Alright, it might not be the best picture but its the best one Aisling got because I kept trying to stop her from standing on top of the dang thing.
This little guy showed up in the late afternoon yesterday and looked like he (or she?) was getting pretty comfortable on top of a pile of leaves and random yard mulch that I was hoping to turn in to a compost mix of some sort.
We’re pretty sure its just a common garter or garden snake, but they can still deliver annoying bites and bad smells so I don’t exactly want to leave the welcome mat out. For now, that means losing out on a lot of the mulch and dried up plant matter that was going in the compost, but hopefully the loss of the perfect snake hill will scatter him back off to the edges of the yard.
We haven’t seen any owls since the hard freeze when one came knocking at our window at midnight, and maybe that’s why the snakes are surviving in to older age! It might even be time for an outdoor cat if the owls don’t fly back soon…
This air conditioning unit is starting to be a real pain…
So we’re all just standing around playing a fun game of Wii Bowling, but despite my winning score I couldn’t help but feel something was wrong. The house kept getting hotter despite my half conscious adjustments to the thermostat. Steve was sitting directly under the air vent, so when I verbalized my complaints he assured me that it was indeed working (for him at least.) And unfortunately, when I went to check the vents in the other rooms there was virtually zero pressure coming out of them.
Step outside and sure enough – the copper pipe that runs the freon around inside the machine is frozen over and probably leaking whenever it finally melts.
At least its still May, instead of July or August… I guess…
Honestly, its time to get a completely new AC unit, but who wants to invest five thousand bucks into a house that’s already underwater? Maybe its time to act like the billionaires and walk away from our debts…
Obviously, a toothache is first and foremost an indication that one needs to get to the dentist – but whether for financial or temporal limitations, sometimes we have to sit around for a while waiting for a chance to see the real medical professionals. That said, the time frame between the onset of symptoms and treatment is an incredibly miserable period. There’s something unique about tooth pain that makes concentration and relaxation almost impossible!
Anyway, this throbbing upper molar had been driving me nuts for a few days now and its probably going to be a while until I can scrap together enough cash to cover the uninsured costs of major dental surgery. I’m just kind of assuming the issue will be expensive because the tooth in question already had a filling put in it once and this pain is much, much worse.
Benzocaine Marketing
Now obviously, if you think about something to temporarily fix a toothache you’re probably thinking of Orajel or one of the many similar products with a big marketing budget. That’s sort of why they spent so much on advertising in the first place!
But I don’t like to go with the flow unless I know exactly what I’m getting in to. So I had to do a bit of research to figure out exactly what the active ingredient was doing.
Unfortunately, benzocaine is one of the chemicals tied to a condition called methemoglobinemia: the excessive presence of methemoglobin in the blood stream. Unfortunately, methemoglobin won’t bind to oxygen and tissue starts to die from hypoxia. Unfortunately again: the 20% concentration of most oral pain killers is plenty to get in to your blood stream and trigger production of methemoglobin. That might not even be the worst of it, because it suppresses the gag reflex and can lead on to fluids in the lungs. It is considered particularly dangerous to use benzocaine, drink something, and go to bed.
So what, my tooth still hurts!
Now now… I haven’t forgotten about that horrific tooth pain, I just wanted to figure out if the common solution was the best solution or just the one with the biggest advertising budget.
There are other choices available with much less risk, you just have to look around a bit.
This is where clove oil comes in. The oil of cloves has been used for thousands of years in various medical situations and still occasionally in dentistry because it is extremely effective in killing pain, and has an added bonus of killing off infections. Yup, it is both an analgesic and an antiseptic, and the lethal dose would probably be about an ounce of pure stuff swallowed in a short period of time. Sure, its potent enough to be dangerous in extremely large quantities, but there really are no known side effects at the effective dose (other than the rare instance of allergy that can pop up with almost any medication or food.)
Yeah, does it work?
Well, I’m writing again, aren’t I?
I managed to find some clove oil at the local CVS, and once applied to a bit of cotton and placed on the painful tooth, the stabbing sensation seemed to vanish immediately. The taste is extremely strong and bitter, but almost in a pleasant way. Remember, cloves are primarily used in cooking: either as a potent spice or as the primary component in what we westerners like to call chai tea.
The pain didn’t come back before I went to bed a few hours later. I slept very well, and to my own amazement there wasn’t even any pain when I woke up. 12 hours after the first dose, there wasn’t the slightest hint of the tooth ache that had been driving me insane.
