What's closing in? Vacation! A sweet week of snow and (hopefully) sunshine in the northern reaches of this long long country we know as Sweden. Well maybe you don't know it, but I do, I know it like the back of my hand. How well do I really know the back of my hand? Not that well. I mean, I do look at it from time to time, but it's not like I can recall the specific locations of the veins or the textures or how many sunspots there are on the back of my hand. It's the same thing with Sweden, but it's still like a part of me, just like the back of my hand. Enough about backs and hands though. The topic at post is I'm leaving on Wednesday and I think I might be catching a cold.

Pause for suspense.

Last time I flew with a cold it felt like my eardrums were about to explode. I don't want a retake on that not spectacularly pleasant experience, so I've been eating tons of healthy food today. Ginger, raw onions, a whole lot of fruit, echinacea, horse radish, etcetc. Time for a shower and some deep sleep. And then what? It's Monday! Huzzah! I'm leaving on Wednesday btw. Later.

Also. Summer time just sprung in. Clock your clocks.

You remember this? Well I thought I'd start the countdown a bit earlier this year. ;)

I created a simple script in which you could interact with an AI through a chat a few years ago. All phrases and questions were stored in an XML document, but suddenly I ran into some trouble, the script just wouldn't work. I remember I spent quite some time trying to find errors in the code structure, but I never found it, so the work was discontinued and stashed away. I picked it back up again today and it turns out I had been using numbers at the start of a series of XML tags. If you work with XML you should know that tags can't start with a number, so I've been doing some restructuring, and hey, it works again! Check out the script in the stuff directory. Or you could just click this link. The vocabulary is still a bit limited, but at least it works. :)

A month later, still aint nothing happened.

Chris Brogran posted a list of a hundred blog topics he hoped someone would write about. I was planning on covering all his topics with one blog each, for fun, but then I read through the topics and realized that he and I must be very different people. Very few of the mentioned topics are topics that I am either knowledgeable of or interested in writing about. So instead of writing a blog for each topic, I'll write a line about why I won't write more lines about each of the topics. Prepare for a long post anyway. Here we go...

1 How I Use Facebook

To keep track of friends. Also very unwillingly. I feel it undermines the social values of real life communication and friendship. It also takes up way too much time.

2 Ways I Embrace My Audience

I don't. In writing these blogs I'm probably about as sociable as a wall. I just like writing, if people like reading what I write, then all is good. If they don't, shame. Should I embrace my audience? *

3 Should My Town Use Social Media?

No, and I hope they won't.

4 A Community I Love

Newgrounds.

5 Technology That Empowers Me

My computer. The one that is a part of me. I'm speaking about my brain, one of the most sophisticated mechanisms in this world that we have yet to fully understand or replicate.

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This is a follow-up to this post.

A little more than a week ago I booked in a dentist appointment. I haven't posted much since then partly because I've had a lot of work to do but also because I've had a lot on my mind. I've been thinking about my teeth and their state of health. Thoughts like, how are my teeth going to look in another twenty years; what does it feel like to get a tooth pulled out; how easy is it to accidentally break the jaw bone; how does it feel not being able to chew with your own teeth; what if my front teeth are pushed so far forward that they fall out; other disturbing questions have been swirling through my mind. Unfortunately there are no easy answers to such questions, there is no huge database of information on such subjects. There is no community of dentists that answer all questions you may have in mind. I thought I would get some answers on my dental visit, but I was wrong, I didn't get any satisfactory answers at all and I left the room dazed with an invoice in my hand and most of my questions still unanswered. Not to mention bloody gums and my teeth all the same.

My wisdom teeth looked fine, they've all grown out well she said. What I did have was 8 minor cavities that need to be fixed. The next available time is in May so apparently the cavities can't be very important. That's when I'm scheduled for removal. If you judge by the price the cavities seem incredibly important. This one quick interrogation that didn't last half an hour cost about a third of what it's going to take to get my teeth fixed. You want a price? Well ok, getting my teeth fixed will go for (according to quote) 7200KR. On my interrogation I was also fined 375KR for 'further examination of a specific tooth'. I don't even know which tooth required further examination. To me it seemed like all teeth took about the same amount of time to examine, just a few seconds each. What did I just pay for? Did I get any help? Did I get any advice? Did I get even a little tiny bit of satisfaction that I finally had the courage to go see a dentist after a few years of stalling? None of the above.

I'm not pleased.

I woke up at 3:50. I went up at 5. I took the one hour train ride into city, then a short ride by subway. I navigated through a maze of corridors. I sat in a chair for maybe 10 minutes. Then I had my teeth checked. Then I took the one hour train ride back home. This was one of the most unnecessary things I've ever done. I'm getting these cavities fixed somewhere else, hopefully with a better dentist, someone who genially cares for my wellbeing. Not that this one dentist wasn't kind, she just didn't seem concerned at all, she didn't seem motivated, she even had a sloppy handshake. I don't really know what Banshees are, some kind of spirits, probably malicious like a zip bomb, but going to the dentist was like walking through a crypt. I wasn't as nervous as I had expected, but the whole event was just depressing, unreal as the sight of a ghost. Not just all due to money loss, but there wasn't anything I gained. Just writing this lowers the mood plenty, think I need to go rejuvenate myself with a strategic battle, or a smoothie, or maybe both of those items combined. I'll see you later.