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For the last couple months I’ve been using a teeth whitener to shine up my pearly whites. I’m quite happy with the results.

My teeth aren’t black or horribly discolored. I don’t smoke and rarely drink red wine, those are two things that can really darken a smile. But my teeth are just a bit yellow. And darn it, I want a nice smile.

I bought a “boil-n-bite” tray set and 15 ml of 22% carbamide peroxide from Dentist.net for a total of about $40.

The boil-n-bite set came with 4 trays… good thing because my first attempt at making a form fitting tray failed. But the next two attempts (top and bottom arch) went just fine. It was a matter of warming up the tray quickly (5 seconds instead of the suggested 15 seconds) and using all my fingers to squish the trays into place. I looked a bit odd with all 10 fingers in my mouth while hovering over the stove.. but hey.

I got 22% because… well, because I’m cheap. 10% is only a few pennies cheaper but is supposedly recommended for “beginners”. Bah. I’ll admit that the first couple times I did it, I had to take the trays out after about 30 minutes because of a burning sensation in my gums, but I’m good now.

I brush my teeth, squeeze about 0.5 ml into the tray along the tooth-line in the tray, and plunk it in my mouth. I usually do both the uppers and lowers at the same time. Though I’ve done my uppers more often because that’s what people see the most. I leave them in for 45 min to 1 1/2 hrs depending on how I’m feeling and how fed up I get with having bulky trays in my mouth.

After about 5 sessions, my teeth were noticeably whiter. Importantly, they still look natural. They’re not monochromatically WHITE but an imperfect and naturally looking white-er.

The last couple sessions haven’t gotten them much whiter, but that was expected. I’ve read that the first couple sessions give the most benefit.

I could have gone to a dentist or Brite Smile but I seriously wasn’t interested in paying $600 for WHITE teeth… $40 was more my style, even if I have to stick trays in my mouth for months instead of a single 2 hr dentist visit.

Last but not least, it very much appears to be “safe and effective”. I couldn’t find anyone online that had problems with the stuff.

update 12-30-05:It’s been 8 months since I used the teeth whitening stuff and I’m still happy with the results. I went to a dentist a few weeks ago and I asked about teeth whitening products. They compared my tooth color to some tooth color swatches they had; my teeth compared to the second whitest in their swatches and they said I definitely didn’t need whitening… though they’d oblige me if I still wanted to give them money. I thought that was a bit strange because before I went in, I was thinking I might need some more whitening. I guess I’ve got a little tooth-color-anorexia. Suffice to say, I’m still happy with the results.

The report took the US intelligence community severely to task for a series of shortcomings it said led to the false conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

(Source)

Still looking for scapegoats? I remember seeing a parade of individuals in positions of authority saying that there were no WMD. People like Charles Duelfer, head of the UN Iraq Survey Group, and “official CIA reports” (so said the news).

And I recall about 2 1/2 years ago there was a stink about the president ignoring reports by the CIA and UN that said that there were no WMDs.

Yes, Mr. Hussein is a very un-nice person. But there are lots of un-nice national rulers in the world. Why not pin a target on those guys chests?

Ok, so, we went to war to put a presence in the mid-east for national security’s sake. Just freaking say that!

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I will go to my grave being angry at Colin Powell for lying in front of the UN Security Council and the tens of millions of people watching on TV. His appearance before the council on February 2nd, 2003 is what convinced me that the war was justified. He used his tremendous stage presence to deceive me.

How do I know he’s lying? He talked about a tremendous amount of “verified” incriminating evidence. Yet not a single scrap of evidence was ever found, not by the UN inspectors and not by the US military. Not a single molecule. [update 4-2-05. This statement is incorrect. See Comments below] I find it odd that we can recover data off a hard drive that has been overwritten 5 times and then smashed with a hammer but not find any traces of sought after chemicals in one out of at least “65 such facilities in Iraq” (Powell).

I just finished Half Life 2. What a huge huge sprawling insanely detailed game. It was more of a world than a game.

The 2004 Vault of Heaven Burning Man Screen Saver so lovingly created by Scorch at the Burning Man Screen Saver Project has been released! Scorch graciously mailed beautiful CDs jam packed with thousands of pictures to all 50 or so of the contributors like myself.

It’s available on the official Screen Saver Project page. It was available as a .torrent file here for several months.

Here’s the Readme from the Screen Saver Project CD.

You’ll find the PG rated version of the screen saver (no boobies etc… though you’ll have to be the judge if it’s “work-safe”) on the official site. You’ll find the R rated version (the good version) both on my site and the official site.

On the playa, I go by ‘Nector (as in ‘Connector’) and working on the Colossus project, they called me “Grinder”. See you in the dust!

Don’t know what Bittorrent is? It’s a great, free, popular, easy to use program for downloading large files. Just go to the website, download and install the program. Then come back here and click on one of those “.torrent” links. You’ll find gazillions of other big files to download at websites like isohunt.com (entire television episodes and such) and etree (music). There are a zillion other sites out there. Try Googling for the word “torrent” and your favorite subject!