Perhaps most comforting of all, is that the swelling in my gums near the affected tooth is drastically reduced. Now I’m starting to wonder if it was a cavity at all, or if it was really some kind of gum infection that the antiseptic properties of cloves can actually cure.
Either way, I’m saving up for that trip to the dentist. You know, just in case!
We get it. You’re joking. Nothing anyone says is serious and people seem to think that creating disappointment is the height of comedy.
Welcome to April Fools Day – a most sinister holiday that doesn’t even come with candies or cookouts or turkey dinners.
I guess this blog is where I choose to expose myself as the boring and humorless person that I am, but I just don’t enjoy April Fools Day on the internet.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good prank or practical joke, but it seems like on April 1st everyone is trying to be The Onion and failing badly. Or worse – my favorite TV station drops its normal schedule and plays a bad shows on purpose (really). Worse again, tons of social websites will try to add funny themes or pretend they’ve released new features – oh yeah, by the way they only spent the time and effort to think up the “joke,” not the time it takes to actually implement what could have been a good idea.
This is kind of related to a bigger trend: Making up good news and trying to pretend it actually happened. That’s not really even a prank, that’s just getting someone’s hopes up with a blatant lie. Is the Publisher’s Clearinghouse junkmail suddenly a comedic goldmine because it arrived on a certain day?
Anyway, you’re really not fooling anyone when you launch your pranks and fake stories on the one day of the year that everyone is on guard and expecting that kind of stuff. Want to be original and actually catch some people off guard? Try dropping your prank at the end of April! (I was going to suggest the middle of April, but the proximity to paying taxes might ruin some peoples’ sense of humor. I know it does for me and apparently I didn’t even start off with much to spare.)
If its not funny on March 23rd, its not going to be funny on April 1st. Think about that next time you try to pass off some quick content or the lack thereof!
On a lighter note, have you actually seen any April Fools Pranks that were really good? I’m sure there have to at least be a few out there!
I’ve never really fit on to a 24 hour daily schedule. During school and through my first jobs it was always a nightmare – I just couldn’t go to bed and wake up at the same time day after day.
First I got around it by taking on jobs with irregular hours, the kind of gig where you might work lunch one day and close up on the next one. Of course, its hard to get a good job that way so I also tried out the regularly scheduled, five-day plan. Pulled it off for almost two years, but the stress just kept piling on despite the fact that I actually liked the job’s environment and tasks.
So it was shortly after a very painful dental surgery that I realized I had to go mercenary and learn how to make money on my own – any time of day, any way I could. No more schedules, no more putting the rotation of the sun over the cycle and rhythm of my body.
And it worked…
Shortly after abandoning the scheduled day that everyone considers normal, I almost immediately noticed that a different pattern was developing. Every day I would want to go to bed about an hour later than the day before. Yesterday, I went to bed at 6:40pm, the day before was about 5:45, and the day before that was right around five.
I didn’t think much of it at first because, well, that was the point – to go to bed and wake up when my body says its time.
Then almost as a joke, my friend mentions that I’m not sleeping randomly, I’m sleeping on a lunar schedule. It sounded like it had some grain of truth in it and I had to go find out more…
Well apparently, the lunar day is about 24 hours and 50 minutes long. Weird – that’s very close to the interval between my bed times. So I decide to check it out a bit further: How does my bed time coincide with the flow of the tides?
Pulling up a local tidal calendar, I can’t say I was too surprised to learn that my daily trip to bed – for the whole last week – had lined up almost perfectly with the high tide of the river at the nearby Mainstreet bridge.
So … now what does my nature tell me? What is this adaptation good for? Fishing? I guess this means I wake up shortly before low-tide – and that’s a good time to start fishing as the tide comes in and rises.
Oh well, the river here is pretty gross (thank you, local industry!) and there’s no way I’m going to give up the comfort of my website revenue to go chasing after a rising tide at 5 am. Maybe I’ll check it out next time I feel like I’ve got spare time and need a hobby…
So what is up?! Do you know anyone with an odd sleeping schedule that doesn’t ever quite sync up to the “normal world?” Is there some lunar influence on our circadian rhythm when we’re able to shut out the outside light and use electrical illumination instead?
