To start this blog post out I think I need to feel everybody in who doesn't personally know me. Well I've had problems with sleeping since I was a little kid. Probably since about age 8. That's about the time when my friends use to complain that I snored like a bulldozer when I spent the night at their house. I've always woken up in the morning with headaches and I was finally diagnosed with sleep apnea about 2 and half years ago. Ever since I was diagnosed and I got a CPAP machine my quality of life has been better.
In October of 2007 I had surgery on my nose to try and open up the airway more. It helped a little bit and helped out mostly during the day when I didn't have the CPAP machine on. In October of 2008 I proceeded to have the second half my surgery to have a U3P procedure done. Basically they just roto-rooter everything in your throat cutting out as much tissue as possible. The second surgery was painful but was still worth it.
So now that's the past. Let's get on with the real story. Today my total sleep count for the past 4 consecutive days adds up to about 17 hours. This morning I woke up about 3:30 AM with a painful headache right behind and above my left eye. Tapping on my fore head with my finger seem to not indicate a sinus problem but that doesn't rule allergies so I go down stairs and down 3 Motrin, a Claritin, some shots of Nasonex in each nostril, and a tall glass of OJ. Of course my head doesn't start to go away till around 5:45 AM and by now I'm awake so I grab the remote to start channel surfing.
Today around lunch time I started to getting over active hearing. I could have sworn I was hearing voices. I'm not a person who normally gets the mid-afternoon crash since I usually don't load up on sugar for breakfast or lunch so I'm tired when 5 or 6 o'clock rolls around. My coherentness has become sub-par. Probably at the same level a normal person would have after maybe 2 beers. Driving to work this morning time seemed to skip. Like I may look down a side road and then I would blink while turning my head back to the front and time would seem to have past for maybe a micro second. I think this is called microsleep. Another symptom I've noticed today is that I've been extremely thirsty. I haven't been hungry for calories and carbs since I try to eat more protein and fiber to slow down digestion.
Now that it's after 10 o'clock PM and I'm starting to wind down I think about the list of things I've accomplished today and what I still need to do tonight. College homework is just going to have to take a side-step for another night as I don't have the concentration to make educated
decisions about "Computer Hardware Architecture" although I just had a two conversation to IT today about the same subject today. My final symptom today that's just started since I've been typing this is numbness in my extremities and muscle cramps in my shoulders and neck. I feel like I'm blinking more to keep my contacts wet.
Sleep deprivation is nothing new to me and I guess it would scare a lot of people. I know of it all too well and I like documenting the stages I go through as each time seems to be a little different.
Over the years I've looked at alternate sleep patterns trying to find ways to push the human body to the limit. Time awake means more time to learn but how much will you retain. I've read stories about some of my mentors in life like Albert Einstein, Nichola Tesla, and daVinci all practiced polyphasic sleep patterns.
Anyway, off to dream land I go soon and hope for more than 5 hours of sleep tonight.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
4th Grade Math Stumper
Helping my son with his math homework and he has one problem left that has stumped me. Maybe I'm just thinking in to it to much but here's the question and see how you fare. I've came up with 3 designs but they only use 24 tiles. Using 25 tiles makes the design not a square anymore.
Katrina made a square design with 25 tiles. She used 9 red tiles for the diagonals, 12 yellow tiles to complete the outside border, and 4 blue tiles to complete the center. Show what Katrina’s design looked like.
Katrina made a square design with 25 tiles. She used 9 red tiles for the diagonals, 12 yellow tiles to complete the outside border, and 4 blue tiles to complete the center. Show what Katrina’s design looked like.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Another Depressing Christmas
I never have liked Christmas.... Really what is the modern day meaning. I know what the true meaning is and nobody really celebrates that. So your next culmination may be fellowship. OK I could buy that for $200 Chuck. But really what does the modern day family see in Christmas. Is it the shopping, the tree, the lights...nope. It's the dream to buy something that may make someones life a little brighter by going in to debt so you can spend the next 12 months paying off the $37 scarf they needed for one time. You say why do I look at it this way. I think gifts should be made by hand. Christmas tree's should decorated by ornaments made by your family. Not some ornament you buy in the store so you have to store it up for another year to in the hope's it won't break while you shove it through a hole in to the attic that you can barely fit in.
