While my week has been noticeably quiet here on my internet homestead, it has been quite the opposite for me out in the real world.
I had to go to the dental surgeon to remove a couple of wisdom teeth that had become nuisances and were putting the entire neighborhood in distress. I recognize that it was a pretty minor procedure, but like any reasonable adult, I am scared shitless of visiting the dentist. I was in a state of panic for two days leading up to the event, unable to sleep and overcome with anxiety.
On the day of the procedure, it all turned out to be relatively fast and straightforward — thanks in large part to the surgeon, who kept talking to me about photography and his love of Lindorf technical cameras. Of course, now he is a Canon man. (I wonder why the world still insists that dentists prefer Leica.) He gets full marks for keeping my focus on everything but the surgery as he extracted those getting the troublemakers out.
I was back home in just two hours, but that was followed by two days of pain. I used the prescription pills twice, but given their content (Hint: rhymes with “foxy”), I decided to switch to plain vanilla Tylenol. Between the headaches and the jaw aches, not to mention being restricted to eating only soft food, it hasn’t been fun. But I am feeling better today. Almost normal. I am even looking forward to eating a proper lunch. As I eat, I will likely mull over the question that’s been needling me: does wisdom go when the wisdom teeth do? (Let me know what you think, and the funniest answer will get tweeted on my Twitter.)
One — and maybe the only — positive side effect of the surgery was that it gave me a lot of forced downtime to do a bunch of reading. I was able to get through both my Safari Reading List and my Pocket Reading Lists. I also got a chance to enjoy a handful of movies and some cricket. Given the mediocrity of the New York Yankees, cricket is proving to be a much-needed salve for my bruised baseball fandom. Due to injuries throughout the league, even my fantasy baseball teams are proving to be disappointments.
I wanted to share some gems I found on the Internet this week while laid out in bed, struggling to will away my aches and pains. These are some perfect time wasters:
- Does your facemask come with a HEPA air-purifier, microphone, and a pair of headphones? If not, you should consider this.
- Here is a great and simple way to introduce soundproofing to your offices and apartments. Leave it to the Swedish to use a common-sense approach to screwing around.
- “Drill, baby, drill” gets a Japanese makeover.
- Can you turn music into landscapes? Hmmm!
- The Golden Gate Bridge sings. No, seriously.
- Musicians quit their pop life to find a different career. Now, that’s inspirational!
- 35.4 percent of those who answered my Twitter poll think Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5” was the best one-hit wonder of the 1990s, barely edging out the “Macarena.”
- ‘90s music was awesome! The era’s website designs? Not so much. Here’s how some of today’s top services, such as Twitter and Spotify, would have looked in the 1990s.
- Speaking of old technology, I miss this baby.
- As the world turns: Amazon now offers a monthly vinyl subscription service.
Finally, here is what I said on Twitter this week:
July 22: Washington often conflates “building more infrastructure” with “resilient infrastructure,” a risky proposition in a networked society, argues @ratulm of @intentionet, part of @trueventures community. @SenatorLujan should talk to experts like Ratul.
July 21: A team at Duke University implanted a new-generation artificial heart in a man, the first such procedure in North America. It is an implantable prosthetic that includes biological valves derived from bovine tissue & operates on an external power supply. https://buff.ly/36Rk6FK
July 20: I wonder if Freud secretly haunts the corridors of Apple’s offices: space autocorrects to SPAC.
July 19: We live in a world where you have to (proverbially) scream to get attention & credit for your efforts. It is important to own your narrative.
Jul 24, 2021, San Francisco