Monthly Archives: February 2009

The Gentle Dental

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Today was D-Day (Dental Day). Got out of bed; I wasn’t looking forward to the looming appointment at 11:30 AM. Went for my usual morning walk, had some breakfast, powered on my computer, checked my emails, and then went for a swim. It was like any other day, except for that dreaded appointment. Then I reasoned to myself—did I want a major toothache to erupt before I would visit the dentist? Memories of 20 years ago came back to haunt me. Furthermore, I had already visited my dentist two days ago and he said that the root canal treatment for this present tooth wouldn’t be too painful as the nerve was already dead.

Before I knew it, the morning was almost over and it was time to make the trip to see the dentist. So I was ushered in and the doc started to do his thing. It was the usual poking, drilling, etc. which dentists are known for (I must admit, the sound of those high speed drills still sends shivers down my spine). Other than an injection or two, I was surprised and relieved to find that the whole procedure was relatively painless, and it was over in 20 minutes. I was fixed up with painkillers, had some gauze in my mouth to stop the temporary bleeding, and that was it.

I’ll have to see the doc again in about two day’s time. Once he’s satisfied that the tooth has no more abscess and infection, he’ll seal it with a filling, and that will be the end of things. Oh, and I must remember to pay the man.

Go for regular dental checkups, even if you believe your teeth are fine and you aren’t experiencing any pain. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than getting a toothache—it’s a real drag, especially in the middle of the night.

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Go away, root canal

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For me procrastination is the state I’m in whenever the time comes for a dental appointment. Now that I’m a full-fledged adult and parent, I suppose the choice is mine whether to go for an appointment or not. I’ve been very good these past few years, scheduling at least one dental checkup a year.

Lately I’ve been noticing a slight numbness in one of my teeth, so I rang up the dentist for an appointment. I’ll tell you why—about 20 years ago I experienced a similar pain—and ignored it. Then one evening the pain flared up, and it got worse as night came. I tried some gel, some painkillers, gargling with salt water, nothing seemed to work. It got so bad that I never did get any sleep that night. As soon as morning approached, I quickly went to see the dentist, and was told that one of my teeth had a pretty bad abscess—root canal treatment was scheduled on the spot to save the tooth. I was lucky to have chosen a good dentist; seems that some other dentists would simply insist on extracting the infected tooth. And the pain then was terrible, although I was given two painkiller injections.

Now 20 years on, I’ve learnt my lesson. My dentist told me that I wouldn’t experience so much discomfort this time round as I did not procrastinate on seeking treatment. Gee, that’s comforting. Anyway I made an appointment to do root canal treatment in two day’s time. Wish me luck.

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Another one bites the dust

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So I’m going for my daily swim and decide to stop by the management office to pay my monthly service charge. I meet up with Tony, our building supervisor, an affable guy. He mutters about his Yahoo Mail, saying that somehow or other the darn thing has been in Malay for the past few weeks, and for the life of him, he can’t get it back into English. He told me that he’s asked three other guys (supposedly IT geeks) to solve the problem for him. They tried, they tried for hours, and failed to resolve it.

He asked me whether I was game for the challenge. Heh, you know me. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot.”

Now I know next to nothing about Yahoo Mail, as I use Hotmail myself. But the settings and options should be pretty similar. Only thing is, all the text is in Malay, and my Malay frankly isn’t that good. Click this link, click that link—nothing works. It won’t revert to English. Now I remember what the wise computer sages advised: “When all fails, read the #!@$ manual.”

Well it’s not cheating, is it. I do a search for language and sure enough, find some stuff. There are a few steps to follow, so I do it and presto! The man’s Yahoo Mail is back to English again. Took me about 10 minutes. The management office staff said I was a genius. Nah, but I’ve always liked a challenge (typical of us computer geeks).

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The Blame Game

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I’m sure all you computer users and geeks out there have faced this scenario many times before—you install a new program, and suddenly your system goes into a hysterical state, or even worse, goes belly-up.

A few days ago, I decided to upgrade to the latest version of Messenger Plus! which is a third-party add-on for Windows Live Messenger. This latest version (4.80) as Patchou the author assures us, is fully compatible with the latest WLM. Alright, so I download Plus! and install it—no hiccups there. After that I click on my Start menu button to access another program. Wait a second, what’s this? Most of my Start menu program shortcuts have vanished! OMG!

I check in my C:\Program Files folder and am relieved that all my program folders are still there. Check the Vista Programs and Features thingy and yes, all my programs are listed. It’s only the shortcuts that have disappeared into thin air—that meant I had to spend an hour or two recreating them. Trust me, it’s no fun.

After accomplishing this arduous task, I pause and take a step back (yes, I’m fond of doing that, not literally though). I suppose my first reaction would be to blame Plus! for heaping this calamity on my system. But, and this is a big but—I’ve been using Plus! for years now, and it has never given me any trouble. I scour the Plus! forums and no, doesn’t seem like anyone else has met with this predicament. And as stated in the home page over 60 million people use Plus!

I reason to myself—no, it can’t be Plus! I decide to use Vista’s sfc (system file checker). You have to run this utility in a command box (and it has saved my bacon a few times before, even during my XP days). So I go to Run, type cmd, and a command window opens. Type sfc /scannow and system file checker dutifully runs. This is the part where I go do something else (I don’t like watching grass grow). After some time I come back to the computer and find that it has finished. And what do you know—sfc reports that it has found some file corruption in my system (or something to that effect) and has made repairs. I type Exit to close the command window.

Now here’s the scary part. I uninstall Plus! (an earlier version) completely, and reboot. I then install version 4.80, the installation goes without a hitch; remember not to install the sponsor program, which is adware. I start WLM up, and Plus! is integrated into it. Twiddle the settings a little bit and check tabbed chats—they work now, yay! Check my Start menu program shortcuts, everything’s there—great!

There’s a moral to this story somewhere.

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Post-Holiday Blues

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Let me get this out of the way first—I like holidays. Who doesn’t? However, I dislike it when they end, because that means getting back to work again; who was it who said everything has a beginning and an ending. And so it was with the recent Chinese New Year holidays—it was a five-day break for me, but what a heavenly break! To be plain lazy for five days, though I still did my laps in the pool.

Maybe it was pure coincidence, but I felt a little sick yesterday—it was like the flu bugs attacking me at a time when I was most vulnerable. Took an actifed tablet last night an hour before going to bed (this cold medication causes drowsiness, so it was appropriate for me to take it just before bedtime) and felt better this morning. Went for a swim to release more endorphins.

It is Sunday, February 1, as I write this. Tomorrow it’s back to the normal routine. Won’t think too much of these post-holiday blues, so hopefully they’ll leave me and go bug somebody else.

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