I look back on the posts I made last year and even though the posts sound depressing, I still feel the same. I hate the holidays! I wish we could just go from October to January but then we wouldn't have a reason to make New Year's lies to ourselves about losing the 20 pounds you just put on in two months or paying off the thousands of dollars you spent trying to make you kids happy.
Kids are happy if you buy them something or nothing. I see it all the time. Buy a kid a twenty dollar toy and they'll play with the box it came in. So why do I think the holidays are depressing? Christmas never really had a meaning to me. Why rush around and be nice to someone once a year. Why not be nice to them all year long..... There's an idea. Now I'm starting to sound like George Carlin.
Anyway I don't like to see people exchanging gifts. It has a sense of boasting. What if the gift you got me cost more than the gift I got you. Then you pissed because you spent more than you had to. When I was younger I think I liked it a little more but I think people go way overboard. Come on does anyone celebrate Columbus Day? No, but damn sure like the day off from work right. So back on task as I ramble away. I have a lot to say in the winter so get use to it. Let's break this down element by element and undermine the value.
UPDATE: I started to add them all in here but I figured I could make multiple blog posts and keep this going for a few days.....so enjoy.
I look back on the posts I made last year and even though the posts sound depressing, I still feel the same. I hate the holidays! I wish we could just go from October to January but then we wouldn't have a reason to make New Year's lies to ourselves about losing the 20 pounds you just put on in two months or paying off the thousands of dollars you spent trying to make you kids happy.
Kids are happy if you buy them something or nothing. I see it all the time. Buy a kid a twenty dollar toy and they'll play with the box it came in. So why do I think the holidays are depressing? Christmas never really had a meaning to me. Why rush around and be nice to someone once a year. Why not be nice to them all year long..... There's an idea. Now I'm starting to sound like George Carlin.
Anyway I don't like to see people exchanging gifts. It has a sense of boasting. What if the gift you got me cost more than the gift I got you. Then you pissed because you spent more than you had to. When I was younger I think I liked it a little more but I think people go way overboard. Come on does anyone celebrate Columbus Day? No, but damn sure like the day off from work right. So back on task as I ramble away. I have a lot to say in the winter so get use to it. Let's break this down element by element and undermine the value.
UPDATE: I started to add them all in here but I figured I could make multiple blog posts and keep this going for a few days.....so enjoy.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
First Walgreens Deal
OK so I'm not a virgin to the drug store deals but I later realized I screwed it up. After seeing my wife do the CVSing for a couple weeks and even helping her once or twice has got me on the let's stretch every penny we have kick. I don't go as extreme as my wife does on the deals but this is my first. Right now I'm trying to only stick to deals that we use but it doesn't hurt to have a small stock of products. Especially living in hurricane prone Florida. My granny always told me when I first moved to Florida that I should have a hurricane preparedness bin so this is my way of thanking Walgreens and CVS for helping me do that. So here's what I got in my deal.
4 x 12pk Dr. Pepper cans = $11 with $3 RR
- $2 Dr.Pepper.com coupons ($1 off 2 12pk)
2 x 7oz Gillette Series shave gel = $4
- $2 Walgreens June coupons
1 x 7oz Gillette Satin Care shave gel = $2
- $1 Walgreens June coupons
- $.55 P&G coupon 6/1 newspaper
1 x 24pk Walgreens Cold Multi-Symptom = $3.99
@ - $3.99 rebate at end of June
Total: $20.99
Coupons: $5.55
OOP(+ Tax): 16.46
Rewards: $3.00
Rebates: $3.99
Where did I screw up you ask? We'll I thought the $5 RR was for any sale over $20 but it was $20 in Gillette products. Since it is Saturday I need to look at next weeks ad. If they have the same sale next week I may return the shave gels and then make a sale for 10 cans to total $20 so I can get the $5 in rewards. I know will forfeit my .55 coupon but getting 10 cans of shave gel for almost a quarter of the normal price will be worth it. I need to find somebody who sale newspapers so I can get the left over ads from the papers they do not sale on Sunday. That would help a lot. I like the way Walgreens puts out a coupon book every month and you don't have to clip the coupon. It's also nice that one coupon applies for each item in the sale.
