Month: March 2007

Well it’s time, time to de-clutter the Disher household. We started last night with the office closet.

I think I inherited the ‘keep it cause you never know when your gonna need it’ from my grandfather. The amount of stuff he had was unbelievable. His basement was comparable to most hardware stores. In fact he bought out a hardware store that was going out of business, as well as had some sort of arrangement with a some guys at a fastener company and he’d often raid their ‘trash’ for packages of nuts and bolts that were fine but weren’t packaged properly.

Yeah, I’m sure that’s where I got it.

Last night we unpacked and cleared out the office closet. It was amazing. Now consider that this closet is roughly 3 feet by 10 feet, but it was fully packed.

Packed with stuff that I in the past I just couldn’t bear to part with.

No less than 3 different sets of cordless phones we’ve used over the years. 3 complete vintage laptop systems, including an original Wall Street G3, and two old Sony’s. Not worth much on ebay, no, but still over the years I didn’t toss them, I just packed them away because “You never know”. I bet all in all we tossed $20k worth of electronics at their original retail price back in the day. Simply amazing.

I had 2 US Robotics Currier v.everything modems from a bulletin board I ran many, many years ago. 3 different ISDN modems/router combos from when we first moved in and ISDN was all we could get. 3Com and a vintage lucent, which in the day was the ISDN router to have.

Boxes of floppy disks from the FPS 1.0 days with GolfTrac on them (400 of them), plus another hundred or so packed away in Jewel cases ready for shipment.

Media, CD media, tons of applications and programs well over 12 years old. Stuff dating back to the late 80’s and early 90’s.

I should have taken pictures.

Believe it or not, we bagged up well over 15 large garbage bags full of stuff, and that’s just a start. We probably need to rent a dumpster to clean out the basement and the barn. If nothing else, it’s proof we know how to pack and get the most out of our storage space.

Our garbage folks are not going to be happy with us.

Dentists it’s hard to find a good one, but I think I have.

Approximately 7 years ago when we moved to our current home we started using a local dentist. He’s been OK, certainly gentle enough with cleanings and what not, but it just wasn’t ‘great’. The office was a bit dated equipment wise, or at least it seemed that way to me.

Throughout my life I’ve had more than my fair share of dental work. I inherited my mother’s ‘soft’ teeth and it always seemed like I couldn’t get out of a dental visit without some cavity filling or something.

Over the last couple years though, I’ve not needed anything past your basic cleaning. Since most of my mouth is mostly metal at this point, maybe that’s not out of the ordinary.

Then about 3 years ago, I ended up with a sensitive tooth, no I take that back, a very sensitive tooth at times. Ever visit to the dentist I’d point it out to him and he’d poke around and take some vintage X-rays. But he could never find anything. He said it’s probably cracked somewhere and I just can’t see it. It will break one day then we’ll fix it.

Well three years later and it was still sensitive, usually when biting down on something hard like a nut or when you get into a steak and find something a bit tough.

On my last visit there I was pretty adamant about getting this fixed, but of course he couldn’t really find the root cause. Again, he said it would break if it was a crack. I decided then I was going to find a new dentist.

Well no less than a week later, it happened. The entire inside half of the tooth came off and it wasn’t a lot of fun. I lived with it for a couple days maybe a couple weeks while trying to figure out what to do about it. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going back to the same guy who a week prior couldn’t figure it out.

About a week after that while chewing some gum I pulled a big junk of filling out of what was left of the tooth. Things only went downhill from there.

I did some digging on our insurance website and found a pretty nice dentist nearby. I made an appointment and went in for a visit. This place was very new and very modern. All of the equipment was great. They took x-rays and immediately showed me the results on an LCD screen in the same room. The tooth was savable but needed a crown. They made a temporary repair and things were better. There was only one problem. I don’t do Novocain, and they don’t do gas. I’m not talking about knock you out kind of stuff, just nitrous or whatever they give you that lest you float around the room. Yeah you still feel that they are working on you and at times it stings a bit, but the bottom line is you don’t care.

So the quest for another dentist began. I asked around the office at work and got a referral, then an appointment.

Two days later and $800 lighter I had a temporary crown, and all the prep work done.

It worked out well. Dr Buchholz did a great job. The office is nice and up to date. While they aren’t as ‘techy’ as the dentist I originally visited, all went really well.

I had the actual crown put on this morning and things went pretty smoothly. I would not hesitate to recommend Dr. Buchholz.

Oh, and no novocain was required. 🙂