Say Cheese!

So I went to the dentist yesterday again. This time they wanted to fill a tooth that they'd noticed the previous fortnight when extracting the broken wisdom tooth (which has healed fine, thanks for asking). Since it was the one next to the now-ex-wisdom tooth, it was pretty important that nothing bad happen to it. Or so I'm told.

That XRay was taken before they extracted my wisdom tooth, so you can still see it in the photo. It's the last tooth on the top row, on my left (which is the photo's right). It's gone now, but it's the one next to it that they were concerned about this time.

You can also very clearly see my bottom two wisdom teeth, and how badly impacted they are. They're growing horizontally, and that's why they've got to go. But that's a pleasure for another day.

Unfortunately for me, the extraction of the tooth a fortnight ago went a lot smoother than the filling of this one did. The anaesthetic wouldn't work, and every time the dentist attacked it with the drill, it would hurt like you wouldn't believe. Finally, after half a dozen more injections and 15 mins of waiting, the entire side of my face was numb, and they could proceed. It turned out into a much bigger job that Dr Shivani anticipated, and she needed to fill it in three or four separate layers.

Once it was all taken care of, they gave my teeth a proper clean, polish and fluoride treatment, which, admittedly, they've needed for a long time.

However, as part of the cleaning, they found that one of my bottom teeth wasn't just dirty - it looks to have the beginnings of decay in it as well. So I'm going back next Monday to have that one drilled and filled now. And Dr Shivani's very concerned with my lower front teeth - apparently they're worn down quite a disturbing amount, and it won't be long before the nerve is exposed, and that means then a root canal would be necessary. They've got some ideas to prevent this, but they all sound expensive.

So what started as a quick visit to patch up a broken tooth (that wasn't really hurting anyway) has turned into a big deal. Still, better to get all these problems sorted out now, I suppose, before they become bigger issues further down the track.

But even knowing all that, I'm still not looking forward to the wisdom teeth surgery.

Let there be Sound

For a long time, we've wanted to put a pair of speakers out on the back patio. Up until now, our solution for getting sound outside is to simply crank the main speakers in the lounge. Whilst they're more than capable of this task, it does prove rather annoying if you need to go inside at all. With the party coming up, it was as good an excuse as we were likely to get to invest in a good setup.

A trip down to the friendly folks at Jaycar Electronics on Sunday saw us come away with a pair of outdoor speakers (decent quality - stinking heavy!), an impedence-matching speaker-selector switch, and metres of speakerwire that they chucked in for free. I like Jaycar - quality gear, but without paying for the brand names, and coupled with good service from people who actually know electronics.

Of course, spending the money was the easy bit. What followed was anything but. You see, our house has a very low pitched roof. VERY low. When I'm up in the ceiling, I can just sit up if I'm right in the centre of the roof, and even then I'm at risk of finding exactly where the roofing iron is with my noggin.Thus, for most of the ceiling you need to crawl along on your stomach. Complicating things even more is that when the back area of the house was added on, the rocket scientists have almost blocked off access to the back through the ceiling, except for one little hole that's just wide enough to get your shoulders through. Thankfully, in the past someone has had the sense to throw a plank of MDF board up there, which makes pulling yourself through considerably easier than it otherwise would be.

To add to all this, there's two other factors which impact on the joy of our ceiling space.

• Number 1 is that whoever did the wiring in the house obviously was out to save money, as 240v wire is strewn from one end of the roof to the other, sometimes stretched tight to make it. They obviously couldn't afford an extra $5 of wire to give the extra length needed to bundle it all up and route it through the roof neatly. Where this causes most concern is when you are crawling backwards through the roof, and manage to get your feet tangled thoroughly in a 240v pull that, instead of laying nicely along the ground, is strung up at foot height.
• Number 2 is that we have been know to house carpet snakes in our roof. I don't mind them, per se, but I still have a GOOD look with the torch whenever I get up there. Of course, where I needed to go was right where they have taken up residency in the past. They're not likely to bother you unless you actually tried to grab one, but between the lack of manoeuvrability space, and the likelihood of being tangled in 240v power wires, I wasn't likely to be able to move quickly even if I needed to. Hence, the comprehensive recce before committing!

Alas, we didn't have any resident reptiles this time, or at least any that I saw. After the last ones left I used a couple of cans of expanding foam to seal up the access into the ceiling space, more as a way to stop rats or mice getting in than the snakes. The snakes being the solution to our previous mouse issue.

After much banging about, swearing, banging, swearing, cutting, yanking and forcing, I had just about had enough. Thankfully Jess came home, and between the two of us we were able to get the speaker wires pulled through into the ceiling from behind the TV & stereo. Despite getting a coupe of metres more wire than we thought we'd need, it was only just long enough. But, "just long enough" is still long enough!


Mounting the speakers to the fascia was another one of those jobs that should have been easy, but ended up taking three times as long. Between drilling into the hardwood truss on the inside, trying to use oversized screws and wrecking the screw attachment for the drill, narrowly avoiding a 240v junction box that a previous owner had taped onto the inside of the truss, and so forth, the job consumed a couple of hours. But, in the end, both speakers are mounted nice and securely to one of the most-solid parts of the house. Always good when hanging weighty box-shaped objects up high on the side of a house in a cyclone-prone area.

Unfortunately, my bad luck with the drill continued when trying to drill a hole to pass the speaker wire through from the inside of the roof to the speaker. Except this time I had the opposite luck - I kept hitting the hardwood trusses instead of finding the space between them.


As such, my trusty tube of Selley's No More Gaps had to come to the rescue once again. Of course, now we face the dilemma of what to do with painting over the patches, since we don't have any of that lovely salmon colour paint. The house came with a couple of tins of paint, the salmon wasn't one of them.

Once the speakers were mounted and connected, we were able to test the system. Which is when we discovered that we were about 2m of wire short. So Jess made an emergency dash down to the dead-heads at WOW to pick some up. After arguing with the sales guy about which type of wire she wanted (I'd given her a cut-off of what we wanted, she'd found the same type on the spool, the guy insisted that she needed a different type), we were able to hook it all up through the selector switch.


And what a fancy piece of kit that is. Because our amp doesn't have an A+B set of speakers, we couldn't simply hook the new speakers up to the same amp. So this switch takes the front speaker output, and can then split it between 6 other pairs of speakers, all whilst ensuring that the impedance that the amp sees stays within it's normal ~8ohm range. If you don't understand any of that, think yourself lucky, and don't ask an electrician for an explanation.

The upshot is that we can have sound playing through the main speakers, and with the press of a button, pull in the outside speakers as well. We can turn off the inside speakers and direct all sound out onto the patio. Or we can turn all the speakers off if we wanted to! All the while, (because of the impedance matching) the volume stays the same.

But what a difference having the outside speakers makes! Now, with the main speakers at normal casual-listening volume, you can pull in the patio speakers and be at a comfortable listening level out there as well. Despite being a large open area, no extra volume is needed - the sound is crystal clear all around the patio area and up into the backyard, without being loud. It's just there.

So, all round, a resounding success. Something that we've wanted to do for ages, and it ends up being an even better result than we could have hoped for. We've still got a few little ends to tidy up with the system - paint the holes in the fascia, terminate the speaker wires inside on a nice blanking plate instead of just having wires emerge from a hole in the wall - things like that. But they can all come later. For now, we're just enjoying the music!


As a bonus, this little guy was sitting on the outdoor table when we were putting the speakers up: