My usual dentist sent me off to another dentist last week - a supplementary dentist, if you like. This guy’s a gum specialist, and vaguely resembles Uncle Arthur, though his actual name is Don, and he wasn’t annoying at all. Apparently my gums aren’t quite up to scratch. Various microscopic organisms are digging around in there causing problems. He used a moderately scary looking weird pointy device to measure how far between my teeth and gums the bacteria have dug, and he sent me off to have an X-ray, which I did yesterday.

In the X-ray place, they had a very high tech thing called a Scanora. You sit in it, and put your chin in a rest thing, and after some adjustment, hold your head still while these camera things circle around you. It felt like I was in the torture scene from a science fiction movie, except that it didn’t hurt. Apparently it can make a 3-D image, or a panoramic X-ray… I look forward to seeing it. I wonder if it would make a good postcard?

My dramas with my credit card took two interesting turns today. The more significant, but slightly less interesting turn was that I called the bank about the continued slurping of my account. They had a look and found that the company in Utah reckoned it was going to claim US$49.95 a month out of it. Like hell they are. The bank people were most helpful, and arranged to have the card cancelled and a new one sent out to me, as well as reversing the transaction.

The less significant, but possibly more interesting (and certainly more amusing) turn to the story is this: Last week, I e-mailed the company who think they have me as a customer, and who think they can get money off me. They’re a big company, they make software. Although I’ve never dealt with them, I’ve heard of them before.

Oh sod it, I’ll name them. It’s PowerQuest. I’ve certainly heard of their Partition Magic product before - it’s quite well known in geek circles.

So since this is going to cost them money (because my bank quite rightly will give me the money back), and because I’m a nice kinda guy, I thought I’d drop them a line or three:

Pretty straightforward, I would have thought. Well this morning, I get the following, somewhat surprising, reply from their Customer Service department:

I had to re-read my original mail (which was tacked onto the bottom of the reply) to be sure I hadn’t written the wrong thing. I hadn’t.

How is it possible for somebody to read enough of an e-mail that they can figure out my name, yet get the contents of the mail so completely wrong? Surely anybody of even subnormal intelligence should be able to scan the mail I sent and figure out that Form Letter #34 (Downloading problems) doesn’t come close to fulfilling the requirements of what could be considered to be an intelligent and appropriate response.

Now, it’s no real skin off my nose if they lose money because someone has fraudulently used my credit card. But I’d prefer people didn’t get away with that kind of thing, so I sent a brief reply back.

I’ll await the next instalment with interest.

Yesterday there was rather an odd occasion: my old kindergarten’s birthday. I can’t remember if it was seventy years or eighty years or ninety years old, but it was definitely a bunch of years. And they were having a kind of reunion/birthday thingy. I can’t say I recall much about my kindergarten days. Actually, to be entirely accurate, I remember bugger all, though I’m sure my mum has some pictures of them somewhere. Nevertheless, I decided to stop past, since I was kind of going to be in the area (ish) anyway.

The place was pretty packed, with lots of people who were apparently former students or staff or kids of former students or staff, or people who just happened to be walking past with nothing better to do. Not only did I not recognise anybody, I didn’t remember anything about the place except for the big distinctive white front of the building.

Then I spotted Raoul, who I’ve known pretty much since my kindergarten days, and whose mum still lives merely a few doors from the kindergarten. We had a look around at the old photos, trying to spot ourselves. Turned out they mostly had photos going back only ten years or so, so no luck there. Thinking about the fact that I had been there more than twenty-five years ago made me feel suitably ancient.

I hung around a few minutes looking around, before going and getting on with my day.

(I was going to expand this out into more detail. But I can’t be bothered.)

1. Get into work, lots to do. 5 mins later, fire alarm, entire 40-ish storey building evacuated. 90 mins wasted

2. Production problem, entire system grinds to a halt. Run around like a maniac finding a fix and dodging red tape to get it deployed.

3. Go to collect kids. Pissing down rain on the way home. Get wet just running from the car to the house.

4. Young ‘un not feeling well, refuses to eat dinner. Complains when (as promised) he gets no dessert. Bathtime, kids in bed, phew, finally some time to relax.

A few little snippets of news…

The bank came back to say that the first wacky weird amount of money that got slurped out of my Visa card, the $57.94 that went to Utah, well, they’re unslurping it. They did say they’d have to reconsider if the merchant in question comes up with a signed imprinted authorisation for the transaction, but as I’ve never been to Utah, I’m betting this won’t happen. They’re still looking at the other transaction.

The shop down on the corner, the most doomed retail location in the history of the universe, has disposed of yet another futile attempt at retailing. Yes, the beauty shop which only opened a few months ago, has closed its doors, and the For Let sign is up again. This place has had three incarnations during my six years residence here: first it was The Pot Spot (and always will be, in my mind), then it was a carpet shop, then after a long period of emptiness, it became the beauty shop. What will appear next? Who knows.

My landlady has yet again shown her limited understanding for rubbish disposal. Apparently she believes the logical way to get rid of a horrible old gas cooker is to leave it on the nature strip. It’s been there about a week - I’m guessing it will be there for quite a bit longer before it goes anywhere.

Okay, just one last clipping:

Meanwhile, it turns out that last week when nobody turned up to my divorce hearing because of sickness, well, they just went ahead and did it anyway. So I’m officially divorced. I’ll get the bits of paper confirming it in July. Yay! I should organise celebratory drinks or something.

I know I’ve put more than the average amount of newspaper stuff in the diary this month, but I can’t not mention this one, clipped from tonight’s freebie paper, MX:

I think the guys at MX may be confusing real life with television. IT’S NOT TRUE! The Thunderbirds are just fictional characters! Granted, seeing them on TV you might presume they were real, but LOOK CLOSER! They’re just puppets! International Rescue doesn’t really exist!

Just a little note to the paper (one of three published today) regarding this stupidity in yesterday’s.