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I’ve been dealing with a gum infection for almost a week now. At first, I didn’t even realize my gums were infected. I woke up one morning and I noticed a pain in the lower left and back region of my mouth. It hurt when any piece of food would slide past that area. I looked in my mouth and an area of my inner jaw had a white spot (not the delicious restaurant kind) on it. In my experience, white, painful spots in my mouth are canker sores. I used to frequently get canker sores in my mouth when I was younger. I asked both my dentist and my doctor why I was getting them and how I could prevent them. They had no clear answers for me, sometimes they just spontaneously appear. So, I thought this was a rare canker sore.

There’s really nothing you can do with a canker sore, you just have to let it heal on its own. So I just left it for a few days, trying to avoid touching it. I noticed on the second day, however, this supposed canker sore looked a bit odd to me. First, it seemed like it would change shape if I ran a cotton tip along it. Was this oozing something? Canker sores don’t really ooze. This began to worry me.

Another day passed and I again pushed against the problem area. This time, a sizable amount of yellowish pus appeared, followed by some bright red blood. I instantly knew this wasn’t a canker sore since those don’t have pus and blood like that. I had an infection, which is more serious than a regular canker sore. I also noticed the gum area surrounding my last lower tooth in the back was now red and with spots of yellowy pus on it. Gross. The infection seemed to have spread.

Infections in the mouth, especially near teeth are things you should take very seriously. Left alone, you could easily loose a tooth. Also infections that occur in the head area just make me really nervous since your brain is so close by. So, at my first opportunity, I went downstairs to the dental office to schedule an appointment. Luckily, they were able to see me on the same day, just two hours later.

The dentist looked at the infected area and he really worked it. After the initial visual inspection, he took a gloved finger and pushed at the place where all that pus had initially come out. It hurt like a sonuvabitch and he must have hit gold because he immediately asked the hygienist for suction. He then placed the suction tip right where the pus was coming out and left it there for a good ten seconds, like he was trying to vacuum out all the nasty stuff. He also then took an ultrasonic cleaner and did some dental scaling for the tooth that was surrounded by the infected gums. He also took an x-ray of the tooth. He told me he just wanted to make sure that tooth was ok, since an infection of the gum might have led to some problems in the tooth as well. Based on the x-ray and the visual inspection, the tooth seemed ok but he wasn’t sure if it would stay that way. I was really concerned at this point since I didn’t want to loose the tooth to some stupid gum infection.

The care plan the dentist gave me consisted of me going on antibiotics immediately, Advil to reduce the swelling, plus some regular warm saline rinses, and a return visit in seven days time. I was cautioned that if things got worse, like an infection in another area, pain getting worse, or anything else that was out of the ordinary, I was to return immediately.

I have been on the antibiotics now for about 36 hours and there has been some improvement. The gum area around the tooth looks less red and less pus-filled but you can still tell it’s infected. There has been a decrease in the amount of pain in the area but without a doubt, the area is still tender. I’m on the antibiotics for a total of seven days, so I will continue to let it work its magic and hopefully things continue to improve.

I really hope nothing bad happens to my tooth back there.

Matt Stonie is back with another video where he eats a lot of one of my favourite foods, french fries. You know, as many as 1620 french fries seems, I’ve have probably eaten that many fries over my lifetime. I wish that weren’t true but it is.

In an effort to get to bed earlier, I tried to make things easier for me to actually get into bed. I usually shower right before I go to bed so that’s something in my routine. I figured if I did that earlier, that’d be one less thing I had to do before bedtime. So this evening, I showered at around 8pm. That’s one less thing I need to do now and that will shave off about 10 to 15 minutes off my bedtime routine. Let’s see how this goes.

There was a time-limited Amazon deal today and I was able to buy 96 Fererro Rochers for $22. Considering that a box of 16 goes for sometimes up to $8, this was a great deal. I also did the math and 96 of these chocolates is over 7000 calories over 500 grams of sugar. They are so delicious though!

So I discovered an interesting perk that one of the teams at work is currently rolling out. They are formalizing a “work from home” strategy for every member of this team. The general gist of it is that each member of the team is allowed to work from home one day at week, the day of which is their choice.

At least in the Vancouver studio, EA doesn’t have a formal “work from home” policy. It’s usually done ad-hoc, like if you need to stay at home during the odd day because a plumber needs to come fix your kitchen sink. I’ve done this a few times over the years but it’s rare. To roll this new policy out for an entire team, is an amazing change.

I imagine this will be sorta of a pilot program as other teams see how well it works. I think it’s quite possible to be successful, as long as it’s done smartly. Sometimes you’ll just need to be at work for a meeting or something like that. Overall though, I think it won’t affect productivity at all.

