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Chip off the ol' molar

Riki tiki — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:00:53 -0800

How worried should I be about my chipped tooth? So I found this previous question, which is almost tailor-made to my situation as of tonight. I'll be following the "don't sweat it, maybe get some over-the-counter temporary filling" advice from that thread, so I'm less panicked about that than I was earlier tonight.

However, I am concerned about why it chipped. There was no impact, no particularly hard food that caused it. I was just flossing back there, felt a little snag and assumed it was a piece of food, and came back instead with two prongs of my top right molar. I have no pain or anything like that and my teeth look more or less fine, but is it possible that the looks are deceiving and my teeth are about to fall out en masse due to some unnoticed systemic decay?

I exaggerate a bit, but I am troubled. I'm currently without dental insurance, haven't been to a dentist in two+ years, and not in an awesome financial position to have to take on a bunch of medical bills.

Do I need to bite the bullet (not literally) and make an appointment even if it means my credit cards will have to wait a while longer to be paid off? Or is this something I can put a band-aid on (not literally) and postpone until I hopefully find a job with dental benefits in the nearish future?

Wisdom tooth chip right after my insurance ended. D'oh

special-k — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:28:52 -0800

I seem to have chipped a tiny bit of my upper-left wisdom tooth. My dental insurance also ran out a month ago. Now what? This evening I was trying to dislodge a piece of food but instead took out a tiny chip off my upper-left wisdom tooth. It doesn’t hurt but I can feel the jagged edge with my tongue. My dental insurance also ran out a month ago and I will not have one until I start a new job (January at the earliest, possibly as late as March).

What should I do? Is this something that needs to get fixed immediately before it gets worse? Or can I just be extra careful, taking all preventative measures to prevent bacteria from accumulating there until I have the insurance to cover this? I am not broke and can spend a few hundred bucks to fix this (but I fear that wisdom tooth removal may be in the thousands).

I live in the bay area if it matters.

i DO have a chip on my shoulder but I'd prefer it were in my mouth.

ericthegardener — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:04:01 -0800

How can I make chip shop chips at home? I live in Texas but have made many trips to the U.K. over the years and I always come home missing authentic chippie-style chips. There's no shortage of places around here that sell fish & chips (and I could give a damn about the fish) but none of them serve anything that tastes like the chips I get in the U.K.

If I want them in the U.S. I'm gonna have to make them myself but I have no idea what the secret is. Is it the oil? (I'd prefer not to use lard and I know I've had chips that were more than suitable fried in vegetable oil or peanut oil.) Is it the potato? Do you boil them first? Is it the oil temperature? And what of the salt and vinegar?

Help a brother out.

Chip-pop?

Anonymous — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 21:03:49 -0800

Where can I find covers of popular songs done in the style of c64/amiga/mod/xm etc? The era the music comes from isn't as important as how familiar the songs are to your average joe.

What is the best way to (temporarily) repair this tablet stylus?

Iananan — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:38:41 -0800

This morning, my wacom tablet (graphire 2) sytlus stopped working, and I would like to fix it until I can buy a new tablet This morning, my wacom tablet (graphire 2) stopped working

however, the mouse still works, and the light is still on.
I have found that (what i assume is) the transmitter chip inside the pen has come loose on one side, rendering it unable to send pressure data to the tablet itself, This is all that is broken though, as if i hold the chip down onto the pcb it will move the cursor

photo here http://i15.tinypic.com/63wbgv4.jpg
where you can sort of see the contacts loose on the left hand side of the chip

What I am asking, is what is the best way to secure the contacts back onto the board? I have a rather large and cumbersome soldering iron, and little knowledge of how to do circuity stuff.

What's best chip & memory bang for my buck?

timnyc — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:46:04 -0800

What's best chip & memory bang for my buck? For my upcoming laptop purchase, any reason to upgrade the configuration from an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66GHz 2M L2 Cache to something speedier like the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.00GHz 4M L2 Cache ($140 upgrade at Dell)? Is there a noticable difference? And, what's the ideal amount of memory? 2.0GB DDR2 SDRAM ($195 upgrade from 1GB at Dell)?... I'm inclined to skip the chip upgrade and get the extra RAM. Do you agree? What sort of use would necessitate the faster chip...gaming? No hi-graphics games for me. I just like my apps and my Web pages to load fast and tolerate multiples open simultaneously. And I'm not all that interested in a Vista upgrade...

