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The worst of the discomfort from the wisdom teeth removal finally subsided Friday night and I haven’t had to take a Vicodin since then.  I’m still kind of sore, but it’s not too bad.  I’m glad it finally ended, because I was starting to worry that something was wrong (and I was also getting really tired of the constant pain).

Throughout the day yesterday my hosting company (Dreamhost) was the target of a major distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) (it was actually aimed at one of their main routers), making it nearly impossible to access my website or my email server.  This also affected The Bitch Girls, as they are hosted on my account.

In this article about the gorilla that escaped from the Dallas Zoo last week, I came across this little gem:

Meanwhile, animal activists are planning a memorial service and candlelight vigil for Jabari at 7:30 tonight at Dallas City Hall.

Excuse me?!  WTF?!

I’m coming to believe that there isn’t anything too stupid that “animal activists” won’t try it.  There were people injured in this incident and they’re mourning a freakin’ gorilla?!  Give me a break!

This whole business with the wisdom teeth is starting to get really old.  Everyone I’d talked to about the operation has had a horror story to tell about one thing or another.  I originally thought that some of it was probably the usual embellishment that occurs when people relate their personal medical experiences.  But now I’m coming to appreciate the reality of it. 

Today will be one week since the procedure and I’m still experiencing quite a bit of discomfort.  In fact, I’ve experienced an interesting variety of pain over the past week: The deep throbber, which radiates out from the area where the teeth used to be and infuses the rest of my head.  The sharp shooter, which zaps you with a momentary blinding flash at unexpected times.  The burning-itching-sliced sensation which inhabits the area around the sutures and never quite seems to go away.  And last, but definitely not least, is the vice-grip headache that I had for several days, which brings me to the pillow.

For the first few days I was told to sleep in a somewhat upright position (to reduce swelling), which only made the headaches worse.  I’ve never been able to sleep on my back because I would get a nasty headache almost as soon as the back of my head hit the pillow.  Over the years I’d tried a number of things, such as different types of pillows, propping myself up, no pillow, etc, but none of them worked and I resigned myself to sleeping on my stomach.  But even with the painkillers I couldn’t stand the headaches anymore and tried to sleep on my stomach a couple of nights ago.  I managed to find a position that didn’t put pressure on the affected areas, but I ended up with swelling when I got up. 

I did some research yesterday and found that other people who got headaches from sleeping on their backs got relief from using theraputic neck support pillows.  The problem seems to be that improper neck support puts stress on the neck muscles, causing a tension headache (the symptoms of which matched what I’d always experienced).  I looked around and finally decided on the Tempur-Pedic Neck Pillow.  The downside is that it cost $125.  That gave me pause for a little while, but the need for a decent night’s sleep finally won out (although the idea of a $125 pillow might have kept me up…).

I wasn’t sure it would work, but I tried it last night.  Even though I had a little discomfort at first I didn’t get the usual headache.  I had a little bit of one when I first got up this morning, but it quickly went away.

The verdict so far, then, is that even though it seemed expensive it was definitely worth it.  It’s hard to put a price on getting a decent night’s sleep for a change.

The title of this post is taken directly from the subject line of a spam that I just received on my work email.  Our company’s mail servers have spam filters that block out tremendous amounts of spam each day, but lately I’ve seen a number of these getting through.  The use of unusual words is the latest attempt by the spammers to get around Bayesian filters.  It works to some extent, but by rendering their messages nonsensical it makes it quite simple for me to delete their messages unread. 

Further, they are being forced to insert random words and punctuation into the body of the emails, which makes them almost unreadable.  If we can at least continue to force the spammers to make themselves spout gibberish then we may eventually win this war.  Spammers have to push a product at some point in their messages, but that’s hard to do when they’re forced to write gibberish to get past the filters.  Or at least that’s my hope.  Given that spammers are fiendishly clever technically, but abysmally stupid socially, I may be hoping for too much.

Alternately, we may be able to take advantage of the gibberish nature of the spam to enhance the Bayesian filters with another layer of filtering that looks at grammar and structure.  Granted, this might require the current generation of IM-kiddies to learn to spell and to write in complete sentences, but I think of that as a feature rather than a bug.

I’ve become a skeptic of late concerning the most recent drunk-driving laws.  I originally supported MADD in most of its efforts, but I think they’ve outlived their usefulness and are starting to go off the deep end.  As an example, the 0.08 laws seem designed simply to ensnare people who have had one or two drinks and don’t actually pose a risk to other drivers.  The real problem drivers are the chronic drunks who get stinking drunk and drive regardless of penalties.

Given all this, I’m not sure what to think of a new law that recently went into effect in Ohio.

A new state law in Ohio requires judges to brand convicted drunk drivers with special “scarlet letter” license plates—with red numbers on a yellow background so other motorists will know exactly what they’ve done.

I’m always wary of laws like this that attempt to alert the community to someone’s actions.  I think that if a person is that much of a risk, then the original punishment should be severe enough to get that person out of circulation until they are no longer a risk (which is why I oppose sex offender registration; if they’re so dangerous then they should have gotten life and shouldn’t be out and about).

