Night Over, Broken Phone

Today, I worked a shift for one of my coworkers, because I quite like the Saturday morning shift, and because I'm a nice person like that. It was great until I realized that it was so great because the agent phone out in the lab was broken. (Saturday morning works out in the lab a lot like the overnight shifts do.) I tried a different cable but it didn't work, so naturally it's a switch problem, or the phone itself is broken. I called Mel and got permission to try a different cable, but that didn't help.

Anyway, I'm back here in the office working out the rest of my shift instead of in the lab. It's not much of a difference because there are so few people here anyway, but it does make me say things like "wow, I can't wait for the lab aides to get here" which I don't say all that often.

On another note, Megan asked me to stay with her last night because of her scare from yesterday involving some creepy guy who likes entering random rooms. It was the first time this year I've slept on a low bed, and I do say that I miss it ever-so-slightly. Also of note, we can sleep on the same twin mattress successfully if we don't have any additional padding. And no, nothing other than sleeping happened. Well, we did watch "Meet the Robinsons" which is an amazing movie, just so you know.

Also, my NaNoWriMo wordcount is about 7,300 now. Pretty good I think, but I am totally looking forward to increasing that, instead of the word count of my blog.

Sleeping Schedules

I've noticed lately that I'm having a problem adhering to any kind of real sleeping schedule. It hasn't been a big problem in the past, but it is now starting to become a little bit of a problem. Thursday morning I overslept a bit, and although I did make it fine to my class, I am worried that if this gets any further out of whack, I'll not only have issues waking up, but I'll have issues actually making it to classes, and I wouldn't want to ruin my record of having extraordinarily good attendance, or in cases where the attendance isn't perfect, being nearly dead.

Aside from that, the sleeping schedule being messed up also causes me general discomfort during the day, wherein I'm generally not very good at doing my job, or I start nodding off between calls. Luckily after some water and a few calls, I'm not doing too bad, so at least that wasn't too bad. Although I'll admit to having been so out of it this morning that I actually got my door code wrong on just one digit, not even a trailing one.

As with many other things, I'll figure it out eventually. It may not improve for a short while though, what with my first-ever overnight shift coming this Saturday night. I'll have to post a blog entry about that one, for sure.

Fire Alarm

Well, it's happened. Gabaldon Hall has had a fire alarm that I've been here for. Apparently, according to Jim, it has actually happened multiple times, but this is the first time I've been here for one. It was about midnight, and luckily it didn't seem too serious, although it was quite interesting. Although, I didn't see Meaghan or Glenn, presumably they either were elsewhere, or just didn't come out. Oh well.

Odd Dream

I get a great smooth jazz station from Vegas where I'm here at home. I love to listen to it, and I have my alarm clock set to turn on at 4:30 a.m. with it.

Actually, there's a mildly funny dream story related to that. My dream last night/this morning involved me, trying to get somewhere to do something and three other people, who were part of some radio show about job fairs in Las Vegas. We started at NAU I suppose, piled into a car and were conducting a phone interview. We then stopped at a toy shop, eventually met some brave-little-toaster esque appliances and went to an electronics store, where for some reason I saw my mother and somebody who looked very similar to my COM101 instructor from NAU.

I woke up at like 5:30 and it turned out that the radio alarm had turned on an hour before, and there was some kind of radio program about job fairs in Las Vegas. Although, in the dream, mostly only one guy was talking, but on the actual program, all four people (three men and one woman, if I recall) were speaking.

I am going to have to put some more research into suggesting things for my dreams, quite possibly trying with my iPod and/or my iMac and the radio on a timer, to see whether or not my dreams can be suggested using other materials. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few albums I want to try... the Wicked soundtrack, War of the Worlds audio performance, the Rent soundtrack, mostly because those things have plots that can be dreamt. Though, I'd be interested in whether or not a standard disjointed album of music, or a new-age or otherwise instrumental album such as Mannheim Steamroller, Yanni or John Tesh could influence my dreams.

Fire Alarm

I just figured that it's important for everybody to know something. At approximately 2:30 a.m. on December 11, 2006, The fire alarm in Reilly Hall at Northern Arizona University went off. It's just about 3:05 right now and we've just been let back in. This is dissapointing, of course, because it was very inconvenient for me to have to wake up from my pre-finals slumber and leave the building, and complain about it for as long to Jim, Nathan and my roommate.

So, if I fail my SC-111 final, I have a reason.

