Last night was the next chapter of the Tale of Tooth Twelve: Post and Filling.

After the excavation, the dentist left a temporary filling over the gaping hole. I managed to crack this temp filling on Tuesday night while eating a granola bar (damned delicious almonds), revealing the rubbery plug providing support underneath the filling. As it turns out, though, this was no big deal; I was careful about crunchy things for the next day or so and everything was OK.

The procedure itself was cake. The nerve tissue in that tooth had been removed during the excavation, so anesthetic wasn’t really necessary. Granted, the cold air on my gums was uncomfortable, and the way the temporary filling got drilled out was unnerving, but otherwise things were OK.

Right now I have a post embedded in the actual root canal; this provides internal structural support to the natural and artificial surfaces. (I think it’s some sort of plastic but I’m not certain.) On top of that is an epoxy filling; apparently I was the first at that office to receive that particular sort of epoxy, because the dentist and his assistants were all geeking out over the consistency and finish and set time.

I get the crown in a couple weeks. After that, #12 will be basically fixed.

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This past weekend I got my tax refund. Once some bills were paid and a sizable chunk of money applied towards existing debt, Fred and I went to replace a few articles of clothing and a few things around the house. We also did some minor splurging here and there; the largest single purchase of the weekend was a new iPod for me, as my previous one bit the big one. Other notable purchases include some work-type clothes and a new DVD player-slash-stereo to replace the dying separate units.

The best part of buying new stuff is the sheer novelty of new stuff, of course. The second-best part, though, is getting rid of that which is no longer useful or functional, and we got pretty extreme with our clothing purge. For about half an hour we dug through every corner of the closet and dressers and basket of just-done laundry —

• Do you wear this?
• No.
• ‘k. *chucks another item onto pile; grabs next thing* Do you wear this?

etc. By the time we were finished the bed was COVERED in old, donatable clothing, and the trash can was overflowing with old, non-donatable socks ‘n’ underwear. Now that all of that is gone, though, we can just about fit all of our clothing into a single dresser, and there is sufficient room in the closet to root idly through for the Perfect Look [tm] without having to remove crap first.

I will confess, though, that in our search for the aforementioned DVD/stereo, we very nearly sprung for a new TV. So far we’ve been able to resist, although I can see the day approaching where we’ll let down our guard. (I have found myself researching brands and models, and this is rarely a good sign.)

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Fred has a new site for his emerging practice. He’s adding content regularly, so keep an eye on MetaWholeness.

Well, between the dental drama, a few other money-type commitments, and the sometimes-iffy availability of the hardware itself, I think I’ll wait on the Kurobox. Still looking for something smaller/quieter/more energy efficient, though.

Today, while digging through shelves at the office I stumbled across an unused “bronze keyboard” Powerbook that appears to be in good condition. The wheels got turning, and I got to thinking about converting it to a home server. To do so, I will need to purchase a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card and either an external enclosure for the existing PATA drive, an external enclosure + new SATA or PATA hard drive, or a new external HDD.

Big advantages of this approach (relative to the Kurobox) are a lower necessary startup cost, a bit of flexibility (to change something, just open the lid and type), built-in power protection (batteries), and a surfeit of packages for the PPC platform.

Drawbacks relative to the Kurobox are the fact that the laptop batteries won’t protect the external drive from power loss, and the fact that the laptop on its own has a maximum power consumption of 45W compared to the Kurobox’s 17W. (Much of the laptop’s theoretical max would be devoted to using the CD-ROM, using the internal hard drive, and powering the LCD backlight; I intend to pull the CD-ROM after installation, and I plan on using the other two as little as possible. Doesn’t affect power usage on the external HD, though.) But while the Kurobox beats the laptop on those two fronts, the laptop is still a far cry better than the current system. Additionally, if I really want to take a Kuroboxy approach later on, I can do that and just put the laptop/external drive assembly someplace else as my offsite backup (duplicity, w00t).

of course, first i need to see if i can even have that laptop.

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Crunching with BOINC on a couple systems: my home laptop, Fred’s Mac mini, the home server, and my office workstation. Fred’s is the most recent addition to the mini-cluster, and so far I don’t think he’s noticed any difference in performance.

Also have MacFUSE and sshfs going on his computer. Essentially, now we both have secure wireless access to the home server — from home or elsewhere — and I can probably turn off netatalk and save a port and a few cycles.

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I have a post brewing about energy efficiency. Light bulbs are the easiest way to describe the economic benefits of efficiency, but I want to expand beyond how CFLs will save you money on your light bill. Since I’m not 100% certain how I’m going to achieve this, I’m going to set it on the back burner.

Joe. My. God. posts on how Pride doesn’t need to be “reformed”, on why drag queens and leather dykes invariably wind up in news reports on Pride festivities, and on how the political aspects are nowhere near as important as some people think they are. Probably the most insightful piece I’ve yet read on the whole Pride phenomenon, and an important primer for those of you who are unsure about what the hell the big fuss is.

If you hop to it, you can get free MP3 files of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, as recorded by the BBC Philharmonic. At this writing it’s just numbers 1-5, but in a couple weeks the other four will be available (mark your calendar!).

BBC - Radio 3 - Beethoven Experience - downloads

Please note that they’ve taken the monolithic approach to ripping these MP3s — each file contains the ENTIRE symphony, instead of one file per movement — so if you’re short on time and/or bandwidth and/or disk space then you should probably explore other venues. (especially if you’re after that Third Symphony, “Eroica” [please note the absence of the letter "T"], at 51MB). Of course, some kind soul is bound eventually to split them into MP3s for each movement of each symphony.

w00t for BoingBoing for publicizing this one.