Frozen Wings

Just had a batch of the best frozen pre-cooked chicken wings I've ever had.  Willow Brook Buffalo Style Hot Wings - 2 greasy thumbs up from this connoisseur of wings.

Baseball and Painting

The final spring training game was today - the next one counts.  We spent the day painting the trim - and all I could think was that all our neighbor's think we're moving.  Why else would someone paint the trim?

The art of the Subject Line

Noticed a few emails I've received lately have pretty useless subject lines, like "sometime..." or "Important!!!" (The latter with repeating punctuation - another peeve).  It's a bit of a skill I suppose - getting the entire gist of the email into one line.  

Here's a good subject line "Chat with Doug Cox (66 lines)" - shows me exactly what to find in that email and a hint at how long it is, in case there are several chats that would have the same subject. 

It's all in the art of naming - a tricky art.  I read once that most of good software development stems from good naming techniques.

Fillings - Right Side

According to Dr. Bobbitt I had 9 fillings done yesterday.  He said most were really small, and I think 3 of them were "replacement" jobs.  The good doctor and his assistant Jessie had me in the chair for about 3 hours.  Once again I was highly impressed with the equipment and techniques, so here's a list of stuff they did:

1. Fixed a chipped tooth:  Dr. Bobbitt skill was really evident here.  I'm gonna call it "deft" because it was clear he's an expert at building teeth.  He made it look easy.  He did it fast.  There were no mistakes.  My sister mentioned he's into woodworking.  He should definatly insure his hands.

2.Laser: It is used in place of the drills - but unfortunately it only works on regular tooth material, not old fillings or decay, so there was some drilling. 

3. Dental Dam: I might have had one of these before, but I don't remember, cause I couldn't see.  Which brings me to...

4. Mirror: They always give me a little mirror to hold so I can watch what's going on.  It was the first time I was able to get an up close look at the inside of my own teeth, after the drilling but before the filling.

5. Anesthesia:  Given the choice, I'd say knock me out - but the usual prick of the Novocain wasn't so bad - Dr. Bobbitt was very good at distracting me so it wasn't as painful, and if I was knocked out I woulda missed the lasers.

Having my mouth held open for 3 hrs sucked, and the chair made my arm fall asleep, but through it all they seemed to anticipate everything I was feeling, and explaining it to me.  I might bring a CD next time, because they were spinning a new Jimmy Buffet CD.  For some reason I'm not into Buffet... even though I love sailing, and I even have a couple Buffet tunes on my iPod.   I suppose I really like the idea of Buffet, but when it comes to the actual music I find myself reaching for the "skip" button.

How to share

So far this morning I've read 2 things I wanted to make sure I shared with specific other people.  None of those people read this blog, so this is not the place to post them.  All the people have email, so that's what I ended up doing.  One of those people just consumed the email and later when we talked he mentioned it... which I think was appropriate.  What I fear - is that the other email I sent out will be considered a crituique on something, and will lead to an email thread - when it was just intended to be something like, "Hey - I read this, I thought you'd find it interesting."

What would be nice is if they all read my blog regularly, but that is not going to happen anytime soon.  Also: Then I have to rehash the blog posts I wanted to share - which I think is a waste of time - the info was written well the first time.

Del.icio.us (a good bookmarking site) has a feature where you can tag the links you are collecting as "for" someone else.  I use this from time to time - but today the items I wanted to share were blog posts.

Freeta

free·ta: (Adjective) 1. Free version of software intended to gather testing results from the user community. Often used to judge market acceptance.  Often re-released after "Freeta Period" such that users must pay for the software.  See Beta.

Small Connections

Not sure if this is a connection or a coincidence or what, but I noticed it.  First was a google video of a woman running and talking about a marathon in which she says I Love Hills and the second is a google blog post about a website using google earth to raise awareness of mountain top mining called I Love Mountains.

I post the connection becuase similar things come up.  It's an artifact of getting my news/information from several sources.  A bunch of blogs, some websites, the news channels and many people around me.

The Hills vs. Mountains things may not be related anywhere else but my mind and blog, but I'm sure there are a bunch of other things that are related in the various feeds I get.  Every day I see the same news story represented in several places.  Often it's interesting where I hear about it first.

Dental Scorecard

Had another dental visit, 2nd part of the cleaning and got my score raised from 30 to 74.  They do the score with a dental tool with a scale on the side, and measure your gums at a couple spots on each tooth, and put it all on a chart and do some math to get a number.  100 is the best you can get I think, and on my first visit I was in the 30's, and second visit was a 74. 

This number has motivated me to brush and floss - two things I was not very prone to do in the past.  The reason is because I want to beat that number - it's an attainable goal.  Kind of like loosing weight - for me I wouldn't do it unless there was scale and I could see evidence of progress.

The latest visit was with Debbie, and she once again showed me how to brush and floss.  I think it sank in this time.  Funny part is it also changes how I brush the kids teeth and they get all mad expecting the "Say Cheese" part and not getting it.

Debbie is also a Red Sox fan, so I'm gonna try to schedule my next visit during a day game and bring a radio to listen to.  I was reminded of the Bill Cosby sketch about how his dentist wanted to talk to him and he couldn't because his mouth was full of dental tools.  I had to compile my comments on the Red Sox discussions and summarize them in the couple seconds you get after rinsing.

Also sending some more Dental Kudos to Pearl the front desk administrator who is helping me navigate the insurance-sea, which is an expensive place to be.  Dr. Bobbit isn't in our insurances program or list or something - so they don't cover 100%, and it's proving difficult to justify the cost when Suzy & thd kids haven't had to pay a penny for a visit ever.

Google presentation

Went to a "Google breakfast" seminar.  Got a free breakfast and a peek at how Google is marketing it's "Google at Work" stuff.  Some interesting quotes:

• Fast is better than Slow
• Fail quickly and learn
• Assume chaos and deal with it

Some other stuff: Manual Categories and Hierarchies are Dead - replaced by Great Search.  Google will be releasing a Wiki technology soon. I think it's the JotSpot acquisition they made.  I signed up for that beta a long time ago with no reply yet.

The most interesting part I suppose was that the presenter Michael Lock showed us his gMail account live, as well as the Google intranet "Moma."  It's good to see Google using their own applications for this.

There was free bacon too.