How does Bittorrent work? Everyone who is downloading the file is also uploading the bits of the file that they already have to other folks. So the more people that are downloading, the more capacity there is. It is considered a generous thing if you leave your Bittorrent client running after you’ve downloaded your file; that will help others download the file quicker.

I might also mention that there are many Bittorrent clients that work very well but my favorite right now is Azureus.

George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson, eat your hearts out. No, really. Thrust your hands between your ribs, grasp your beating hearts, pull them out, and eat them.

This from Warren’s movie’s web site, Pony Trouble.com:

Currently in production, Pony Trouble is Warren Lynch’s feature length fantasy/comedy/horror movie about a group of adult toy fetishists who take their fantasy game a little too far…

Pony Trouble is an independent movie, shot entirely in Boston and edited at Music Lane Studios with music supplied by daisycutter and Freezepop. Pony Trouble’s expected release date is June 2005, so join our mailing list for advance screening information!

I’ve seen the demo and I know Warren well. This fantasy/comedy/horror movie has great cult potential.

I was a huge Babylon 5 fan. I loved everything about it, most notably what a wonderfully consistant universe JMS had created.

I went a little nutty when it came to getting this favorite show of mine. I went out and bought a $600 SVHS tape recorder and bought SVHS tapes at $12 apiece to record the whole show, 57 tapes in all. I got Direct TV just so I could record them with a higher quality digital signal.

I’d stay home to hit the pause button and meticulously remove the commercials from episodes I had already seen while recording it for posterity.

So now I have 114 hours of Babylon 5 on SVHS in a box in my garage labelled “B5 Heavy”. What am I supposed to do with it? The box really is quite heavy. The entire DVD set can be bought for $350 on eBay, $150 if you go with a Chinese bootleg.

When I was doing the collecting, I knew that I was being obsessive. I’d even tell people, “I know it’s a bit much. I figure that everyone is allowed to have just one obsessive thing in their lives. This is mine.”

What am I going to do with the set now? Sit at home and watch 114 hours of old sci-fi show?

But now that it’s done, I kind of hoped that… I don’t know… something good would come of it. It doesn’t feel right to just throw it all away.

Check out this creepy-cool animated gif I found.

Click to savor it.

Wait, it’s not animated! AAAHHH! My eyes!!

(courtesy Ebaumsworld)

When a programmer needs a nonsense phrase to insert into a document, the phrase or words that often come to mind are “foo bar”. I remember hearing long ago that there was a very well traced etymology of this phrase but I don’t want to bother switching to a different window and googling it. Besides, it would loose some of its mystery.

I’ve got a few common nonsense phrases. Heck, as I’m typing this, I’m thinking that I shouldn’t tell people these phrases. Maybe they could be plugged into some semantic analysis engine and used against me.. Years ago there was talk of passwordless systems that would detect the identity of the user by keystroke patterns and timings, phrase analysis and the like. For example, I usually use my right ring-finger to hit the apostrophe. If I had paid closer attention in my high school typing class, I would have gotten that using my pinky is faster. This slows me down just a bit but it’s completely ingrained after 15 years of typing. A computer should be able to detect my “signature” delay in typing an apostrophe and grant me appropriate system access (or electrocute me, as appropriate).

So, back to my nonsense phrases. When I am creating ficticious todo lists, one phrase has always come to mind for the last 10 years. I think to myself that it’s rather a rude phrase and that people shouldn’t know that I use it. But when I see it, I get all happy thinking about what fantasy creature is actually saying it (surely, not me!) I imagine that I’m not writing this but some powerful fleet of… I don’t know, Vogons or something are making a todo list. If you were a Vogon, what kinds of things would your daily todo list have on it? Well, my creatures have this:

• Kill all humans

The natural course of action after that is to play on that…. “eat humans” “cook humans in wine”, “nap”, “rule world” etc… A couple times I’ve had to stop myself from building my ficticious planet killing lists at jobs. I’d start the list and then realize that other people would probably be reviewing my code. It might be … … unsightly if I had to explain to someone my pseudocode list system.

For other uses I have different phrases. Ficticious email addresses? That’s easy, asdf@asdf.com is a long-time favorite. The folks at asdf.com don’t particularly mind. They realized long ago that they’d never get to use asdf@asdf.com for themselves… Jeez, they must get tens of thousands of spams a day. I like that, in order to contact a real person at asdf.com, you should send email to: jklsemicolon at asdf dot com. Cute.

Variables… Unix geeks use “foo”, “bar” and “foobar”. That is a given.. Hmm. I might dating myself with that. Are there new phrases that are used? I’d love to get comments from you, fair reader. What do you use?

I mark my temporary comments with the ubiquitous asdf just because it’s easy to do a search for in a document. I try to use LCS for comments but it takes sooo many keystrokes, SHIFT, L with the right hand, C with the left, S with the left. What a horrid chore. (wow, I’m lazy).

asdf unfinished. I’ve run out of things to say about this.

I mean, come on people, is anyone on the planet dumb enough to fall for this?

RE: AWARD WINNING NOTIFICATION: FINAL NOTICE.

