My Life Blog

Writing here has ground to a halt as I deal with the after-effects of two crown preps.

Alas, I’m not blessed with healthy teeth.  And to make matters worse, I’m not very diligent about ensuring their health.  Yes, I have a phobia against dentists.

I trace this back to when I was nearing my teenage years and preparing for braces.  The orthodontist declared that my mouth was too small and that pulling teeth would enable straight teeth to be possible.  So I had four baby teeth and four permanent teeth pulled within a two-week timeframe.  Unfortunately, that left lasting mental scars.

So while I’m well aware of the need to see a dentist and to take care of what I have, I often succumb to irrational fears left from my childhood.  However, since I have a wife now to keep me honest, I have now returned to the dentist. 

The good news is that I only required one filling and one new crown for a cracked tooth.  The other crown was an existing one which needed to be replaced.  Unfortunately, the existing crown was on my lower right and apparently I have difficulty getting numb in that area.  I think I had a total of four shots to try to get that area numb.  But even after four shots, I still was not completely numb.  As they drilled, I winced.  And upon seeing this, they stopped.  I told them that I was on the "edge of pain".  But the next level of anesthesia involved a hammer, so I let them press on with the understanding that the pain would get no worse.

If that weren’t enough, I’m on Day 8 since the visit and still feeling pain.  So I called to see if this is normal.  They think its still a result of the trauma and the many shots.  But this bit of pain is requiring daily medication!  So we’ll see how this goes.

But I have to say that its going to take some real maturity on my part to go to the dentist again.  I do not suffer this kind of pain well, unfortunately.  Does anyone else face these kind of demons?

For what its worth to all you who have not seen me, I do have healthy straight teeth…but there are a few crowns involved to make that the case.

SPOILER ALERT:  Read no farther if you haven’t seen the first episode.

The season premier of "Lost" did not disappoint last night as there are now new questions and more intrigue.  We now know a little bit more about what was within the hatch.  If you watched carefully, you noted that the inside of the hatch said "QUARANTINED".  The castaways didn’t remark much about this, but I think the side of the hatch that the message appeared on is critical.  In my opinion, the message tells he/they who are within, that the outside is quarantined.  I have no idea if this is accurate or even meaningful, but it is a subtlety that I, at least, wondered about.

We also had wondered what was being injected into the arm of the hatch inhabitant.  We slowed it down to frame-by-frame and could only make out "RX-1, For Injection Only".  And of course, we’re led to believe the inhabitant is the same guy who was running the stands with Jack.  The mystery behind his strange and hugely coincidental (or is it?) presence within the hatch was this episode’s cliffhanger.  Equally curious is his influence on the healing of the woman from the accident.  You will recall that this is the woman that Jack eventually marries — we found this out last year, but we got more of the history last night.

So all in all, a satisfying first episode and the ride continues…

www.ritarelief.org

Looks like we’re preparing well in advance on all fronts.  That said, their web page does appear to be registered by someone wishing to ward off the scam artists of the world.

Its early, but I fear we may all be soon considering contributing to the clean up of the Texas Coast.  If there can be any good news coming from Katrina, its that we appear to have learned some lessons.  Mandatory evacuations and residents-helping-residents operations are already underway.

I’m no expert, but if you could pick a city besides New Orleans which is extra vulnerable to damage from a hurricane, Galveston would have to rank high.  This due to the fact that they are a barrier island and aren’t far above sea level themselves. 

Here’s hoping for the best…

Wow!  I recently bought a Linksys Range Extender to cover some wireless dead spots in my own house.  However, according to this it looks like Google may be working on a HUGE Wi-Fi network and thus maybe I wasted my money!

If this is true, a lot of business models will be trashed, but having widespread Wi-Fi coverage would be a great step forward to most.

We are just hours from the season premier of "Lost".  If you aren’t on board (ever so slight pun there) already, you have two options. 

1. Watch the hour-long catch-me-up show that airs prior to the premiere tonight
2. Tivo tonight’s premier and quickly purchase and watch the season one DVD that is available now.

Suzanne and I were lucky enough to latch onto this show from its pilot last year through its season finale.  It was a great ride and since it won an Emmy, its obvious that we weren’t alone in our opinion. 

It was great fun to learn more about the characters each week.  The show makes ample use of flashbacks to develop its characters.  In some cases, the flashbacks are from years ago and profile a life-changing moment in a character’s life.  In other cases, the flashbacks are only days old and provide context to how the character came to be on the flight and how they may have previously interacted with the other soon-to-be survivors.

The island also holds some supernatural phenomenons that have not yet been explained.  For those who don’t believe in such things, don’t worry, it doesn’t interfere with the entertainment value of the show.  This is to say that while the survivors do get harrassed by a perceived monster from time to time, this is only a minor part of the story.  The island’s real mysteries concern fate and destination along with its ability to free people of their limitations (both physical and mental).  I know that sounds pretty mysterious, but I’m being purposefully vague so as not to spoil it for any who choose to jump on board.

So tonight we are looking forward to more of the island’s secrets revealed…join us!

