'm not admitting that I do, then I blame the Alice in Wonderland ride in it's entirety).  That is all, go about your business.  Nothing to see here.

Me and Him

I expect you will now berate me as a hypocrite and shout the name Turncoat with harsh callousness in my direction, and I put my hand up and plead guilty as charged.   

For more then four years I've written this blog with complete cynicism of love, the hurt it creates and the immense futility of it all.  But then I met Taubin and everything changed.

Taubin is everything.  He is the complete spectrum starting at sweet and caring, passing through respectful and intelligent, then detouring through funny before vectoring off into extremely hot, and then coming full circle with incredible, amazing and wonderful.   And he's my guy.   How the hell did that happen?  I am the luckiest girl alive.   Down in Love City Hall, some little cherub has made a huge clerical error because they hadn't had enough coffee that morning.   Please, nobody tell them there's been a mistake, I don't want this to ever be corrected.  *sigh*   Yes, get your sharp pointy sticks out ready to thrash me, because here it comes.... I love him.  And now my blog should implode into itself, creating a black hole into which nothing shall ever return.  Or something.

So I guess you're wanting a picture - in my little world you all know each other, but incase my little world hasn't yet escaped and infected your little world yet, there is a gallery of us, aptly named Me and Him.   And for those too mentally stable to actually click that link, here's a sample.

Oh and if you even dare mock us I will rip your tonsils out with a rusty blunt axe, show a little respect for love for gods sake.

Me and Love.   Who could have dreamt it.