Why does computer chip process size have to keep getting smaller?

chrismear — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:21:13 -0800

Computer chip process size: 130 nm -> 90 nm -> 65 nm. Why do we need to keep making it smaller? Why can't we just make the chips bigger? Every time we shift to a new crazy level of nanometeromification, the chip companies have to battle through a barrage of technical obstacles in design and production, leakage, heat production, power consumption... And when they crack it, they always say "With this new process, we can fit more processing power into a chip!"

Instead of all this hard work, why can't we just increase the physical area of the whole chip, and put more transistors on it? It's not as if your CPU die is taking up a lot of physical space in your average computer system.

My (declining) Physicsy intution tells me that it might be something to do with the sheer distance that you can get signals to travel around the chip within the timeframe of one clock tick. But I haven't been able to find any material to back up this idea, or to blow it out of the water with a better explanation. So what's going on?

atomchip real or hoax?

blueyellow — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 14:48:35 -0800

Is the atom chip vaporware? A few months ago there was a great deal of speculation about whether the quantum-optical computers from atomchip.com were real or a hoax. They are supposed to be presenting their product at the current CES 2006, but I can not find any coverage. Does anyone have any new infromation?

xBox Modding Please

Napierzaza — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 18:37:52 -0800

I just got an xBox specifically to mod it out but I'm a bit lost. It appears as if I don't even need a physical mod chip but is that really true. If this is so what's the use of them? So it seems that there is such thing as using saved game files to mod my xBox. So what is the point of the physical mod?

I want to:
- Play emulated games
- Play DVDs
- Play videos (AVIs, MPEGs etc)

Should I:
- Add RAM (tricky work seemingly)?
- Get a physical mod chip?
- Do anything else?

Also is there any special stuff that might be an interesting thing to do to an Xbox?

More 8-bit music?

mcsweetie — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:02:16 -0800

Request for music recommendations! I'm looking for more music similar to Beck's Hell Yes EP and bands like Treewave and old school Nintendo music, but not campy "hey, I sampled a video game!" type stuff like Richard D. James's Powerpill Pacman. You know, stuff that's true to the SID chip and isn't kitschy and maybe has some vocals. Whacha got?

Intel Fab-4 - what does it mean?

Kwantsar — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 22:49:51 -0800

fab-4 - what does it mean? Is that where Intel made the 4004?

Where I can find/order wasabi-flavored potato chips?

aramaic — Fri, 28 May 2004 19:39:37 -0800

Does anyone know where I can find/order wasabi-flavored potato chips? [mi] Some while back, I bought some Calbee brand wasabi flavored chips in Hong Kong. I've never managed to find them since, although I've found other people who want them too -- one of whom has a picture of the bag.

Ideas? I've never managed to find these online -- the closest I can find are wasabi-prawn crisps, which aren't what I'm looking for.

I can't get my head around how microchips work.

willnot — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 14:28:16 -0800

How do microchips work?

I understand it at a very basic level. I know that when you apply current to a semiconductor, it becomes conductive, and that this closes the gate in a transistor. By opening or closing the right gates, you're able to do basic counting and logical operations.

Here though, my conceptual model totally falls apart. Because try as I might, I can't get my head around exactly what it is that controls the current going to the semiconductor in the gate in the first place. How does the microprocessor know to open or close a particular gate? It seems like if it already knew to open or close a gate, then the operation has already been done. It's like you'd need another microprocessor controlling the current within the first microprocessor, and so an and so on back to some omniscient prime mover.

Should I hack my XBox? Why or why not? Which hacks?

Keyser Soze — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:23:12 -0800

I got an Xbox for christmas, and I have been googling for Xbox hacks, and looking around I see a lot of people saying different things about it. Should I get a mod chip? Should I go with the software hack? Is there ways to hack the Xbox without resorting to using a pinout to plug a USB device into the controller? Who here hacks their Xbox? What I want to do is copy games and install an upgraded HD, now or later. I don't mind not being able to play Xbox Live. I have been looking in this for a week, but forgive my naiveness anyway.