Last night I had the opportunity to watch (on TV) my first hockey game in 17 months.  It was the Dallas Stars versus the Edmonton Oilers.  All in all, I enjoyed it but I found that the game I remembered is not the game they are putting on the ice this year.

There are several new rule changes this year designed to open up the ice.  Along with the rule changes, is an edict to the officials to call the games closely.  Because there are so many changes, EA Sports has incorporated animated rules briefings into their marketing campaign.  They are of course using their gaming assets to do so.  I have to say that I appreciated it and needed the information.

Last night’s game had 20 power plays and 10 goals — the game ended in a 6-4 Stars victory.  If each power play had not overlapped, the 20 power plays would have represented 40 of the 60 minutes of hockey.  So basically, the 5-on-5 play was in short supply last night.

To be honest, I’m not sure I liked it.  I kinda liked a team working hard for their goals.  And I liked that power plays were limited and that you really had to take advantage of them when you got them.  As it is now, you only have to wait a couple of minutes and then you’ll be on the power play.

I do not know how many shots on goal there were last night, but the shots that did find their way to the net were very different than normal.  These were mostly power play shots.  I can’t help but think that the goalies have to hate this.  They are facing more coordinated attacks and harder more frequent shots.  I guess if you have chosen to stop rubber for a living maybe you look forward to the challenge.  But this is like being at a hockey all-star game every night where there is no defense — you get shots like those in that contest, but only for one night and for only one period.  We’re talking about a whole season now. 

I have no idea now how you build your team.  You better have a good goalie, for sure.  And then it seems you better be solid on defense.  Then again, you need to have good skill up front to take advantage of the power plays.  You’ll also need the same skill players to do penalty kill duty.  If you are deep on the bench and aren’t on any special teams, will you see the ice?

So many questions and so I guess we’ll see how this goes.  Next up, Dallas Stars vs. Detriot Red Wings on Friday night and in person.  Whether pre-season or not, those match-ups are always fun.

If you perform a search on chicfila.com on Yahoo, my Chic-Fil-A and Ketchup post is tops on Yahoo’s list.  You can try the search here.

So it had me wondering if they had a website at all.  Turns out its www.chic-fil-a.com as you might expect.  However, it would have been wise for them to register chicfila.com as the hyphened domain name is entirely too hard for most people to get right.

I was thinking if I had entered the same search criteria on Google, that they would have given me a "did you mean…", but the same thing happened — no www.chic-fil-a.com.  But at least you are spared reading my complaint about their ketchup policy.

I uttered the phrase "happy as a clam" the other day and then wondered what I had just said.  Suzanne and I began to wonder how the phrase came to be.  After all, when you are a clam, it seems you have two things to look forward to: 1) being stuck in your shell in the bottom of the sea or 2) being eaten by some human or predator otherwise.

To us, neither of those outcomes seemed worthy of the emotion or the phrase.  So of course, Google led me to the answer here.

It seems we’re using the short-form of "happy as a clam at high tide".

From time to time, its worth looking at the Internet Usage Statistics to ensure you have an accurate perspective on where the web is going. 

Of note, North America represents 23.8% of the World Users with a penetration rate of 68%.  But look at Asia, Europe, and Africa who currently represent 34.5%, 28.7%, and 1.7% of the World Users.  If you thought North America dominated the Internet, think again. 

Once those regions increase their penetration rates (they are 8.9%, 36.8%, and 1.8% respectively), North America will be even more outnumbered.

So if anyone wonders whether their app should be internationalized, there’s evidence to say that the audience is certainly there.  That is, of course, if the app is the kind that might have a world-wide audience.

My mother recently pointed out that she enjoys the humor and life portions of my weblog, but is bored by the deep ones.  In addition, I’d already been thinking that I needed to perform a little redesign magic on the site since I’ve been riding along with a thieved version of Zeldman’s site.

So I’m thinking about getting my money’s worth out of Typepad and setting up a few additional blogs to serve as "channels".  I know that sounds completely silly.  And yes, I know that those who want to could filter by category.  However, I think the channel blog idea has some merit.  She can subscribe to my "Life" blog and be spared by other deep-thinking.  My buddies and my step-dad can subscribe to the "Sports" blog.  And everyone else can enjoy the more branded professional blog.

I’d like to tie all this together under my main domain name, www.billeisenhauer.com, so I’m thinking of wrapping these blogs and a few other assorted pages together under a coordinated design.  That’s actually not a trivial undertaking since I have to delve into the Advanced Template Design features of Typepad and pretty much roll my own blog markup and CSS.  I’m up for the challenge, but it begs the question:

After everyone visits once and resubscribes, who will ever see the design anyway?

If most of you are like me, you have an RSS reader and you read posts straight off of there.  You rarely enjoy the site design itself.  So should you think much about the design of your weblogs? 

Unfortunately, I think the answer is yes for all of us.  All of you web designers out there must take special care.  Not only is it your branding, but its a part of your work portfolio.  For me, an application architect, entrepreneur, and a few things otherwise, it represents extra polish on my evolving personal brand.  So while I could short-arm the design, I probably will not.

So hopefully in a month or less, I’ll be able to let you know that the site has a new look.  At that point, you can enjoy my XHTML for once.