4 x 12pk Dr. Pepper cans = $11 with $3 RR
- $2 Dr.Pepper.com coupons ($1 off 2 12pk)
2 x 7oz Gillette Series shave gel = $4
- $2 Walgreens June coupons
1 x 7oz Gillette Satin Care shave gel = $2
- $1 Walgreens June coupons
- $.55 P&G coupon 6/1 newspaper
1 x 24pk Walgreens Cold Multi-Symptom = $3.99
@ - $3.99 rebate at end of June
Total: $20.99
Coupons: $5.55
OOP(+ Tax): 16.46
Rewards: $3.00
Rebates: $3.99
Where did I screw up you ask? We'll I thought the $5 RR was for any sale over $20 but it was $20 in Gillette products. Since it is Saturday I need to look at next weeks ad. If they have the same sale next week I may return the shave gels and then make a sale for 10 cans to total $20 so I can get the $5 in rewards. I know will forfeit my .55 coupon but getting 10 cans of shave gel for almost a quarter of the normal price will be worth it. I need to find somebody who sale newspapers so I can get the left over ads from the papers they do not sale on Sunday. That would help a lot. I like the way Walgreens puts out a coupon book every month and you don't have to clip the coupon. It's also nice that one coupon applies for each item in the sale.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Procrastination - the story of my life
I must be the biggest procrastonator in the world. I hate to do homework. Yes I said homework. I am in college and have been off and on since 2002. I've taken my fair share of breaks over the years. I usually can only take about a year of it then I need a six month break. I still haven't seen the point of a degree. It seems to only be worth the paper it's printed on.
What I mean is who can really be a programmer on the leading edge of specific development languages by going to school. I have friends who have Bachelors in Computer Science and couldn't program "Hello world" but here I am with no college degree and have been programming professionally for about 2 years now. I say professionally for two years because I really hadn't proved myself till then. I had made some small things here and there but until I took on a couple projects that other more well known programmers had failed at is when I really proved myself to my peers. I also made a name for myself when I just took on a development team for an ASP.Net website and took off making leaps and bounds for customers.
So this brings me to where I am today ranting and raving about a stinkin' degree. I've been developing this website we'll call as "BIAS". At the beginning I stayed up many nights trying to finish the core to really prove what I could do to make it a product we wanted to stay with. Well I not only did that, I fed their thirst and they wanted more. Everybody within my team loved it. Now Friday I just finished up the administration section and then threw in a curve ball with a nice report that wasn't expected. I think I have a couple things in the admin section to go back and complete like the user's profile upload image page but that won't be used for awhile and was really just a way out there feature. I need to code the IFrame to make it work correctly.
Tuesday I begin working on the configuration section and that's where the controversy will start. What I haven't told you is there are two other programs, one legacy program with many years of following and a new high cost development team project that are basically trying to do the same things I am doing. The only key there is I can make changes in a day what takes them weeks after all the red tape. One thing I learned early on is make the change and ask for forgiveness later. It always works out in the end especially when the customer is happier.
So back to my weekend procrastination fest. Here I am on a earlllllyyyyy Monday morning doing homework again not getting anywhere. Sometimes I wonder if I have ADHD or am just lazy. I think I will take my Provigil tomorrow and see what happens. I always seem to be able to focus better when I take it. Anyway the class is Human Biology and what I think is useless unless you are going to become a doctor or chemist. Really what do I care about how the liver and kidneys filter blood except how it filters my beer out of my blood. So now I know how to get drunk and stay drunk longer by saturating the liver down.
On a good note I got a new cell phone on Friday after the first one died that I received Monday. Now for the story. Well the Friday before I broke my other cell phone, a Motorola L2, which was a piece of junk. After using it for over two years I had began to become fed up with it. So Saturday I order myself a refurbished AT&T Tilt from their premier website. Paid for the over night shipping so I would get it Monday. My wife was at home at the time so she opens the box and the back cover has a tab broken off. No biggy, I'll deal with it and call them this week to send me a new cover. Well Thursday afternoon I had to take my wife to the ER and while me and the kids were in the waiting room the damn screen goes white like all washed out. I tried a soft reset, a full hard reset to no luck. Well when we got home later that night I called up AT&T, same number on the box, so after being passed around about 4 times and working with 3 or 4 different sales people they go me a new phone sent out. Guy on the phone told me three to five days delivery. I'm like great. I got a nice three day weekend here to deal with a broken phone. Well Friday my new phone shows up out of the blue. It even looked different when I opened the box. Like all shiny and new.
