Archives December 2003

Reproximation recap

I forgot to mention that the reproximation at the orthodontist SUCKED. I had 6 spots worked on. It was a little reciprocating tool with an attachment that looked like a little hack saw (but it wasn’t sharp) The guy basically jams it between your teeth and it vibrates back and forth, grinding away tooth to give clearance for movement. I would not say it was painful (until afterwards) as much as it was very uncomfortable. It rattled my skull and the first 10 seconds of each new pass really sucked as he wedged the tool between my teeth. I also found out that I am going to have this done multiple times through out my treatment. (something that was conveniently not mentioned during my consultation) The 24 hours after the procedure, my teeth were the most sore they have been since I started waering the aligners . I could not bite down on anything with my front teeth. Ali only had to have 3 spots reproximated and she may not need to have any further done. Lucky her.

Headaches, blacklisted, linux

Wow getting blacklisted sucks. As a result of a misconfiguration I made in our firewall, I inadvertently had an open 8080 http proxy on our box for a week or two. This was eventually sniffed out by spammers and they were spamming away through our box. I stopped it as soon as I found it but as a result our IP address has been blacklisted on a number of spam lists. Trying to get off these lists is cumbersome at best and in some cases downright impossible. Frustrating.

You think you have problems? Look at what this angry Reading, PA resident posted regarding the latest polls that indicate that Reading, PA is among the nations 25 MOST DANGEROUS CITIES! No wonder I moved huh?

I have to admit I am getting more and more into Linux. I am picking up bits and pieces here and there and just bought a book about Suse Linux I am working through. Except for gaming, there is no apparent disadvantage to me of running Linux and a lot less issues since you aren’t running Winwhatever which is the number one target in the world for hackers to attack. Learning a different OS is somewhat similar to learning a new language. If I were to make a comparison I’d say I can carry out a crude conversation in Linux right now but if you spoke too fast I would be lost. 🙂

Dirty gym

The only things my gym has going for it is the fact that it is 2 minutes from work and it’s cheap. In the 2 years I have been a member there, there has been no new equipment purchased, they reduced the amount of space that was useable by the members and it is the dirtiest gym I have ever been in. The water fountains are permanently discolored and are only washed by the spit residue members leave on it. I try to avoid touching them and rely on my bottle of water. They constantly play these horrible techno dance crap cd’s that sound like they are permanently skipping. The music may be enjoyed by the teenage girls that go there but since I can count them on one hand, I’m not sure what the point is of blaring that shit. The men’s bathrooms are so bad that I do everything possible to avoid going in them. Today I forgot to take a leak before going to the gym so I had to go while I was there. Terrible. The urinals look like they haven’t been cleaned in weeks. If someone blindfolded me and took me into the bathroom and asked me to guess where I was I would say a strip club or a truck rest stop. Gross.

Proximation

Today, Ali and I go to the orthodontist to get our next set of aligners and to have PROXIMATION done on our teeth. Proximation was described to us as thinning the teeth to give some additional clearance to move and straighten them. Ok great. What wasn’t great was the way the process was described, like using sandpaper dental floss on a jigsaw. Somehow that imagery does not seem very appealing. Hopefully it is better than I am anticipating it being.

Have you ever known anyone that looks like a yard gnome?

Holiday harmony

As you can tell by the title of this entry, I had an enjoyable 4 day holiday. No rush, no fuss with a little bit of excitement thrown in there. Long entry warning.

On Thanksgiving day I awoke relatively early and had a relaxing morning. I played Call of Duty, watched some of the New York Thanksgiving Day parade and did some work on my RC planes. I also took my jump in the pool. It was around 70 or 71 degrees, nowhere near polar bear material but cool enough to wake me up. Not having to worry about preparing Thanksgiving dinner and/or prepare for a large family visit really simplifies things. We got to the restaurant right about 2 oclock. We were able to be seated immediately. The food was great but there were a few glitches in the meal. First, the iced tea that my wife ordered was accidentally made with coffee, then one of the turkey dinners came out without the turkey and finally, when the bill came I was charged for the bill of the table of 9 behind us. All of the problems were addressed, the waiter was very nice and the food was very good so it didn’t really bother me much.

The entire thanksgiving dinner experience only took a little more than an hour. My mom had mentioned she would like to go to the beach on thanksgiving since she never got to do such a thing. We headed towards downtown, we had a lot of time on our hands so we decided to make our second annual thanksgiving day trip to K-mart. Unlike last year, we found very little of interest, in fact the store seemed to be filled with mostly crap. We bagged out of there with a stocking for Nicki and a thing to hold Alison’s pampered chef stuff.

We went down to the beach. It was probably around 4 when we got there. We were surprised with the amount of people that had the same idea as we did. A lot of people were hanging out, in the water, fishing and even some appeared to do their thanksgiving feast on the beach! We walked down to the Naples pier and hung out for the sunset. Beautiful as always. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera.