We are pleased to inform you of the announcement today of winners of the CARMLOT JACKPOT LOTTO WINNINGS, PROGRAMS held on the 15th of March,2005.Your company or your personal e-mail address, is attached to ticket number 9901-0148-790-691, with serial number 6109-17 drew the lucky numbers 990-11-815-37-10-83, and consequently won the lottery in the 2nd category. You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of US$300,000.00 in cash credited to file REF NO: MELI-T/17-F044262312. This is from total prize money of US$9,000,000.00 shared among the Thirty (30) international winners in this category. All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 25,000 names from Australia, New Zealand, America, Europe, North America and Asia, as part of International Promotions Program, which is conducted annually…

By the time I got half way though reading this, I was squinting my eyes and scratching my head. “Where the f… do they get this drivel?”

That it made it to me is a testament that the technical staff defeated Spam Assassin and Microsoft Outlook Junk email filter. So why can’t I get a picture of Ed McMahon in my email or an Easter Seals phishing attack or some such. I’m bored with these International lottery phish. One (1) a day makes it through my shields… and that’s one (1) a day too many.

I was initially impressed with the quality of the Washington Mutual “reset your password” attacks. But then they started getting sloppy.

I was most impressed with a couple Paypal attacks I got. Fonts, images, style, all dead on… except for a little grammer. And that was the first time I had gotten an email from a phish that LOOKED like a text email with a link in it, but was actually an HTML email made to look as such with the links altered appropriately like this…(imagine the font is Courier New):

Go to the Paypal site now by clicking below
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login

Nice.

Health insurance for an individual is, as we all know, quite expensive. About 6 months ago, I did some hunting around to try and find health insurance for my self. Here’s what I found. I live in NJ so some of this advice might not be appropriate for you.

I’d get a great break on insurance if I had a company with just other employee (must work at least 25 hrs a week or so)

NJ Blue Cross Blue Shield (the “official” provider for NJ..) is freaking expensive. They wanted to charge me $650/month for moderately good insurance.

The IEEE has a good insurance program. You’ve got to be a member for 2 years before being eligible… Since membership is $100/year and it would save me $150/month in insurance, I immediately joined. I’m still waiting for my membership to mature though.

You want to be in a group. 1 person obviously gets more sick, more often than that same person as long as he’s paired up with someone. Hurumph.

NJ law makes it so that I can’t get cheap but crappy insurance. Instead, I must get good, expensive insurance… well, expensive at the least. This differs from many states. I noted that you can get things like $10,000 deductible insurance in California for $90/month

Don’t be afraid to get phone numbers and call on the phone. I sometimes got more done in a 20 minute phone call than an hour browsing confusing medical insurance websites.

I eventually ended up going with a trusted client’s recommendation. I get my Health insurance from Medical Insurance Claims Inc. of Kinnelon NJ. I pay about $370/month for a good Oxford plan… $30 copays, RX paid 1/2.

Here’s some links I collected. They may or may not be useful or still valid:

http://www.workingtoday.org/resources/insurancebenefits.php
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http://www.workingtoday.org/productsservices/products.php
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http://www.asmeinsurance.com/
I have to be a member for 2 years first.
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ACM.org Association for Computing Machinery. $99/year
– Professional Liability Insurance – about $1800/year
– Major Medical – blue shield of NJ 212-476-1111
– Catastrophe Major Medical Insurance – no
– Disability Income – yes
– Auto – 1-800-524-9400 www.libertymutual.com/lm/acm
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Marsh Affinity Group Services 1-800-503-9230 http://www.seaburychicago.com/cwp.asp?assn=ACM
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IEEE computer society – http://www.computer.org/
$95/year to join IEEE and Computer Society as a professional (partial year)
– Comprehensive HealthCare Insurance – must be in IEEE for 2 years. 1-877-886-0110
– Disability Income – 20 units of $130/month, 90 day waiting period: $216/year
– Professional Liability – through Marsh Affinity Group
– Discount Prescription Plan
– msa plan
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Blue Cross of NJ (crappy insurance)
http://www.horizon-bcbsnj.com/members_rates.asp?urlsection=members
Plan: Plan A/50
Effective Date: 4/2004
Deductible: $10,000.00
50% coinsurance
$5,000 coinsurance cap
Monthly Rate: $242.52
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http://www.nationalbusiness.org/
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Small business something or another http://www.nfib.com (but not in NJ)
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insurance quotes at: http://www.ehealthinsurance.com
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http://www.keystonetosuccess.com/
What the frig is is? Just a discount plan? I was referred to this by http://www.nationalbusiness.org/NBAWEB/Premium3600/NBAcontact.htm
Ah… It’s a pharmacy discount
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Nationwide Health Plans–NFIB Ohio
1-800-551-4312, option 4 < --- Call --------------------------------------------------- update 8-1-05 Good to know: When you get your insurance, use a company that provides a real live human being at your service. When something goes awry and you are battling the insurance provider, it will be good to have an agent that knows all of the loopholes and such. I am right now in the process of getting health insurance in California. It is amazing, I can get very similar insurance in California for $170 that I would've paid $370 for in New Jersey. I am going to opt for a less inclusive $100 per month plan. A 70% discount!