NO OWNER OR OPERATOR
OF A RESTAURANT IN THIS STATE SHALL
USE SALT IN ANY FORM IN THE PREPARA-
TION OF ANY FOOD FOR CONSUMPTION
BY CUSTOMERS OF SUCH RESTAURANT,
INCLUDING FOOD PREPARED TO BE
CONSUMED ON THE PREMISES OF SUCH RESTAU-
RANT OR OFF OF SUCH PREMISES.
Really, someone actually wrote this bill up and went through whatever it takes to have it considered, placed on the agenda, and uploaded to the public legislative website.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Most places use way too much salt, but this is hardly limited to the kitchen – the one place salt actually belongs. The problem is usually that the “raw materials” are already loaded with salt before any cook actually begins cooking.
Of course, if you’ve ever baked, cooked rice, or fried potatoes, you know exactly how indispensable salt is for certain foods. I’ll be the first to complain if the chef uses too much in his recipe or when the chicken breasts from the grocery store come packaged in a salty brine, but to expect any kitchen to actually cook decent food without the ability to use a dash and a pinch here or there? Pure insanity.
I’m all about encouraging and educating people to make healthy dietary decisions, but this micro-management of the kitchen is just out of sync with reality and does nothing to stop people from overindulging on salty snacks and frozen meals outside of the restaurant.
If governments want to get involved in policy that will encourage better eating choices, they should start off by undoing all of the subsidies designed to promote grains and all of the trade barriers designed to protect local farmers from places with better climates and environments for certain crops. Yes, I’m looking at you, American sugar cane and corn farmers!
The Conservative Political Action Conference is an annual event that usually hosts some of the most nationalist and socially conservative Republicans the nation can come up with, but this year the choice of the voters in the straw poll was none other than my favorite libertarian rebel, Ron Paul.
In the speech, he does a good job of explaining why he feels his preference for a non-interventionist foreign policy is actually more consistent with conservative values than any policy or war Bush introduced to the Republican party. He even dares to go so far as to call for a greater tolerance of individual lifestyle choices that Republicans might not personally agree with. Shocking stuff, but don’t take my word for it! If you’ve got half an hour, its worth hearing what the Republican party should be saying if they want to have a chance with the younger generations:
But those younger generations aren’t the only ones voting or showing up at the CPAC this year, so not everyone in the crowd was happy to hear that Ron Paul had won the straw poll. Among older Republicans, Ron Paul is seen as little better than a Democrat – or as bad as a downright traitor.
Why the venom? Well, Ron Paul is more concerned about actual freedom than any kind of partisan power. A strong Republican party could start whatever wars it likes and enforce its own vision of ideal social regulations, but a Ron Paul Republican party would be more concerned with the liberty of the individual citizen and the financial position of the nation as a whole.
Perhaps as a bluff to strong-arm the markets into optimism, or perhaps as a sign that they do know something useful in that pile of information that they’re keeping secret from the markets, the Federal Reserve has announced that they’ll be slightly raising the rate they change banks to borrow money. Of course, banks will still be paying less than 1% while we have student loans that average 10% and credit card rates closer to 20%, but that’s what we call a “free market” for some strange reason.
But absent real financial and political reform, it is unlikely that consumer wages will be able to maintain the demand for most economic activity. The problem we’re encountering is actually a relatively simple one: Labor hasn’t enjoyed the benefits of increased productivity, and they’re starting to learn that they have nothing to gain from being so productive. Further, since wages haven’t kept pace with the cost of living, individuals have to choose between making the mortgage on an underwater house or buying things that keep the future economy running. Without seriously writing down the expected value of the financial sector’s mortgage loans, there’s just no way that American workers can support both sides of the economy – the fictional paper pushing one, and the real manufacturing and transportation one.
Its likely that this move will be remembered as a tragic act of hubris – one last attempt to prove that the economy could recover with just a bit of academic hocus pocus and the old trickle-down theory of printing more money for the ones who already had the biggest share. Not only will a lot of houses be hitting the market this year, but so will a lot of mortgages reset triggering the next wave of defaults in high-end residential and commercial real estate.
Severe Weather Warning
Regardless of what business you’re in (well, unless you’re a banker I guess) you should probably hold on tight and get ready for one heck of a ride. All signs point to sharp deflationary contractions through the coming year, but that won’t stop the supply of dollars from growing at the same exact time foreign demand for them falls.
Inflation or Deflation?