After we got back I went hard core into Call of Duty and finished the game. Bummer because I was planning on that entertaining me for part of the weekend. It is a great game with a bit of a disappointing ending. The beginning of the russian campaign is right out of a movie I saw in the past year where the russian soldiers are coming to stalingrad in boats with their officers telling them if they run they will be shot. It was freaky. I mean it was right out of the movie.

On Friday we planned to take Nicki to the dog beach we heard about. Before we went I wanted to get a run in. I had Ali take me to the end of the street and drop me off. It was 1.7 miles back to our driveway. The run went ok but I could tell the difference running on a hard road versus the treadmill. I felt a twinge of pain in the knee that I haven’t felt to this point. I guess I will stick to treadmill running for now. As I trudged up the driveway trying to catch my breath, I see a dog’s rearend go around the corner of the house. Hmmm. My mom had mentioned she had seen 2 dogs walking around our property three days this week, evidently they were back again. They were 2 cute little dogs, one was some sort of pug mix that was walking around peeing on everything and the other was some sort of mini collie dog. They were both very cute but you could tell they have had it rough. However they had collars and my mom said earlier that week they did not have collars. So obviously someone owned them. Ali was very distraught about the idea of stray dogs and was afraid of them getting hit by a car. She called animal services and they said they would come out. I felt bad about the idea of them going to the “pound” so I went out door to door with a picture of the dogs to see if I could find out who owned them. I went around for a half hour or so, no luck, noone knew them. Just as I got back the animal services van pulled up. The guy was very nice and explained that the dogs would get cleaned up, get shots and then have 5 days for the owners to claim them. After that a “decision” is made. We asked what that meant. What it meant was they decide if they are going to go up for adoption or put to sleep. Of course the thought of sending them to their possible demise made Ali feel terrible. She was crying. The guy explained that since they were little dogs the odds of them being adopted was very good. He loaded them up and took the little guys away. I felt bad as well, they were very friendly and just wanted someone to take care of them. We were finally ready to take Nicki to the dog beach, a couple hours later than we planned but oh well. As we pulled out of the driveway, we are stopped by the kids from 2 doors down. (I didn’t ask them about the dogs since I knew they didn’t have any) They asked us about the dogs, we explained what happened. They said they took them in a week ago as strays. Supposedly their dad left them on the porch but left the door open so they could go to the bathroom. Translation – he hoped they ran away. I don’t think the kids realized this. Anyway we told them all they had to do was call animal services and they could get the dogs back. I will be surprised if they call, I haven’t seen the dogs reappear at their house. In an attempt to find the original owners, we made 2 huge signs with their pictures and posted them at the end of the street with the animal services number. Hopefully it all works out.

We found the dog beach. Nicki is very nervous around strange dogs and people. She was excited but scared as she hung very close to us. A few dogs came up to her to say hello and she circled Ali with her leash and almost tripped her. We kept her far away from the action most of the time. She actually got all 4 feet in the water, a first for her. Eventually I told Ali we should take her off her leash and let her run free, there was no imminent danger and she obviously would run to us if she is approached by other dogs. Ali cautiously agreed. Nicki had a good time running free except for a couple incidents, the funniest of them was while she was standing in a small area of water looking around. One of the dogs was hyper and came running towards her and she didnt see it. It broadsided her and knocked her into the water, it looked funny as hell and of course she yelped and came running to us for aid. By the time we left she was a sandy, wet exhausted mess. We’ll take her back to the beach again.

On Saturday we had a Pennsylvania like weather shift, it went from the lower 80’s on friday to being in the 50’s for most of the day on Saturday. It was also super windy so it felt even cooler. Brrrrrrr. On Saturday we did some home chores and I mowed the grass in the back for the last time this year. I think it was the first time I mowed grass and didn’t sweat one drop. We spent the rest of the day relaxing. I watched a good part of Matrix 2 again in an attempt to clarify Matrix 3. (It didn’t help much) We also watched The Core. A middle of the pack movie that I would not wanted to have paid to watch in the theater.

Sunday the only real “work” I did was put up xmas lights on the palm trees out front. They look nice, I’ll try to get a pic of them up. The rest of the day was primarily football watching, including ANOTHER big Eagles win. 7 in a row. Of course I was wearing my jersey. 🙂 It is the first time they have won 7 in a row since 1980. I remember that streak in 80. I love the fox pregame show (as I mentioned before) however I think this will be the last season of Jillian Barberie doing the weather spot. She is hitting the wall. She just is looking bad and when your primary job is to just look good that doesn’t bode well. When she first started a few years back she was smoking hot. It’s weird, it’s hard to explicitly identify what is going bad but it’s just bad.

Ali spent a lot of time putting together an Amazon order to take a chunk out of our Xmas shopping. Almost 400 bucks later we still have a ways to go. 🙁

A good 4 days, the best 4 day stint I’ve had in awhile.