Monthly Archives: April 2011

Weather

It’s a Twister!

Friday night, we endured what is now being called the biggest storm to hit St. Louis since about 1967. Tornadoes, wind, massive lightning, toad-stranglers… we had it all. An EF4 tornado walked through the area where I work, crossed the river, and walked across the airport, villages, towns and hamlets, leaving a really long path of destruction — on the order of dozens and dozens of miles. In fact, we could see the northern tornado on the radar, and watched it work its way across St. Charles County, right across the radar dome, and into St. Louis County. I’ve never seen a tornado signature more clear on the radar.

What’s impressive, though is how our home was never in the tornado warning boxes. The big blue circle on the weather map is the house, and at the height of all the action, we were outside the red warning boxes. (Click on the image to see it embiggened.) Simply amazing. The wind blew, and it rained a bunch, but it was nothing like what the areas around us had to endure.

Tornado Warnings
Tornado Warnings (form the iPad WeatherScope app)

Once again, the WeatherShield™ technology apparently employed around our house has warded off the threatening weather. I told Beck that I thought it was something all the Apple gear was emitting that was keeping us safe… perhaps changing the nature of the atmosphere around us. While I doubt that’s true, at this point, I’m simply happy about the outcome!

General

Pounding on My Face

I’ve probably mentioned somewhere in all my nattering that I was going through the process of getting an implant to replace a tooth I cracked in half back in 2009. In December (I think), we finally got the implant landed — not the most fun process in the world. Several checkups and x-rays, and things looked ok… until last week.

Last week was to have been the final checkup. In this one, the oral surgeon was checking the implant with something not far off of a torque wrench. Presumably, that was to check that the implant was gonna stay in place before inserting a permanent post in there, and a crown atop that post. She cranks on it, and then she says “That’s not good” followed by “It failed”. Ugh.

What that means is that the implant — apparently — didn’t survive the torque test, and unscrewed right out of my jaw. After looking at the x-rays, her and dentist decided I needed a bone graft to build up jawbone to help hold the next implant attempt in place. Yesterday, we did the graft.

While it wasn’t the most miserable process in the world — although there was still some mallet-on-skull action this time ’round — the aftermath has been much worse. A ton more swelling, and a lot more pain. To put it in perspective… when the implant was installed, I was hurting for just a few hours, and I only had to take pain meds once. With this thing, I’m coming up on 24 hours of pain meds, and am still hurting. This isn’t uncommon, as they have to really stretch the gum to take all the new bone material that’s been inserted. That gets pretty aggravated, and it certainly isn’t shy about letting me know.

Not a fun way to spend Tax Day!!!!

Rants, Sports

The Cards, Fox Sports Midwest, UVerse and MLB

4 Comments

So, I know nobody reads this, and this is about the same as screaming in a empty forest, but I’m torqued, and this is my only outlet.

Apparently, Fox Sports Midwest and UVerse are in a pissing contest over money for twenty baseball games. I guess that FSMW has packages of games — one at 132, and another at 152 — and UVerse has elected to go with the 132 package.

So the fans are caught in the middle.

Thinking that MLB could come to my rescue, I went to MLB’s site to sign up for their MLB TV package (delivered through my AppleTV). That service won’t show me games in which the Cardinals are playing, because I’m deemed to be in the Cardinals broadcast area, and they wanna protect the local guys (either over-the-air broadcast, or FSMW).

While it’s technically true that I’m in the Cardinal’s area, it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to see this game, or apparently twenty others… unless I change providers.

It is entirely evident to me that the various enterprises with their fingers in this situation (probably not the Cardinals, although I don’t know that for sure) have completely lost sight of who the consumer of their products are — the fans and viewers.

Now, UVerse has my money, and me under contract, so they don’t care. That’s probably true for many folks in this same situation.

FSMW already has my money vicariously through UVerse, and likely couldn’t care a bit about whether I see the game or not. Their money’s in hand, and there’s no way I can influence them in any way.

MLB is trying to do the right thing, but doesn’t have a way of determining if I’m on UVerse or something else. However, they would like to charge me $120/yr to see every game EXCEPT the ones I most likely wanna see — my home team — through MLB.TV, so they don’t care about this.

Truly, the golden rule applies — he who has the gold, makes the rules. Those of us that are downstream from that just get to enjoy being bashed about by the current whim of those industries and entities who continue to poor-mouth, pointing at each other as the party at fault.

I think it’s back to AM radio broadcasts for me. The Cards have moved back to KMOX, so I can hear them again (sorry KTRS!), and that game delivery is open and free.

For now.

We now return you to the normal tone of this blog.