More Than Meets The Ear, and Other Randomness
Posted by Chief Oddball around midnight on January 15th, 2008It was an interesting weekend.
I worked half a day on Saturday, doing “post-launch” tasks in the wake of getting the new websites online. On Saturday night, Apple and I watched a bunch of HDTV, including movies like Panic Room and Men In Black, just because. It was fun being lazy.
On Sunday we were going to go out to see a movie (in the theater this time) and grab some dinner, but my right ear had other plans. A “debilitating buildup of earwax” sounds like one of those embarrassing problems you only hear mentioned in equally embarrassing TV commercials for prescription drugs. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what I was suffering from, to the point where I could barely hear out of my right ear.
That’s no condition to watch a movie in, so I broke out the Q-tips. In retrospect, this was a bad idea. Folks, let the record show that if you have an earwax problem, a Q-tip is not going to solve it. Nay, it will merely make it worse — mostly by relegating whatever wax is in there to the even deeper, darker reaches of your ear canal. By the time I was done, I had completely lost all hearing in my right ear, which was also swelling up pretty severely and giving me a hell of a headache.
Over-the-counter “earwax removal systems” (no, I’m not kidding) did not help, so I had to visit the local walk-in clinic today to have my crazy delinquent ear looked at. Apple was kind enough to drive me there, since I didn’t think piloting a car with half of my aural instrumentation offline was a terribly bright idea. It took a pressurized water irrigation to actually restore my hearing 100% — which hurt like a bitch, I don’t mind telling you, probably thanks to the inner ear infection the doctor discovered I had. Got some antibiotic pills and some drops and went home.
As a result of these shenanigans, my Sunday was pretty much lost. Not that I had anything else to do, but I basically spent the day lazing around the house with a headache, and general feeling of wooziness that comes from having half your head blocked up and a dull ringing coming from one side. I watched the premiere episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles last night in decidedly mono sound, and despite my affected hearing, I thought the show was pretty good. Whether it can stay good — or even just stay on the air, since it’s a property of the cancellation-happy Fox Network — is another matter.
Tomorrow is Apple’s annual MacWorld convention in San Francisco. I never thought I’d find myself giving a significant shit about the Apple conference, but as it turns out, I do — since it seems that I’m about to get an iPod Touch, and Apple might also be about to get herself a Macbook. The rumors flying about this year include a tidbid about a possible ultra-light notebook launch, so I’m interested to hear if and how that will pan out. Steve Jobs is a pretty charismatic fellow anyhow, so even if you don’t care about Apple products, he can be fun to listen to. There will be numerous live Web broadcasts of Jobs’ keynote speech tomorrow, so I might tune in.
Switching gears now, did you ever get the feeling that there’s a rebel inside you, trying to claw its way out? I seem to have had this rebellious streak built-in since day one. I never liked school, never liked hanging out with other kids, never liked sports, never liked parties, never liked a lot of other mainstream stuff that everyone else seemed to be into. That continues to this day. Ironically, I will sometimes find myself favoring something that’s historically been very mainstream, and thinking “Hey cool, now here’s something I can get into where I won’t be an outcast.” And inevitably, the next day that thing will become a mainstream pariah. It’s uncanny. If I announce that I’m getting into something new, you better watch out because whatever it is will shortly fall out of favor with the mainstream public.
My rebellious side mostly remains dormant, quietly guiding my choices, tastes and preferences in things. But lately it’s been becoming a lot more vocal. It seems that the incessant nagging of the nanny-state media brings out that rebel voice. Like a person with a substance abuse problem, my first reaction to the do-good suggestions of the wealthy, powerful and influential members of our society is to do exactly the opposite of what they propose.
Just like in high school, when I got bored one day and read a few chapters ahead in our English Lit textbook, ran across the poem Beowulf and became enamored with it. But as soon as it was assigned to us, and we were heaped with innumerate dull tasks in reference to it, I started to hate and resent it. Nothing like a good force-feeding to kill someone’s appreciation for something, even something admittedly great and wonderful.
They say we’re supposed to want smaller, more economical cars? Fuck it; give me a 7-liter, 600-horsepower V8 monster that makes as much noise and drinks 93 octane as fast as you can pump it. They say we should not eat this, that, or the other thing? Damn the torpedoes; that just makes me want to eat more of it. They say we should be more supportive of the plight of undocumented workers? Sorry; I’m not seeing how having a less-than-stellar life gives someone the right to break laws and push their problems off onto someone else.