By the way... (Reilly as a cheesy videogame) the mutants are on the first floor, the pirates are on the second floor, the ninjas are on the third floor, and the zombies are on the fourth floor. I am fairly certain that the ghosts are on the fifth floor, and the corrupt cops from the west are on the sixth floor. I haven't beaten the sixth floor yet, but I think that the seventh floor has the big evil monster. I hear that if you start by going in the back entrance, you can go to the first floor after the fifth and you get all the nice powerups from the first floor before the sixth and seventh floors.

The Universe Hates me, and I'm Ready

Ready for the semester to be over with!

I am not sure what's happened, (other than the horrific sickness, and general awfulness) but ever since getting back to school from Thanksgiving break, I am just ready to be back at home, the way it was over summer. Or maybe I am just ready to not have classes any more.

It starts last Thursday. At about 4am, I had just gotten done eating a microwave burrito, and I was going to go ahead and stay up all day to finish my NaNoWriMo Novel. Unfortunately, what I discovered was that I had started to become ill. So, I decide that I can afford an hour of sleep. Unfortunately, after the hour of sleep, a shower, and anything else I could think of to try, I was still feeling fairly awful. So I just slept until about noon, when I had to get up to get ready (very slowly, might I add) for my class at 1:50. I went to class, and gave the presentation about my extended argument paper. That sucked massively, but at least I did it.

After ENG105, Kat and I went over to the Comm building to get our JLS130 practice final exams, and we then bid each other our goodbyes, and as I walked in front of the math building back toward my dorm, I vomited.

Luckily, I eventually got back to Reilly and lay down in bed, looking forward to a lot of sleep. I crawled in bed, and was nearly asleep, when, of all the awesomely lucky things that could have happened to me... the fire alarm went off. At this point, I knew that the Universe hates me. I eventually got back to sleep, and managed to sleep right through Friday. It is now Saturday, and I'm feeling a bit better, but I don't know when I'll feel perfectly awesome again.

Some Good Techniques

Here are some things that I have found to be helpful when I'm doing teh-polyphasic.

• Don't always try to be actually doing work, especially while I'm still transitioning.
• Have a small amount of caffeine, a shower, or some food right after I wake up. (but not a whole 1L Mtn. Dew)
  
• Have a list of things to do, even litle things like "write pointless blog posts"
• Doing physical activity, including showering, random 6.5am walks with the camera (I got some AWESOME pictures :D), etc.
• Drink lots of water, apparently.
• Enjoy little things, like finding the aliens.
• Find the aliens.
• Write a novel.
• Actually get up on time.
• Don't skip naps.
• Try not to reposition individual naps more than about an hour in either direction... it screws everything up.
  

2006-Cory5412 vs. 1993-Cory5412 & 2019-Cory5412

Epic Time Battle!

I am intentionally depriving myself of sleep, therefore anybody who is insane enough to read these (I [heart] you Megan!) is now going to be subjected to some sort of rant about technology. (You have permission not to read this if you don't want to, Megan!) Of course, those folks in my English 105 class will know that my premise, (sleep deprivation) does not imply my conclusion (tech rant). Of course, I mentioned the sleep deprivation, right? That means that I don't care. [insert smile face here]

So what will I rant about today? Recently, at the vintage technology internet forum that I visit, the 68k Mac Liberation Army, a member posted an interesting PDF file. It was a 107 megabyte scan he made of an Apple Product Catalog from Fall of 1993. Thirteen years ago, the 68-page catalog of 68k Macintoshes was hot off the presses, and if we had lived back then, with unlimited funds, it was decided that every one of us would have a Mac Quadra 650 with the 16" Macintosh Color Display, a LaserWriter 630 Pro, with the 500-sheet feeder of course, along with every other little goodie we could get our grubby little liberator paws on.

I see a problem with this, however. My issue is that almost nobody provided a reasonable dream setup. My own setup was actually a Quadra 610 with one or two bits of software, the inexpensive monitor, as well as the cheap laser printer. Additionally an even more realistic setup that I cited, was a Mac Color Classic, and one of Apple's inkjet printers, paired with just one software package, an integrated piece of kit that can nearly do it all. As an added bonus, the cheaper computer and printer had carrying cases available for them, and they were within my arbitrarily defined budget of "just a few dollars more than whatever I want."

