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Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category

Dental QQs

Feb 25th, 10 / 3 Comments

The last time I was at the dentist for a cleaning (This is not one of those, I haven’t been to the dentist in 20 years, stories .. I go regularly), the Doctor noticed one of my molars had fractured. He asked me a bunch of questions about when/how … to which I could only shrug. One would think a person would remember if they bit down on something so hard their teeth actually cracked under the pressure, but I had no recollection of when or how this fracture could have taken place. Hurrah.. <sigh>.

The tooth wasn’t falling apart at the moment, so it was decided to wait until a preliminary test was going to be done on a new type of porcelain-heating method supposedly able to generate inlays,onlays, and crowns 10x harder than conventional heating methods.

My tooth, however, had other plans. This past Monday, as I sat at my desk enthralled in my work, my fractured tooth decided it was time to give up the ghost. I was horrified when I started spitting out pieces of my tooth. Immediately, I picked up the phone and made an emergency appointment with my dentist.

Example of a Dental Crown

Long story short, I now have a temporary crown, while “the lab” uses this new heating method to create a the permanent one for me. It’s more expensive, but because of the way my jaw is structured, 100% of the work done by my teeth is handled by only 4-6 teeth in the back – therefore, any dental work done back there needs to be way stronger than normal. Joy of Joys.

Add to this, my resistance to conventional anesthetics, which makes any visit to the dentist that much more nerve wracking (HA!) for me, and you have the *best*day*ever* for me, yesterday. By the time I got home, I was in so much pain, I took some ibuprofen and passed out for about 4 hours. WEEEEEEEEE!!!!

So… yeah. And this whole ordeal isn’t even over; I have to go back to get the permanent crown put in, in a few weeks. Oh, and the payment is due at that time as well – yeah, insurance isn’t going to cover this since I had a filling put in that same tooth fewer than 5 years ago. I’m so overjoyed. I don’t think there is an appropriate emoticon that truly represents just how elated I feel.

Update – 3/1/2010

I talked with someone at my Dentist’s office, and it may not be as bleak as I originally thought. There is a chance the insurance will pay for half of the work. That still leaves hundreds of dollars for me to shell out, but 50% fewer dollars is quite helpful, if it goes through.

Unification, or Mass Confusion?

Feb 1st, 10 / 0 Comments

For a while now I’ve been trying to find the magic-bullet in Social Networking: how to combine all my different feeds into a coherent whole, while maintaining individual usability. What do I mean by “individual usability?” Not all networks are created equal – they each have their target audience, as well as their target “feel” for how they present information – or even what information they focus on. There is much overlap, I know, but I feel it is also important to maintain these differences as well, as they are what help separate some services from one another.

For example: Facebook and Twitter are not the same thing; they focus on different aspects of their users lives; they had different target audiences to begin with (though I am willing to admit, evolution and popularity have merged what once was separate, to a great extent). Because of this, it is not only inappropriate to use them the same way, but down right insulting. Are there times when your Facebook status is going to be the same as your latest tweet? Sure, of course… but does that mean it should *always* be the same? No. Linking your Twitter account directly to your Facebook account, so that every tweet becomes your Facebook status, is not only a misuse of the two services, but also information overload for people who don’t care.

This is how I view some of the services available. I’m sure others will disagree with me, but … here ya go:

Services like Twitter, Identi.ca, Plurk, and YouAre: Life Streaming – that is, a round by round answer to the question, “what are you doing / What’s going on right now?”

Services like Facebook, Tumblr, and LiveJournal: Life Highlighting – that is, general overviews, points of interest, Micro-blogging, or virtual scrapbooking.

Services like BrightKite, Foursquare, Gowalla: Life Tracking – that is, answering the question of, “where are you, where have you been, and what do you think about those places?” There is some overlap here with Life Highlighting, and even Life Streaming of course, but generally one way: Life Tracking moves into the others, but rarely do the others move into Life Tracking.

Services like Plaxo and LinkedIn: Contact Manipulation – that is, work and/or personal contact listing. I’m not sure why either of these even offer the streaming of anything else (such as Twitter or Facebook feeds) as it seems, to me, to be highly inappropriate.

This is not a comprehensive list of course, just a random sampling of some of the services I use. When I use Ping.fm to send updates, everything in Life Streaming generally all gets the same information. Even though I put Facebook and Tumblr in the same category, I separate out micro-blogging from scrapbooking. Facebook will post news of what I post in Tumblr, as a scrapbook entry, but then you go to Tumblr to actually read the post.

I dunno… maybe I’m over-thinking everything, or just making a big deal out of nothing.

Maybe I should prune this all back to just two or three services and leave it at that.

Perhaps I should just mind my own business and let people use different services however they want to – in what ever way works for them. Those of you who know me, however, will know I just can’t do that … as a judgmental absolutist, for any given “thing” there is a “correct way” to do it (real or imagined .. and I’m quite willing to admit, sometimes it’s more of the latter than the former).

