Wisdom Teeth et al.

I had my deeply embedded lower Wisdom teeth and some others removed Wednesday morning, a fairly major procedure. I assumed that, like most surgeries, it would be worst right after and get better as time went on. I seem to be wrong though and each day seems worse than the last. Wednesday was unpleasant, but not too bad. I slept most of it and even made a video in the evening. I was thinking of going to work on Thursday.

Thursday I realized they punctured my sinus cavity when they were working on my upper jaw, called the dentist and got a prescription for antibiotics. I was out for an hour or so in the morning, but was tired by the afternoon and in increasing discomfort. I started using the Codeine prescription I got (which I noted has a refill), which I hadn't needed before and was hoping to "save for later"

Last night I got up every two hours and was supplementing the codeine with 3 Advil. It was like having 4 pending root canals. Only two of the teeth, the bottom 2, were wisdom teeth, buried quite deeply with one "fused to the bone", the uppers were broken beyond repair.

They suggested to me on Wednesday that the swelling would peak "after 3 days", which better be today because I look like the Godfather at the moment. I am hopped up on Codeine and Tylenol atm, and will probably try to get some sleep.

A New Video

I've been working on an in-game instructional video for a server wide event I occasionally run in City of Heroes. It's a complicated 2-hour event called a Hami Raid, and generally involves coordinating approximately 140 volunteers for two hours toward jointly defeating a monster no one could defeat alone. The event is broken into phases and, frankly, even minor screw ups in any of the phases can spell disaster for all. I tend to run 2 or 3 of these a month, and a few other "Raid Leaders" on the server do the same. You need to be at the top of the game, level 50, to really participate, and folks that make it that far tend to have "strong personalities". Also, some of the 140 people are absolutely dedicated to seeing it fail for their own juvenile reasons. It's an interesting challenge. The reward for a successful raid is a very rare type of permanent bonus for your character and these can be traded. My whole purpose in running these is to make a market in these bonuses, called Hami-Os.

Since there is a continuous flow of players in and out of the raids, instructing new people and keeping the event popular is a little difficult. My solution is make an amusing instructional video showing folks what goes on and what to do. The video will be ready in December, but I was up late last night and threw together a 3 minute "trailer" to keep interest alive.



High Rez Version

If it looks a little like a confusing mass of people enveloped in lots of glowing stuff with no clue of up or down.... that's about right. You've got the experience of what it's like to be there.

I am, btw, the guy in blue with glasses who waves at the beginning and is standing near the lecture, aka BluShield.

Kiwi!

This is brilliant! Worth the 3 minute investment



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Oobleck

At some point, every physics student makes up a batch of Oobleck, a non-newtonian fluid. What's a non-newtonian fluid? Basically it's a compound that acts like water when under little or no sheer stress, but a solid when subjected to lots of stress. The most common demo shows someone stirring a beaker of the stuff with a spoon, then hitting the fluid with a hammer and watching it shatter. You can mix up a batch at home, it's basically cornstarch and water (WARNING: DO NOT DISPOSE OF OOBLECK IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL).

This demo however, is a vastly superior demonstration:



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Lt. Horvath at a Training Exercise

Department of Self-Absorption

Wow. Grover derivies the wrong lesson entirely:

Although some glitz has come off Mr Rove, Republicans have been more eager to blame botched campaigns and individual ethics scandals. “Bob Sherwood’s seat [in Pennsylvania] would have been overwhelmingly ours, if his mistress hadn’t whined about being throttled,” said Mr Norquist.

Obviously the real lesson is, "make sure the ball-gag is securely fastioned before choking your mistress.

The Last Temptation of Donald Rumsfeld