This leads into something else though. One thing I've noticed is that when it comes to older technology, it is extremely tempting to simply not look at the lower end machines. It is not every day when I hear somebody talking about how awesome it was that they were able to pick up a Mac LC and a 12" color display from the school. In fact, I have even heard some people talk with disdain about older low end machines, as opposed to the not-really-much-faster high end variant.

I do understand the argument that in 1993, there was a massive difference between a 25MHz 68LC040 and a 33MHz 68040 processor, let alone a 16MHz 68030. However, I think that that difference equates today to a distribution like this. the 16MHz 68030 would be about equivalent to a 1.5GHz Intel Core-Solo processor. The 25MHz 68LC040 would equate to a 1.83GHz Core1Duo, and the 33MHz monster powerhouse would equate to a 2.16GHz Core2Duo
microprocessor.

The funny thing is that in 2019 then another thirteen years have passed, and a retro technology enthusiast's group has formed and is discussing these things... the actual difference between a 1.5GHz single-core chip and a 2.16Ghz dual-core chip will be so negligible, that the 2019-Cory5412 is unlikely to claim that there is any practical speed difference at all.

Good god, do I want to slap the 2019-Cory5412! However, 2019-Cory5412 certainly brings up a good point about the aging of technology, and the 2006-Cory5412 is saying similar things.\

Of course... I don't think my rant is necessarily tech-based, I think it's now a rant of excessiveness. Quick everybody, I'm going to run out and get a 3.0GHz Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram, four 750 gigabyte hard discs, two 16x SuperDrives, and I'm going to fill it with four of the nVidia GeFORCE 7300GT cards, then I am going to buy four 30" monitors, and four 23" monitors for it. I just know that 2019-Cory5412 will have one of those, but 2006-Cory5412 will certainly have something closer to a 17" iMac Core2Duo, 2.16GHz, 1 or 2 gig, 250gig.

I am certain that for that, 2019-Cory5412 will laugh at 2006-Cory5412, but who cares, because 1993-Cory5412 would have ended up with a used Mac Plus and, if he was lucky enough to get a laser printer at all, one of the original LaserWriters, or a LaserWriter II of some sort. He would have enjoyed it until its death (in 2003, I bet. There's a reason I don't want to be 1993-Cory5412.)

I [heart] my Dell OptiPlex GX110 and my 500MHz Apple PowerBook G3 "Pismo." As an aside, I probably have another tech-related blog entry somewhere, but this will do for now. It proves that I am definitely going to stick to polyphasic sleeping this time. (Yay! +10 points for reference to polyphasic sleep in this blog post.)

Massive Gargantuan Failure...

... At polyphasic sleep. Last night I was doing well, then got to my 1am nap, and I must have either not set the alarm, or slept through it for eight hours, because I found myself waking up at about 9am. Actually, I could have waited until 9:30 to wake up, but I wanted to take a shower and today is a Wednesday which means I've got my 10:20 class.

At the very least, SETI has begun to act properly again, meaning that I am now on my way to being the champion of Work Units, and my NaNoWriMo novel has begun taking shape. I have crossed the line for 20,000 words, but today's quota is 25,005 words. Will I make it in time? Will I end up making it to 26,672 words tomorrow, whether or not I mke it to 25,005 today?

Well, I probably will do both if I stop writing silly posts to the blog. Oh-well. One thing that these failures make me wonder is whether or not I am capable of adapting to polyphasic sleep, or whether the current time is just too intense for it. I am thinking about just trying to adapt to polyphasic over the winter break, but I really need it right now, not next year.

The other thing to consider is the fact that I really like sleeping. Not so much being in bed, as I like arranging the covers, jumping in, and just being comfortable and warm between the sheets and the blankets, not necessarily doing anything productive at that moment.

I will continue trying to do polyphasic sleep, hopefully it will have more success with fewer classes and horrible things like that in the next few days to cause it to go wrong.

Success at Last! (Among Other Things)

This is just a note to say that I have finally defeated the 05:00 nap! :) Now I just need to survive for the next two weeks or so, as well as conquer today.

In other news, I am going to have to sign up to become an RA today, as well as possibly going to surplus sales to get a proper keyboard and mouse for this Dell OptiPlex GX110 computer.

In other news, it's really hard to get any radio other than country stations on my Walkman in my room. That's unfortunate because I like radio stations other than those which play country music. Of course, there is always the Internets, but I quite fancy listening to tapes any more. Lord of the Dance and Keys to Imagination are quite awesome tapes. I also have Avalon but that's a CD.