Cryptic Brings Back Subscription Deals

Aug 27th, 09 / 0 Comments

Okay.. see.. I’m glad they’ve reinstated the original special offer (original, meaning that it ends by launch, as they originally advertised it), but this just underscores my original objection of why have an unadvertised numerical limit in the first place? And this only heightens the marketing Hocus Pocus that graypilgrim first aired grievances over.

Here’s what I think: I understand the company wanting to put a cap on how many lifetime subs they are willing to sell -They lose money on those in the long run, so I understand the desire to limit their number. However, once they saw they were quickly reaching that cap (which they admit they thought would never happen) they should have just removed the cap… we were only a few days away from the time limit anyway so what’s the big deal?

Instead, they pull the rug out from under everyone saying they ran out, people start clamoring and pitching fits because (other than the *one* dev comment where it was nonchalantly mentioned there were “limited quantities”) no one even knew there was any kind of limit.

And in the end they end up removing the cap anyway. So all they’ve managed to do is piss off a whole bunch of people in doing what they should have done behind the scenes in the first place.

oh well.. i’m glad they removed the cap, but i still think that cap should never have been made public. just my two cents..

*clink*
*clink*

D&D 4e

Mar 19th, 09 / 0 Comments

Okay.. so.. it was by birthday a few days ago, and so I was browsing Amazon this morning looking for ways to spend gift money, when I noticed the new PHB2 had come out for D&D 4e. As I read the blurb about it, and the customer reviews about it, I get kind of excited… everything sounds great. I also notice 2the Divine specific book, and the Arcane specific book, and I go, “OOOOooooOOOOooo” while happily clicking on those items to read more.

And then my mind yanks back to reality, where I have a bookshelf at home crammed full off 3.x material. And I pause. And I think to myself…

“Ah @%#$”

You know what I would REALLY like? I would like for someone to write a guide on porting 3.x material over to 4e hehe. I just feel like I have all these splat books that will be going to waste now.

<sigh>

I guess my only big gripe at the moment is they really made it so you HAVE to get the PHB2. It hass too much in it… it is a completion of the handbook. Other than being greedy and wanting us all to pay twice for what should have been one book, I can’t think of a reason why they would do this. I mean… Barbarian and Druid… come on! How are those supplamental classes these days?

Oh well… I guess I’ll choose two-day shipping.

The Electoral College

Sep 29th, 08 / 43 Comments

Anyone who has known me for any length of time has probably heard me rant about how unfair the Electoral College is, and how any system that allows for a President to be elected when they lose the popular vote is a system not worth using. Well… today is your day to gloat …. or to pass out from shock.

I still believe it is wrong for someone to “win” an election when they have lost the popular vote. I believe that is a flaw in the system, but one that could be fixed if congress would just take the time to do it. I suppose since it has only happened 4 times (as of today.. I’ll be watching this year’s election *quite* closely) they must not think it a problem worthy of their attention. In my opinion, it should never have happened at all. But I digress…

Yes, there are problems with the system, but I have come to make peace with it, as flawed as it is. It is NOT because I have switched to a Jeffersonian mindset; i do not think people are too stupid or uninformed to be able to vote for the president directly. However, I do now see that the Electoral College system ensures an even distribution of power between the states. In the same way the House of Representatives strives to ensure equal voice for the citizenry of the country, so too does the Electoral College strive to ensure equal weight for the votes of that citizenry.

It is quite possible that this equalization has been a strong factor in how our country has survived for so long without imploding. A representative democracy is not an easy thing to maintain, yet we;ve managed to keep it running. I’m beginning to think that some of these things, which I have been so verbally against for so many years, have actually been part of the glue that has held this country together.

May Columbia and Uncle Sam forgive my impudence.

That said… I still have one issue: The Electors themselves. Quite honestly, they seem superfluous to me. Many (but not all) states have created laws that say the Electors are required to cast their votes in line with the popular votes of the state. Those state lacking such laws have Electors who are mealy “pledged” to vote a certain way; they are legally free to vote however they wish. With more and more states passing laws to remove the “pledged” part of the Electoral College, and even some states moving from an all-or-nothing division of Electoral Votes to a congressional district division of Electoral Votes, it seems odd to me that we still have physical Electors… people who simply go to a meeting and hand in the states votes. It seems to me that we should be able to cut out the middle man. Thy have already been stripped of independant thought in many states, so why not get rid of them completely?

The states collect popular votes and divide up the Electoral Votes however they wish, and then simply report to the Federal Government on how their Electoral Votes have been cast. Simple. Done, and Done. Why do we even bother with the physical Elector anymore?

Anyway… there you go: I’m okay with the Electoral College now. I see the underlying benefit it has on our government and in how it helps ensure political stability across so many different states. All we have to do is get rid of the superfluous physical Elector, and fix the holes that allow someone to lose the popular vote yet still win the election, and you’ll never hear me complain about it again