Friday, June 26, 2009

Wisdom teeth are done

I did something this week that I've put off for a long time. I had my wisdom teeth out.

Dentists have been suggesting I do it for well over 20 years. For different reasons I've put off doing it. But this time when my dentist suggested it at my last visit I just decided to go ahead and do it.

The process was went rather smoothly and quickly. I had the initial referral within a couple of weeks. They take this cool wrap around the head x-ray with a 3-d image of your mouth. I could see the bottom wisdom teeth one of them was sideways. Then I set the appointment for a just a couple of weeks later. That was fast. I'm not used to such quick delivery of health services.

I did the procedure on Tuesday morning at 7:30 - earlier than I'm usually out of the house or anywhere. I elected to go with just local freezing instead of mild sedation or being fully knocked out. The assistant was curious why I didn't get sedation as local freezing is apparently unusual. I had a couple of reasons.

- I didn't want to skip breakfast. You can't eat before if you get sedation.

- With sedation you need someone to drive you home afterward and stay with you the rest of the day. I didn't really have anyone to drive me around. So going with local freezing I can just drive myself there and back afterwards.

Those were the reasons I told her. The really BIG reason of course I didn't want sedation is because of what happened when I was in high school. A friendly girl named Sherrie died while getting her wisdom teeth out. Ever since then of course wisdom teeth and Sherrie have been unbreakably linked.

I was quite happy to have an alternative to sedation so I didn't have to risk my life for an optional dental procedure. I didn't even realize you could get your wisdom teeth done without sedation. I might have done it before now if I'd realized that.

The procedure itself went well. He got all four teeth out in around half an hour. Two of them were really fast, out in probably less than 2 minutes each. The others took a bit of work with lots of yanking, drilling and cracking. But Dr. Powell was very good and it all went quite well.

Afterwards I just sat around my place not doing much. I felt a bit grungy around 1 PM when the freezing was wearing off. The dentist (who is also an MD) gave me a prescription on the way out for Ibuprofen and Tylenol 3. I went back to the Medicine Shoppe to get it filled. The pharmacist was helpful as usual and she took the time to explain to me what they were for that the Ibuprofen was for swelling and to make sure to keep taking it for 3 days even if I felt well. The Typlenol 3 was for pain and I could take them together.

I must say after I took the two Tylenol 3 the effect was immediate and positive. The pain went away and I was in a much better mood all afternoon. Since then I've taken 2-3 a day when my mouth feels sore. The bottom right side has been a bit painful a couple of times a day over the last couple of days. There hasn't been any bleeding in the last 2 days so it seems to be recovering pretty well. I went back to work the next day and it was OK. I didn't want to burn up a lot of my vacation on this.

I was a bit surprised at the cost. It ended up coming in at a bit under $1000. I was expecting that since I'd got an insurance estimate done. I was surprised though that my insurance from work covered it at 90%. That was nice. I had it fixed in my mind it was 50% at best. I think it was maybe 50% at a previous employer. So that was a nice bonus. I was prepared to be out around 5 bills for this. Instead all together including the $5 prescription co pay on the 3 prescriptions, gas money driving to the clininc and back twice, incidentals like McDonald's milk shake and Farmers ice cream I was only out a bit over $100.

So now it's finally done and I'm glad it's done. This is a good time to get it done when my teeth feel alright, I don't have other complicating health problems to deal with, I have insurance coverage on it, and I have some cash to pay the rest.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Your kids may be next

Check out this child welfare case in Winnipeg. The government is attempting to create case law legally establishing "racism" as cause to remove a child from a home.

Of course the sheeple and the media have missed what's really going on here. The government is attempting to establish thoughtcrime as a legal basis to take people's kids away. The implications are far reaching. Once this becomes established law then anyone who expresses any view contrary to the official government line may be faced with having their children taken away. That's a very powerful weapon for the government to have to silence dissent.

Once this becomes law, who decides what "level" of racism is sufficient to remove a child from a home. I would expect that within 5-10 years some or most of the following will be a basis to take a child from the parents.

  • laughing at a racist joke
  • occasionally muttering slurs or epithets
  • failing to publicly support affirmative action
  • inadvertently clicking through to a racist web site

With thoughtcrime legally established as a cause for child removal, then many views which are unpopular today may be intimidated into silence, including


It gets messier. Once this becomes law it will be OK to remove the children of known LTTE Tamil supporters as they are politically unfashionable today. However I'd say there's at least a 5% chance that Bob Rae will become Prime Minister sometime within the 15 years. Bob is believed to be an LTTE sympathizer. What happens then? Will the LTTE kids be returned to their parents and the kids of Sri Lankan government supporters taken away?


I suspect some of the few who have heard of this case are thinking. What do I care about these people? I'm not a racist so I have nothing to worry about. Hey if June Callwood can be labelled a racist then probably so can you.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Medicine Shoppe

I did something usual for me the other day. I picked up a prescription for myself. On the way back from work I stopped in at the Medicine Shoppe in Wedgewood.

