The tooth had to go. An old root canal whose crown was breaking loose due to some decay underneath, and besides, this was a tooth that had become infected a few years ago and created a fistula with a path to the sinus cavities, requiring pretty massive antibiotics but stabilized since then. But I made the mistake at my last regular appointment of asking about the roughness my tongue was feeling back there, and that led to my first tooth extraction. If I have one extraction each 58 years, I’ll be able to keep most of my teeth.

It didn’t want to come out though. The hope is that it can be pulled in one piece, and it did get a bit loose and wiggle, but apparently one of the roots was curved, requiring that it be cut up in sections and pulled out piece by piece. I had the feeling that, had it been a straight pull in one piece, it wouldn’t have taken much time at all. Instead, you hear the dentist asking his assistant “Hand me the pliers. The ones with the larger handle.” I think he got a pretty good workout today.

And of course I rode my bike to the dentist and then afterward to work. I figured, if people drive to & from the dentist, what’s the difference riding? Not that I’m much good here (at work), not because of pain (there isn’t any, but I expect a bit when the lidocaine or whatever wears off) but because I’ve got gauze that I have to keep sticking back there and have to fight off the urge to gag. Might be a slow ride home tonight (but I did get permission from the dentist to do the regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride tomorrow, at whatever pace I can manage).

I am a huge Apple fan. Apple revolutionized the computing world by making them useful to the average person. What a concept. So my family owns a bunch of iPods and iPhones and various other Apple products. We’re helping to keep our customers employed.

But I’m not a fan of their latest vision for the world, as shown on their website’s home page (and printed above). My first thought was “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”, lyrics from the Joni Mitchell song “Yellow Taxi.” My second thought was of the stark contrast between Microsoft’s “Bliss” default image on Windows XP, and the stories and Microsoft’s PR effort surrounding its retirement, and Apple’s view of a world taken over by silicon.

Has someone gone mad? Lacking also in an appreciation for the way Sunnyvale used to look… endless orchards and grassy fields, before people like my parents bought houses in subdivisions in the early 60s.

Solar panels, in my view, should be on top of parking lots and buildings already in place. Make the best use of previously-developed land. The next generation should look forward to new fields of flowers each spring, not expanding solar farms.

I still love Apple, I’m still looking forward to the next iPhone. Our business has hundreds of awesome customers who happen to work at Apple. Maybe one of them will read this and send it up the chain a bit, give someone a brief moment to consider if this is really an appropriate image to project. Of course, the safe thing for me to do would be to ignore this, because, like religion & politics, you really don’t want to discuss controversial issues regarding an employer who provides the work for a large number of your customers, so they can afford to come in and have their cycling needs taken care of. But I don’t always do the safe thing. –Mike–