One word can rap up this entire experience: OUCH!

A few weeks ago one of my old fillings came loose and fell out while eating. So I made my way over to the dentist to have a look. As it turned out the filling fell out because food found its way deep in the hole causing a wider gap.

My dentist jacked me up with Novocain along the right side of my mouth in order to drill deeper and then repair with a new filling.

This was a routine procedure and one I have had a few times since those fillings I had from the ’80’s were getting old.

Typically I have found the numbness of Novocain wares off after a few hours following a procedure. In this case the numbness continued to increase as the day went on.

The following morning I called my dentist to inform him the right side of my mouth is numb and I could not feel my tongue. I could move my tongue around but it was like moving a lame fat muscle.

I was told that in rare events a Novocain injection could traumatize nerves in or around the tongue causing temporary paralysis that can last from a few hours up to a few months. In some rare instances it may never go away.

Over the past week the pain has been excruciating. Just yesterday I was eating a BBQ potato chip and for a second I thought I sliced my tongue with a razor blade. After checking it out in the mirror it appeared I did nothing to my tongue at all.

One of the big problems is because I can not feel my tongue there are times when I am biting down on it and I don’t realize it till I taste the blood.

Finally I headed back to my dentist and he explained to me there was nothing he could do. But I asked him to create me a plastic mouth guard to prevent my tongue from touching my teeth because every time they connected it felt like razor blades to my tongue.

I am now wearing a plastic guard which seems to help with that awful slicing sensation.

I’ve done some research on the web and there are a few posts regarding this rare consequence of a Novocain treatment but it is so rare there is really not much out there. As my dentist said, I should play the lottery because that’s the odds of something like this going wrong. (He is a cool dentist and I actually felt bad for him because I know he did nothing wrong).

It’s not easy to describe the pain but here are the symptoms

1. It’s as if I am licking a 9 volt battery every so often and that sensation surfs around the tongue.
2. Every 30 hours or so pressure builds up on the tip of my tongue as if it is ready to explode, but it subsides.
3. There is a feeling you have a corn chip stuck below the tongue and you can not get it loose. Thus causing you to strain those back muscles causing even more discomfort.
4. You have very little taste for anything.
5. It’s an ongoing struggle to not bite the tongue.

The promising news is I have much more sensation than I did a week ago. The tongue is no longer lame and I can feel it repairing itself. The crappy thing is, as the nerves are repairing themselves my tongue is now extremely sore due to all the chomping I have done on it.

Anyone who is in business should read this post.

The other day I wrote Google: Please Fix Local Business Center, a personal message from me to Google to do just that.

Later in the day I was talking with a buddy on the phone and he mentioned he read that post and he half jokingly ask, “Dude, do you actually think Google reads your blog?”

My response to him was a resounding “Yes!”

I then went on to explain

It is not per say that I think someone at Google has me on their RSS reader or that they are actively reading ShandyKing on a daily basis. Although I think it would be nice if they did.

What I do expect is for the folks who work on Local Business Center to keep an eye out on the internet for anyone who mentions their product. The easiest way for them to do that is to go to visit Google Blog Search and do a query for their own product, in this case Local Business Center.

If you did that you would see my latest post shows up at the very top of the results. As time passes it will be pushed down further and further.

When logging into my Blog today I saw an Incoming Link from Search Engine Land on their SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 2, 2007. If you scrolled down you would see a link to this post under Local, Maps and Mobile.

This Incoming Link validates my point. I suspect the writers of Search Engine Land are on the lookout for content related to Google and they found my post.

My point relates to any business. Everyday businesses should be looking for any content people might have written about them. This is the fastest way to receive feedback from a live marketplace and provide an immediate response showing the world the business is an active part of the community and that they care.

I quickly made my point to my buddy

When I wrote that post I did not care if someone at Google subscribed to my Blog. I just know with enough time that post will make its way to the right people. Assuming of course they care, which I know they do.

Update: 8/6/2007

Google responds to this post via a comment by Matt Cutts. Looks like they are paying attention!

If anyone who works on the Google Local Business Center is reading this, there are issues. For some reason your maps are saying they can not locate the address that is being entered, even though I can see it with maps.google.com.

Then when trying again the LBC map displays the business location on the map but the same error appears saying it can not find the business.

With Wordpress we can extend roles and capabilities to selected users. This feature of WP is highly useful when you have multiple people managing your Blog for you.

Summary of Roles

• Administrator - Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor - Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
• Author - Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor - Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts
• Subscriber - Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive news letters, etc.

Unfortunately I have come across a situation where there is one of two features of one role that are needed but I really want to limit any extended privileges.

Such is the case where I want a user to have the ability to add / post and edit as well as be a moderator for all comments. The role of an Author fills almost all my needs but lacks the moderation ability. You have to have higher permissions to Moderate.

Now I could easily set the user to the role of an Editor but when doing so we found out this enables access to few custom plugin’s that are critical to the site. Although we could train the user to not touch that area it is highly preferred we limit access to it all together.

After doing a quick search I have found Role Manager which allows me to customize each role using a graphical interface. In just a few seconds after installing the Plug-in I was able to enable the Moderate Comments Permission in the Authors Role.

If you are running a Blog where multiple users log in, I would recommend installing this plug-in. It really gives you the ability to administrate what your users can and can not do.