That's an interesting place there. It is all health related items. No perfume, no cigarettes, no lottery tickets, no People magazine. When I went in the pharmacist was right there and it was filled quickly. It is a simple instructions but she went over it.

The pharmacist even gave me a new customer welcome gift bag which was a cloth environment shopping bag with a pen, mug, bottled water, fridge magnet, lip balm and merchandise coupons. That was pretty good and unexpected.

I don't know when I'll go back there. I don't get prescriptions too often; and I hope it stays that way for a while longer. But I would go back to the medicine shop for a quality health experience.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Congo, the country

Well it's Friday.


Wuss of the month award goes to AMD. They let politically correct militants bully them into changing the code name "Congo" on one of their projects. The thing is, it was named after the Congo river! All AMD had to say was this.

The code name is based on the Congo river. Not the country Congo. We are not changing it.
Loser AMD. When you finish up changing the project code name proceed straight to the kitchen. Both sinks are full of dirty dishes for you to wash.



And for this one cue up a big Nelson HA HA laugh

SS guard gets to stay in Canada

Thursday, June 18, 2009

CTV the listener

Sometimes I'll see a commercial for the CTV show The Listener. I could never watch that show. Even with the commercials within 5 seconds I think "this show doesn't make any sense".

The reason it doesn't make any sense is because the show is about a fellow who can read people's minds. The thing about that I can't get past is this. If I could read minds I would just be a professional card player. If you can read minds then you would know what your opponents have, you can effectively "see their cards". So any show about a mind reader could only then be a show about a pro poker and blackjack player. I look at the commercials for the episodes and I just think "why isn't he playing cards?"

--

Speaking of ATV. If Steve Murphy wants to take another week of vacation that's fine. I don't mind Joanne Clancy filling in at all. See looks fine and has a very pleasant on air presence.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Baseball cards

I was back at the local dealer Strictly Singles recently. I was looking at the second half of the 1978 o pee chee baseball set. He had a pretty good selection and I picked up a good number of cards.

The 1978 is in pretty good shape right now. There's about 20 cards left on it. That's pretty good. I'll work Sportlots where I still have some credit and the OPC group on Yahoo and maybe I'll be lucky and able to get close to finishing that set.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

lunch at Hooters

Over the weekend I expanded my cultural horizons. I went to a restaurant I hadn't been to before. I had lunch at Hooters on Main Street.

I met up with a former co worker and a guy I work with now. It was pretty good there. I had Keith's light and wings with hot sauce and they were all right. The Hooters girl who served us definitely delivered.

I've wanted to go there ever since it opened, just to see what it was about. It wasn't disappointing. I'm glad I went. The others there said it was pretty good too. We may go back there again, maybe this fall. There's some other Hooters fans too so maybe we'll get a couple more people next time.

It was a bit of a personal treat to myself to go. I wanted to do something, a small indulgence, to mark the special occasion of paying off the credit card debts.

On the consumer debt front things are going fairly well. It appears to be tracking to pay off the remaining TD loan some time this year. That would be great to get that done in 2009. I may yet become a freeman. Perhaps I'll yet emerge from beta with Me 1.0 after a 20+ year delay.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Invited back to MBNA

I got an unexpected letter from MBNA this week. They have offered me a Premier Rewards MasterCard. This card offers 1% cash back and 7.96% interest.

Funny because when I canceled my old card it was 19% interest and no rewards. So they are rewarding people who cancel by offering them a better deal to return. Maybe there's a strategy there for the existing customers.

It might sound like a good deal but it isn't really. I get 1% cashback already on my National Bank card so there's nothing there. Plus the National Bank card will upgrade to 2% for large monthly purchasers if I really was interested in getting purchase cashback.

And is 7.96% interest really a good deal? MBNA borrows from the central banks at 0.25%. So they are making about 750 bps profit. That seems excessive to me. I feel they are trying to get the good customers to cover their losses on defaults from irresponsible loans they made to irresponsible customers. No thanks.

Plus since I have no balance I don't care if the interest is 8% or 28%. It's still $0 to me. Paying interest on credit cards is for fools and suckers.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the not too distant future the credit card schemes become more quantized. There will be 4-6% interest, no fees, longer grace period, cashback and other incentives for the best customers. Shaky customers will see the legal max interest 20-30%, annual fees, legal minimum grace period, no incentives. They may even have to post capital and partially secure their credit limit balances. Say put up $500 cash in order to receive a $2000 card balance. Maybe a level in between at around 12-15% interest with annual fees.

Plus if MBNA really wanted my business they should try to demonstrate good customer service. After I canceled my MBNA card there was a credit made to the account by a vendor. On April 28 I phoned MBNA and asked them to mail me a cheque. They said it would be sent within 10 business days. The cheque still hasn't arrived and now I have to phone them again to try to extract my money. Why would I want to go back with these people? So thanks but no thanks MBNA.