Jason Moran Dot Com is ALL NEW! Hey, did I tell everybody that I finally got around to updating my main website, Jason Moran Dot Com? I mean, for the most part I took a lot of what was on the old website and moved it to the new "look".

A lot more than that went into it, though. The entire site is now running as an ASP.NET 2.0 web application with lots of AJAX.NET whiz-bang flashy stuff going on. The best part is that I finally designed the site in an easy to maintain way.

Why would *I* care?...

Psssh, cuz now I can update the site 10 times faster which means I will actually update it! Also, one of the cool new things I added was that the home page to the site (the News page) actually displays this Jason Moran blog's posts. So, like, if you wanted to, you could just go to jason-moran.com to read this news.

I have lots of plans for new stuff and enhancements to my website, but those will all come down the line when I start to get free time again (and who knows when that will happen).

The things you should check out on the site:

• Write on Jason's Wall
• Picture Gallery (like, actually click on a picture and it will go into a full screen mode where you can click on the right-half of the picture to navigate through the entire category)
• Remember that you can upload your full quality pictures to the listed categories in Big Pictures.

Labels: JMDC, pictures

  ¶ 10:03 AM 0 Comments

  Sadie Fergalicious My wife and I got a new puppy. (By the way, I tried to spell it puppie but a red dotted line appeared under it so I must have been wrong).

Anyway, our new "puppie" is a Toy Fox Terrier / Jack Russell Terrier mix. The little booger came with the name Tori, then I named her Fergie, but since I bought this dog for Kelly she came up with a better name the following day: Sadie. I liked Sadie, but I didn't want to give up Fergie.

With much ado our new puppy is named: Sadie Fergalicious. Check her out...

Labels: dog, Sadie

  ¶ 1:17 PM 5 Comments

  Alzheimers Might Be Diabetes So, research is pointing at Alzheimer's Disease actually being a type of Diabetes (Type 3 Diabetes) because the lack of insulin is what prevents memory from functioning correctly. I read about it here.

I'm worried about it because both sides of my family have a history of diabetes. I don't even know if any of them lasted long enough to worry about Alzheimer's.

I was reading some comments about Alzheimer's and this one really grabbed me. Sorry for the small amount of language--it's a good read overall. I don't know if I could handle it.

You know what's great about Alzheimer's?
You make new friends every day!

Haha, "New friends every day." Get it?! LOL.

It's not so funny when it happens to you or your family. Wait until someone you know gets it. You won't be laughing anymore.

Haha, that guy has a limp. Haha, that woman is blind. Haha, that kid is retarded. Hahaha. Fucking hilarious.

Whatever you do, don't get Alzheimer's disease. It sucks.

My grandmother just turned 94 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease. She can barely walk anymore. I devote a few hours of my life every single day to caregiving. If you've never known someone like this, you really have no idea what's involved. Yeah, we could put her in a home. We could watch her die sooner that way, wearing diapers and ceaselessly, hopelessly calling out for someone to please take her home. As it is now, she wears diapers, but at least we always change them. In nursing homes, they don't.

Have you ever had someone you know and love, who helped raise you and even changed *your* diapers and then helped teach you how to count and how to read and how to do puzzles and math and typing and how to play games, who taught you the names of the plants that grow out in the back yard? And now she can smile and say "Hello", and tell you to get the hell out because she don't know who you are a moment later?

That's Alzheimer's. You can be helping to manage her most intimate financial affairs completely honestly, you can be doing her laundry and getting her medicine and bringing her groceries and cooking her meals and washing her dishes and vacuuming her floors and helping her get to the doctor and even wiping her ass, when she cannot do it herself anymore, and yet she'll still tell you she loves you one night, and the next morning she wants you to go away, go to hell, or just please, please take her home. Because she doesn't know what home means anymore. She's already at home, and she doesn't know who you are anymore.

She knows what she knew in 1920 or 1930 sometimes, funny stories she can still tell sometimes, but she mixes up everyone's names; she doesn't know who is who anymore. She used to speak three languages, English, German, and French. But now she often speaks gibberish, a weird combination of whatever words she still can recall. She can't always understand simple sentences. She's like a kid who cannot learn.

Alzheimer's sucks; nursing homes suck. Go visit one someday if you doubt me. My grandmother's genes and her circumstances allowed her to outlive two of her children. She never got cancer, but that's what killed her elder son at 50. She had a heart attack thirty years ago, but she didn't die of heart disease. That's what killed her elder daughter at 60. Yet my grandmother lives on, as her mind slowly disintegrates.

She still likes to watch children playing, or to meet a drooling baby, maybe a child of someone who helps care for her, brought over to visit. She still likes to pet her cats and smile and watch them roll on the floor with catnip at her feet, she still can interface with her two grandchildren, she still has a sense of humor that we all can understand and sometimes laugh about together.

She doesn't know what year it is or what day it is, and sometimes she can't remember how to properly hold a spoon (or she'll try drinking from it like a straw). But she especially likes bananas and squash and sweet potatoes and chocolate chip cookies. I know this because I'm there sometimes to remind her to take another bite. She says "This is good, thank you!"

And sometimes when you help lift her into bed at night, she'll tell you she loves you. I guess that helps make it all worthwhile.

Anyway, this is what will happen to you if you don't die of anything else or get hit by a bus before your brain starts to degrade. I suppose it hasn't been all bad, I have learned a lot caring for my grandmother. But she is no longer able to offer her opinion.

Source: quokkapox's slashdot comment

Labels: Alzheimers, Diabetes, science

  ¶ 12:35 PM 3 Comments

  A Couple Pictures From Arizona I promised some pictures from Arizona, so here are a couple tasty morsels. What you should really do is head over to Jason Moran Dot Com which has the full list of pictures from the Arizona trip.






If you are looking specifically for the pictures go to the Picture Gallery at jason-moran.com.

Labels: Arizona, JMDC, pictures

  ¶ 9:17 AM 4 Comments