Anyhow, don’t think I have any sympathy for real drunk drivers (i.e. ones who were at 0.10 or higher) who cause real danger to others.  That’s why I’m not particularly moved by this complaint.

And of course, not everyone likes the red-and-yellow plates. Those who get slapped with them say they’re humiliating—not only to them but to others in their families who get hit with the drunk-driving stigma when they take the car out for a spin.

There’s a very simple solution to this problem.  Don’t get in the damn car if you’ve had too much to drink.

I’ve noticed a number of commercials on TV for some kind of chemical skin peel.  I know women will go to great lengths to look better, but I am somewhat amused that the commercial touts the fact that the product contains the highest recommended level of glycolic acid for a cosmetic product.  When you get down to it you’re putting acid on your face in order to peel off a layer of skin.  Somehow that doesn’t sound too appealing to me.

Anyhow, while it isn’t the most potent acid available, consider one of its other uses:

Glycolic acid uses both the hydroxyl and carboxylic acid groups to form five-member ring complexes (chelates) with polyvalent metals. This metal ion complexing ability is useful in dissolution of hard water scale and prevention of deposition, especially in acid cleaning applications where good rinsibility is a key factor.

I think I could live with “fine lines and wrinkles” if it meant avoiding an acid treatment…

In the comments to this post from yesterday, Roger Ritter tried some different search terms on Ready.gov.  Searching for “pistol” returns a very interesting result.

Maybe someone there does have a sense of humor after all?

While I was vegging out over the weekend I caught an episode of Airline on A&E.  For those who haven’t seen it, it’s one of those ‘reality’ shows where they follow the day-to-day activities of Southwest Airlines and some of its passengers.  In this case a woman became irate and caused a scene when the airline wouldn’t let her grandmother on the plane with her medical oxygen.  She claimed to have planned the trip months in advance.  If she’d really been that prepared she’d have known that oxygen containers are not allowed on passenger flights.  Southwest in particular has no provision for medical oxygen (see here).  If a person can’t travel without oxygen, that person can’t travel on Southwest.  Other airlines can accomodate medical oxygen, although as far as I can tell none of them will allow a passenger to bring their own container (either in the cabin or as checked baggage).  It makes sense, since you’re dealing with a pressurized container in a low-pressure environment (airline cabins are pressurized, but not to normal sea-level; they tend maintain a pressure similar to 7000 or 8000 ft. above sea-level).  A quick check of American Airlines shows that you have to notify them in advance and they charge $100 per flight leg (see here).

I felt sorry for the Southwest employees because they were being abused pretty badly by this woman over something they can’t change.  Maybe I’m just a nervous traveller, but I always check this kind of stuff ahead of time.  I’m continually amazed at people who make a stink over something that they could have avoided if they’d done the tinest bit of research.  All this woman would have had to do was to call the airline and ask about the oxygen. 

Anyhow, I probably wouldn’t have written anything about it, except that I came across this article today.

Aircraft with dangerously low levels of oxygen could cause major respiratory problems for passengers.

Scientists have issued the warning after studying cabin pressure and associated oxygen levels for 300 hours on 80 domestic and international aircraft.

A respiratory scientist at Concord Hospital in Sydney, Leigh Seccombe, said oxygen levels may be too low for people with lung and respiratory illnesses to travel safely, even though aircraft met current safety standards.

In the study, to be presented at the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand’s annual congress in Sydney next week, patients with minor lung and respiratory diseases could not get enough oxygen in a simulated aircraft cabin.

The woman on the show tried to call the doctor to get a release so she could fly without oxygen.  I guess it’s a good thing that the doctor refused.  If she’d been successful in bullying the doctor into releasing the grandmother to fly without oxygen and she’d died, I bet she would have sued the doctor and the airline.

On Saturday morning (after the local anesthetic faded during the night) I felt like my jaw had been taken apart and reassembled slightly out of line.  I also felt like an elephant had stepped on my head.  My cheeks started swelling up and finally peaked on Monday (which is what the post-op instruction sheet said would happen).  I looked like a chipmonk.  A rather grizzled chipmonk, since my jaw was so sore that I couldn’t even shave until today.

Because of some last-minute project stuff that came up last week I had to go back to work on Monday.  I know now that I was too optimistic about my ability to do so.  I lasted half-a-day before I had to take a Vicodin, which effectively ended my usefulness for work.  I spent the rest of the day staring at the ceiling in a stupor.  Today I had to make it to a 2:00pm meeting (mainly because I was supposed to be running it…), so I couldn’t take a Vicodin.  Tylenol manged to dull things enough to make it through the day, but it wasn’t very comfortable.  Annoyingly, after I went through all that we had to move the meeting to tomorrow because one of the major players couldn’t attend. 

I’m convinced that all this pushing myself to work is making the recovery take longer.  At a minimum I have to talk on conference calls, which makes my jaw hurt more.  Oh well, if this is all I have to complain about then I’m not so bad off.  I can only imagine what this baby and her parents are going through.