Observant readers may have been wondering why I seemed to drop off the grid for a couple of days.  Timed posts kept going up as expected, and undoubtedly other socnets seemed like they were being operated by my exocortex (which they were, for the most part).  You've probably been wondering what happened.

You know what?  Fuck it.  I don't have the compute cycles right now to do a proper intro.  I count it as fortune that I have the compute cycles just to type this right now.  There's no easy or polite way to talk about it.  My concentration is …

If you're in Silver Spring, MD near the headquarters of the Discovery Channel, sing out! Everybody okay out there?

Live police scanner feeds here.

I worked the first half of today from home because I had an appointment to have a permanant crown installed in the top-left side of my mouth. At the same time, Dr. Hong was to start drilling out tooth #30, the first molar from the front on the bottom-right side of my mouth to take care of a fairly nasty cavity that's also been giving me trouble lately.

Four hits of novocaine later and I was still feeling the drill and trying to run away from it. No matter what he did, he wasn't able to knock out the nerve …