I can’t imagine how much better it would be if I could work from home one day a week, every week!

There is research that increasingly points towards lack of sleep increasing the odds of a person developing Alzheimer’s. I rarely get a good night of sleep during the weekday. I am doomed. Ok, I need to get to bed.

A few weeks ago, I was going to work and there were several employees entering the studio at the same time I was. In front of me was a young lady. She went in through the door first with her pass card and I went in after her.

After walking a bit, she and I both arrived at the elevators. I assumed since she got to them first, she would press the button to call the elevator. What she did next surprised me. Instead of pushing the button for the elevator, she started pushing the round area where the fire department inserts a key to manually control the elevators. You can see an example of this key entry on this web page. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The actual button to call the elevator is right there. It looks like a button, not a place to put a key. How could you mess this up? Hadn’t she taken the elevator before?

She must have realized what she was pressing wasn’t the button, since it didn’t give. What she did next was even more odd. The wall along the elevators is a decorative one, with all these crazy metal designs on it. I guess the wall is attached and fixed in place with what looks like these large rivets, some of which are placed near the frame of the elevator door. Well, for some reason, she started pushing one of these rivets, thinking it was the elevator call button! Why would anyone think that the button would be located near the top of the elevator door frame, off to one side?

In my lifetime, I’ve gone to a lot of buildings and approached elevator banks where I have never been to before. I’m pretty sure that 100% time, I figured out where the elevator call button is. And even if I didn’t I’m pretty sure I’m not pressing rivets and places where keys go. Elevator call buttons are usually designed to look like they can be pressed. They’re put in central and easy to reach areas.

Anyways, by this time, I was getting impatient and I wasn’t interested in seeing what else she was going to try to press to get the elevator. I politely stepped around her and pressed the real button so that I could get where I needed to go. I made sure not to look at her and embarrass her any further. The elevator arrived about ten seconds later, we both went in and to my utter shock, she was able to press the button for my floor without any trouble.

When we both arrived at my floor, she kept walking to the other part of the studio, so I’m not sure which team she works on. Did she really not know how to call that elevator? Didn’t she see how other people called it the other times she went to work? Even if she was new to the company, it’s pretty easy to know how elevators work, right? Who is this young lady that doesn’t know how buttons work?

On a whim, I’m thinking about buying a new vacuum? Why? I’m not sure really. I bought my current vacuum almost nine years ago when I moved into my apartment. It still works fine but it’s noisy, big and the dust container is designed in way that you get dust and dirt on the vacuum itself every time you empty it. As such, the vacuum gets really dirty the more you use it.

I know I don’t want a Dyson but something lighter, quieter, and with a more thoughtful design for emptying the dust container would be nice.

At approximately 10pm this evening the fire alarm went off in my building. Now in the almost nine years that I’ve been living in my apartment, there are so many false alarms that no one takes the alarms seriously anymore. The problem is that the fire alarm system for an entire long city block is all connected, including the retail space and all the condos. This means if there’s a fire alarm that goes off in a small store down the block, the fire alarm goes off everywhere else, even in buildings not connected to where the alarm is, possibly even 300m or so away. It’s a terrible system and has led to no one listening to the alarms anymore.

So, tonight another alarm goes off and I just ignore it. I hear sirens, which is normal, because the fire department has to attend, no matter what. I keep doing what I’m doing. An hour later, I have to go downstairs, so I get dressed, and take the elevator down. When I get to street level, I see both ends of my street are blocked off and the fire department engine is still there but packing up. This seems like a lot of activity for a false alarm.

I’m curious enough to walk closer to one of the police vehicles blocking the road. The officer is inside the vehicle but he’s looking at his computer or something. He actually looked sorta bored. I cautiously approach his window and he rolls it down. I tell him I live in the building nearby and ask what happened. He tells me that there was a fire earlier in the evening in the first building out of the three on my block. The fire blew out a window or multiple windows. He also says I should be careful because there’s glass all over the sidewalk and street. I hadn’t noticed this before because I exited the building from a different way. The officer says they’ll open the street once a street cleaner arrives to clean the area. I thank the officer for this time and decide to walk back towards my building. Now that I know what to look for, I see shards of tiny safety glass glistening in the road and sidewalk. Though the police are blocking entry into the street, they’re letting people leave. While I’m on the sidewalk, I see three cars just roll through the broken glass, making crunching noises as they go by. Yikes.

I walk back to my apartment, avoiding the glass. Weird. So there was an actual fire but two buildings down from me. I think it’s possible to classify this as a false alarm still. There was no fire in my building technically. The fire alarm system is supposed to be separated now but I guess that work hasn’t been completed yet?

I wonder what type of fire causes windows to be blown out? Meth lab? I’ll see if I can get more info.