In fact, with all the stuff we’re constantly told we should care about, with all the issues we’re told are so incredibly important, it’s not difficult to see why the average American simply wants to turn on, tune in and drop out (with apologies to Timothy Leary). The more your typical hard-working Joe is told he has to give a shit, the more he wants to just plug his ears, scream “LA DE DA DE DA I CAN’T HEEEAAARRR YOU” and turn on the TV. Ironically, the more causes we’re supposed to take up, the less empowered we actually feel — when was the last time you got the impression that you could actually make any kind of difference in the world today, on the limited time and budget you have left when the everyday rigors of life are through with you? Your job, your medical bills, your car payments, your appointments and responsibilities and everything else that it seems you have to handle all by yourself, because you can’t trust anybody else to do them properly, or because the system treats you like a serial number?
Although being an “ignorant American” is just one more thing the media tells me I should feel guilty about, I have to say that I’m honestly having a hard time doing so. Hmph!
Anyway, I’d better get to bed. I’m trying to get up early tomorrow and get back to my morning bike ride routine, which fell by the wayside some time ago in the combined flurry of work and laziness. But here it is, a new year, and what better time to try and make positive changes in your life?
I’ll leave changing the world to someone else, though — in my experience, it just doesn’t want to budge.
Ouch. That sucks. I know how painful and frustrating wax buildup can be, though I’ve never had a case as bad as you had. And yes, I learned pretty early on that Q-Tip=shove the built-up wax deeper into your ear canal. I still use them for “surface” cleaning (for lack of a better term), but never to try and remove a lot of gunk, since that’s a guaranteed fail. And those over-the-counter cleaners always added to the problem for me, personally. I may as well have taken a glass of water and poured it into my ear.
Still, it’s good that you seem to have things cleared up.
I had to laugh at your antecdote about “Beowulf,” as I used to do the same thing all the time in school, especially with history textbooks. I love reading about history, but force me to read some dry boring stuff and then ask me some questions about it and I’m suddenly like, “meh.”
Yep, you’re right on about those stupid Q-tips, they should only be used for “surface cleaning.” Of course I had to find out about this too late, but I won’t be attempting anything that dumb ever again.
Of course, now my right ear is more sensitive than my left, and I’m hearing all sorts of little things that I don’t recall hearing before. Strange noises coming from the back of the car, or the refrigerator running from across the room, etc. It’s weirding me out. I shoulda had the doctor irrigate my other ear at the same time!
Yeah, that Beowulf sort of event happened rather often in high school. I think what’s really going on is that I have a massive problem with authority. I get blistering mad whenever somebody tries to tell me what to do, even if they have every right to do it given their position. Most of the time I keep those thoughts pretty well hidden, but I think I really am a control freak of the highest order.
Perhaps that’s what makes it difficult for me to do side jobs — it’s just a whole bunch of distributed order-taking and butt-kissing, something I already loathe to begin with.
Hey, how is that computer doing? Still being a pain in the ass?
Ever since I disabled the screen saver, the PC has been fine. Hasn’t locked up or anything. I still have to let it warm up for about an hour each morning, but after that it powers up fine and I haven’t had any problems with it at all.
I guess we can just chalk this up as yet another Computer Twilight Zone occurrence for me.
That’s frakkin’ insane. But hey, at least you seem to have isolated the problem. I’ve had screen savers act wacky on me before, but if I recall correctly, that system was using the simplest screen saver of them all, the “Blank Screen.” For that to go wacky…well, it’s just incredibly odd.
But just as well, really; LCDs don’t need screensavers anywhere near as much as CRTs did, and simply putting the monitor to sleep is the best way to go anyhow.
That sucks it has to warm up for so long, have you tried backing off the time to, say, 45 or 30 minutes? Seems like the longest it ever took for me was 15-20 minutes. Then again, it never gets as cold in Florida as it does in Michigan.
In the summer it probably won’t do it anymore…
Yeah, it had the blank screen saver. Like I said, I dunno. I generally shut the monitor off when I’m not using it anyway, so it’s not really a problem to shut off the screen saver.
Well, I let it warm up for about an hour, but it could probably do with less. I generally power it up first thing in the morning, then take the dogs out for a walk. By the time I’m done with that, it’s been warming up for about 50-60 minutes. So it might not actually take that long, but that’s how long it goes before I reboot.