As another sidenote... blogging is an excellent choice over sleeping. I would rather be pointlessly pouring my random thoughts into the deep, dark depths of the internet than sleeping any day of the week. Especially Tuesday. However, being that it's only Monday right now, I'll have to day with blogging on Monday instead of Tuesday.

However, please expect Tuesday to be an insanely awesomely blogging-filled day.

Going Back to Polyphasic, & some New Music

This is mostly just a note to say that I am going to attempt to stick to the polyphasic schedule better from now on. I've moved my alarm clock to the other side of the room, so that I have to get up in order to turn it off. I think that today will be fairly hard because I haven't even pretended to do the naps, after last night's mess up with it.

I am impressed with my newly found ability to get up at exactly 9:30 every single morning, though.

Also, I got two cassette tapes and a CD from the Bookman's today. The CD is "Avalon" by John Tesh, and the two tapes are Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance, and Keys to Imagination by Yanni. All three are highly entertaining, and the two tapes give me yet another awesome thing to play in my Walkman. Honestly, I love the Walkman. :D

Still Failing at Polyphasic

Honestly, this is harder to keep up than I thought it would be. Yesterday morning I failed, and then again today I failed miserably as well. I had thought it would be easy to keep up with, but because I failed yesterday, I didn't take any of my naps, and then last night I ended up playing Monopoly and watching Clerks II until about 1am.

Luckily, I did get a few hundred words into my NaNoWriMo novel, but I am certainly not pleased that I feel asleep so easily. I need to find a comfortable spot other than my bed where I can do writing, and not be tempted to fall asleep. I think that tonight, I will try the Reilly Hall lounge, or maybe the 6th floor lounge. However, I do think that the main lobby/lounge on the first floor is more likely to happen as a good writing spot than the 6th floor lobby.

As a sidenote... Monopoly is quite a fun and interesting game.

Polyphasic Day 3

I am now in Day 3 of polyphasic sleeping. I think I'm in Day 3, anyway. This may be the fourth day, but I have been through three nights.

Unfortunately, a few bad things have happened. First, I seem to have a habit of not waking up from my 05:00 nap. I lay down at about 05:00 and then wake up somewhere between 08:00 to 09:30. The other bad thing is that, true to what I have read on the Internets, found via The Google, delivered via the tubes, I do now feel like I am a zombie, continuously being run over by the force of a thousand school buses. It's totally fun and you should try it!

Another misfortune has struck my polyphasic sleep project. I seem to be getting sick. This is one of those "Seriously, WTF?" moments, where you just have to ask if the Universe is out to get you. I know that it's not my God, because my God is a tree at Kingman High School called Pam, and I happen to have a close relationship with my God. Additionally, my God is busy saving Earth from the Aliens, so she doesn't have time to attempt to foil my polyphasic sleep plans. Luckily, the vending machine has provided me with some Orange Juice, which seems to have helped.

At any rate... I am plodding on bravely with my efforts to gain four hours in every day. I must say that I do quite enjoy the extra time. I feel as though by 10:00 I will have either caught up with the few days' worth of NaNoWriMo writing that I have missed, or that I will have the cleanest dorm room in Reilly Hall. Maybe both will be true.

Polyphasic Day 2

I find myself on Day 2 of Polyphasic Sleeping. I have already had some discouragement. It is hard to stay encouraged to do something so completely different from what is considered to be socially normal and acceptable. In addition, I'm having issues finding things to do during all of my "additional time." I know that what I should be doing is working on my novel, but somehow I end up just kind of... sitting at my computer.

I find that I'm doing silly online puzzles instead of writing or my schoolwork.

I have also just awaken from (oops!) oversleeping multiple times. I think that this means that I need to put careful consideration into whether or not I really want to continue my attempt at Polyphasic Sleeping.

Polyphasic Day 1

I am in Day 1 of my new Polyphasic Sleeping lifestyle. I am going to be using this month to transition to an interesting way of distributed resting, so that I can get more hours in the day for studying, being online, and writing my novel.

Right now, I am pretty tired, but I would say that I am fairly alert... I have not had caffeine today, though I may have a few sips (or a few liters) of Mountain Dew later on today.

Hopefully this gargantuan increase in my available time will let me do things like re-learn some three dimensional modeling techniques with 3dStudioMax, watch a lot of youtube videos, listen to a lot of FM radio, finish my NaNoNovel early, and keep my sanity while getting schoolwork done.