Yes, the deflation vs. inflation debate is over. We can indeed have both and here’s how it will happen:
The value of American owned assets will deflate, and this will be followed up by the Federal Reserve releasing more money into the economy in an attempt to compensate or even that first effect out. Since the only mechanism the Federal Reserve & Treasury use to put money into the economy is to transfer it to chartered banks, they’ll continue to hold this free cash in reserve so they can stay in business at all.
Since the aggregate money supply doesn’t actually “correct” the original over-pricing of American assets, foreign investors lose their appetite for dollar-denominated assets.
So what happens in the end?
The number of dollars doesn’t change, but the home-owning middle-class has fewer of them and the investors and bankers have more of them. All of the dollars buy fewer raw materials, or food items, or manufactured products than they used to (except in that technological and production improvements cause real prices to drop.)
So energy and food and medicine and tuition all continue to skyrocket at the exact same time that people are losing jobs or working fewer hours.
Misery loves company
Is there any kind of hope or silver lining? Well, as bad as America has screwed up its finances, places like Greece, England, Iceland, and Spain might just be worse off than we are. The fact that other nations also got caught up in the bubble frenzy might actually protect us from some of the worst consequences. Or, because of how much the internet allows us to do business across borders and how we rely on foreign sales to balance out our budgets, it could just be the next feedback mechanism for a deep and prolonged economic crisis.
Webmasters and marketers take note, I’ve opened up another social bookmarking site. This one is focused on bookmarks related to the internet and business, and its just starting to build some momentum.
On-topic, seriously
Like any social bookmarking website, there have been some issues with spam and off-topic content being submitted, but rest assured that I’d rather have a lack of content than a flood of spam. This particular community will be tightly guarded for relevance and submission quality, so in the long run this should actually improve the utility and reputation of the site.
Start Submitting
In the meantime, you can get in on the ground floor by getting started with registration so you can add your own submissions or vote on upcoming links. requesting to have your site’s feed added to the bookmark’s automated import process. Please send any such requests to JohnFCB (at) Gmail.com
All the links are clean, and while the traffic is low it will only be going up. At the very least, a PR and link building campaign is underway and some kind of juice will flow across the lines. You get a link, I get a snippet of unique content, everyone is happy – as long as you stay on topic and don’t post junk!
About Social Bookmarking
Pligg sites are almost the link economy’s equivalent to the “leave a penny, take a penny” tray. Anyone can register and submit, so you don’t have to go begging for links. Just add it to the queue and let the power of internet democracy decide what is worthy of front page levels of attention. So, don’t feel bad about taking a few pennies, just try to help out by opening up your own and letting someone else get a little benefit from your domain and IP address resources.
Now, what are you sitting around waiting for? You should be signing up to add your webmaster bookmarks, or you should be downloading Pligg so you can build your own bookmarking community!
I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but the marketing got to my girlfriend and she decided she wanted a Nintendo Wii. Its been a while since we’ve had any console games in this house and she’s never been particularly interested in video games at all, so you will understand if I was skeptical about the whole idea.
Well, the skepticism was probably misplaced, because the Wii is getting a whole lot of use and Aisling is the primary one using it! After years of trying to find a video game she could be entertained by (beyond FreeCell), it seems the designers at Nintendo know exactly how to get non-gamers interested in gaming.
While I won’t be giving up my more in-depth and control-obsessed PC games like Dungeons & Dragons Online, Civilization, or Unreal Tournament, I can kind of remember the simplistic appeal of the old two-button Nintendo controllers and I think the Wii has done a great job of recreating that ease-of-play that first got me interested in gaming so many years ago.
My favorite aspect though, is probably that we can enjoy multiplayer games while being so cheap that we haven’t even got a second controller. The bowling game included with Wii Sports is getting a lot of play time, especially when friends stop by. With just one controller, up to four people can play at once. I mean its bowling – you had to stand up and sit down before it was a video game, too.
The difference of course, is that instead of a stale-beer-smelling bowling alley, we can sit on our couch and eat much better & cheaper food out of the fridge. Considering the cost of drinks, food, shoe rental, and games of bowling, we could have easily spent $200-$300 at the bowling alley instead of buying the Wii. Well, that seems like a good choice to me.
Then there’s Wii Fit Plus. That’s Aisling’s favorite game but I haven’t really tried it out so I can’t comment too much. There are a lot of interesting mini-games in it and they claim to keep track of all your calorie expenditures – but not even I’m ready to concede that a video game could help you lose weight or get in shape. Its not like she needs to anyway 😉