I've been playing with my new phone this weekend customising it to my likings along with my wife liking the Palringo IM I installed on it. Now I've just got a few more items I would like for it then I think I will be happy.
What I mean is who can really be a programmer on the leading edge of specific development languages by going to school. I have friends who have Bachelors in Computer Science and couldn't program "Hello world" but here I am with no college degree and have been programming professionally for about 2 years now. I say professionally for two years because I really hadn't proved myself till then. I had made some small things here and there but until I took on a couple projects that other more well known programmers had failed at is when I really proved myself to my peers. I also made a name for myself when I just took on a development team for an ASP.Net website and took off making leaps and bounds for customers.
So this brings me to where I am today ranting and raving about a stinkin' degree. I've been developing this website we'll call as "BIAS". At the beginning I stayed up many nights trying to finish the core to really prove what I could do to make it a product we wanted to stay with. Well I not only did that, I fed their thirst and they wanted more. Everybody within my team loved it. Now Friday I just finished up the administration section and then threw in a curve ball with a nice report that wasn't expected. I think I have a couple things in the admin section to go back and complete like the user's profile upload image page but that won't be used for awhile and was really just a way out there feature. I need to code the IFrame to make it work correctly.
Tuesday I begin working on the configuration section and that's where the controversy will start. What I haven't told you is there are two other programs, one legacy program with many years of following and a new high cost development team project that are basically trying to do the same things I am doing. The only key there is I can make changes in a day what takes them weeks after all the red tape. One thing I learned early on is make the change and ask for forgiveness later. It always works out in the end especially when the customer is happier.
So back to my weekend procrastination fest. Here I am on a earlllllyyyyy Monday morning doing homework again not getting anywhere. Sometimes I wonder if I have ADHD or am just lazy. I think I will take my Provigil tomorrow and see what happens. I always seem to be able to focus better when I take it. Anyway the class is Human Biology and what I think is useless unless you are going to become a doctor or chemist. Really what do I care about how the liver and kidneys filter blood except how it filters my beer out of my blood. So now I know how to get drunk and stay drunk longer by saturating the liver down.
On a good note I got a new cell phone on Friday after the first one died that I received Monday. Now for the story. Well the Friday before I broke my other cell phone, a Motorola L2, which was a piece of junk. After using it for over two years I had began to become fed up with it. So Saturday I order myself a refurbished AT&T Tilt from their premier website. Paid for the over night shipping so I would get it Monday. My wife was at home at the time so she opens the box and the back cover has a tab broken off. No biggy, I'll deal with it and call them this week to send me a new cover. Well Thursday afternoon I had to take my wife to the ER and while me and the kids were in the waiting room the damn screen goes white like all washed out. I tried a soft reset, a full hard reset to no luck. Well when we got home later that night I called up AT&T, same number on the box, so after being passed around about 4 times and working with 3 or 4 different sales people they go me a new phone sent out. Guy on the phone told me three to five days delivery. I'm like great. I got a nice three day weekend here to deal with a broken phone. Well Friday my new phone shows up out of the blue. It even looked different when I opened the box. Like all shiny and new.
I've been playing with my new phone this weekend customising it to my likings along with my wife liking the Palringo IM I installed on it. Now I've just got a few more items I would like for it then I think I will be happy.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Who needs a stairmaster when you have stairs
I lay here in the floor on Sunday night about ready to go to bed and begin my week of ass pounding on the keyboard until my fingers are sore.
The weekend was very eventful in my house. Friday my wife and I decided we needed to do some rearranging of the furniture in the house. We first started with our bedroom and the loft outside the door of our bedroom. Our plans are to make a small bedroom out of the loft for our daughter. This also included moving the computer closet from the upstairs closet down to the closet under the stairs. This took almost all of Saturday and I still haven't finished hooking up everything. Sometime this week I've got to call Cox to unlock the cable box for me to run a new cable line to the under stairs closet. This closet was were I planned to setup everything from the start but we initially had all the computer equipment upstairs on the loft so that's were I originally setup the shelving and wiring.
Anyway we got most of our bedroom cleaned up and a good part of the loft. Mostly what's left is putting clothes away in the closets and then we can begin setting the bed up for my daughter. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to go to Lowe's to get some coax cable and a waterproof exterior box for the new cable line. You may ask why I need a exterior box to run a cable line. The box is for me moving all my cable and telephone lines to so I don't have to call the cable company every time I want to do something with my cable.
The closet under the stairs is pretty much wired up other than me having problems with my server over heating because I have it vertical instead of horizontal. For some reason I am having problems with my new motherboards north bridge overheating. I emailed Gigabyte today but I won't here anything from them for a couple days to week if they even respond at all. I should get my DVD drive back from NewEgg this week that I had to RMA.
Off to dreamland I go......
The weekend was very eventful in my house. Friday my wife and I decided we needed to do some rearranging of the furniture in the house. We first started with our bedroom and the loft outside the door of our bedroom. Our plans are to make a small bedroom out of the loft for our daughter. This also included moving the computer closet from the upstairs closet down to the closet under the stairs. This took almost all of Saturday and I still haven't finished hooking up everything. Sometime this week I've got to call Cox to unlock the cable box for me to run a new cable line to the under stairs closet. This closet was were I planned to setup everything from the start but we initially had all the computer equipment upstairs on the loft so that's were I originally setup the shelving and wiring.
Anyway we got most of our bedroom cleaned up and a good part of the loft. Mostly what's left is putting clothes away in the closets and then we can begin setting the bed up for my daughter. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to go to Lowe's to get some coax cable and a waterproof exterior box for the new cable line. You may ask why I need a exterior box to run a cable line. The box is for me moving all my cable and telephone lines to so I don't have to call the cable company every time I want to do something with my cable.
The closet under the stairs is pretty much wired up other than me having problems with my server over heating because I have it vertical instead of horizontal. For some reason I am having problems with my new motherboards north bridge overheating. I emailed Gigabyte today but I won't here anything from them for a couple days to week if they even respond at all. I should get my DVD drive back from NewEgg this week that I had to RMA.
Off to dreamland I go......
Friday, February 29, 2008
Long awaited update
It's been a pretty long time since I've made any type of post to my blog and I hope to do it more often. I been trying to get my server at home straightened out. I originally planned to make it my full web server and get rid of the paid server I have now but my 512kb upload speed just wasn't enough to support the needed bandwidth. So in regards to my server I've been working on getting my pictures online with another host. I finally decided on using Flickr for my pictures because of the price and the unlimited storage. I currently have about 18 gigs of pics on my server to share.
Another piece of software in question was my current blog. I found that I liked Wordpress alot better but they didn't offer domain mapping for free. The only way I could get it to work the way I wanted was on my home server and again it couldn't handle the load even with IIS compression turned on. A day or two later I found that Blogger offered free domain mapping so I decided to stay with Blogger. You can now find my blog at http://blog.thedelongfamily.com
A third piece I've been working on is integrating my domain with Google Apps. I've gotten the email, docs, and calendar setup. The Google Apps is pretty cool but I'm not too sure how or if my family is even going to use it.
Right now I have a lot going through my head with work and at home. I'd like to write a really good photo website similar to 4images using Asp.Net and MSSQL Server 2005.
Anyway off to working on my server and network some more.
Another piece of software in question was my current blog. I found that I liked Wordpress alot better but they didn't offer domain mapping for free. The only way I could get it to work the way I wanted was on my home server and again it couldn't handle the load even with IIS compression turned on. A day or two later I found that Blogger offered free domain mapping so I decided to stay with Blogger. You can now find my blog at http://blog.thedelongfamily.com
A third piece I've been working on is integrating my domain with Google Apps. I've gotten the email, docs, and calendar setup. The Google Apps is pretty cool but I'm not too sure how or if my family is even going to use it.
Right now I have a lot going through my head with work and at home. I'd like to write a really good photo website similar to 4images using Asp.Net and MSSQL Server 2005.
Anyway off to working on my server and network some more.
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