musings from the sleep deprived

I once again find myself regretting that I can’t seem to commit to writing anything full length. Yet another nanowrimo gone with just a couple chapters completed. Or at least attempted. So I’m back to just trying to do some writing as often as I can, even if it is an open format and not specifically fiction or whatever. Read more

This week’s links!

I should mention, though perhaps for some it goes without saying, that I don’t necessarily agree with all of the things I’m pointing to here. In fact, I’d go so far as to say some of them are just blatantly wrong. However, I point them out because they are interesting reading. Your own brain is going to have to reach its own conclusions about the veracity of the article, its source(s) and whether what they purport should influence your own thinking or opinions. I’m not an expert on (ok, most of) these topics. You may be. If you want heated debate, we can take that up over a beer. In the meantime, I’m just going to throw stuff out there for your amusement, and leave it up to you whether you elect to consume this fare or not. Enjoy…
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So I have a peculiar brain. I say this because it has managed to take four completely unrelated, seemingly innocent facts about the current state of my life, and turn this into insomnia. Note the time of the post. I’ve been up for about an hour now, and here is the reason:

1. I’m currently reading Sherlock Holmes Complete Works. This isn’t really notable, except in that if you’ve read it, you might recall the precision with which the main character goes through crime scenes and observes things. Watson’s descriptions for his methods, and the narratives describing those examinations borders on the pathological. A minor nod must also go out to the style of language involved in the dialog. This is certainly a function of the era and perhaps also the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s command of it.
2. I’m playing a game called XCOM: Enemy Unknown at the moment. This is an odd sort of game that you don’t often see these days. The relevant point here is that it is a turn-based, squad combat game. For those not familiar with computer gaming parlance, what this means is that, during at least the action-heavy parts of the game, combat is slowed down into turns. In each turn, you get to choose an action for each of the 4-6 squad members in your strike team. Things like “move over to this spot”, “fire your gun at that enemy” or “use your special blow things up especially well ability” might be example actions. At the end of every round, each enemy unit on the field likewise chooses its own action and tries to foil your well laid plans. If you think about how this plays out, it makes what would otherwise be a very quick SEAL-team-like combat sequence play out in very long carefully scripted action sequences, broken into little chunks of action only several seconds long, mixed in with long pauses of your own strategic decision-making about what each member of your team should do to end the combat with minimum losses.
3. I am capable of lucid dreaming. For those of you unfamiliar, I will link to the wikipedia page, and steal its first line here to explain: “A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden (1860–1932). In a lucid dream, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over their participation within the dream or be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream environment.”
4. I wear a CPAP at night. Again, I link you to wikipedia if you happen to be unfamiliar. It is basically like going to bed wearing an oxygen mask, prescribed to help with my sleep apnea.

Ok, I’m going pause here briefly to give you a chance to read stuff at those links if needed, and maybe think about how these things might all play in concert with one another. Go ahead, I’ve got all night. Take a few minutes…

Alright, so here’s what my brain has done with all of that. I end up dreaming about Sherlock Holmes crime scenes and gunfights. Except that those gunfights and crime scene investigations end up playing out like XCOM combat sequences, with each character getting to move in little time-sliced chunks, after each move, taking a moment to have a soliloquy in Sherlockian dialog, with exactingly long sequences of observations about what is going on and with whom. If you’ve seen the recent couple of movies with Robert Downey, Jr, you might recall the sequences where you can see him planning out a method of attacking an opponent, in each moment observing how to best disable them, and then seeing it play out in real time exactly as he had surmised. That is how it happens in the dream. Now add to this the fact that I begin lucid dreaming, and I can, in fact, influence the course of the action, and it becomes exactly like playing XCOM-style in a Sherlockian novel. And then, of course, becoming aware of the sounds of my CPAP machine, adding that into my dream, and then slowly falling out of the dream state because moving through Sherlockian combat scenes in slow motion while listening to the augmented sounds of your own machine-assisted breathing is, in fact, quite disturbing and mind-numbingly boring.

So yeah, thanks brain! I owe you one. I’m going to just go in to work early and try and get some work done.

Brain? By the way? Pull this shit again, and I’m pulling out the ambien and taking your ass down. Just sayin’.

I spent a bit of time today moving the blog up to my hosting provider. Ultimately, I’m trying to slowly relieve my dependence on the machine I have at home to just the core services that I can’t move. Things like MUSHes, minecraft server, mailing lists, etc. Read more

It was a relatively eventful day, with much ado about… eventually, nothing. Read more

For the first time in almost … well, alot of years, I’m trying out contact lenses again. Read more

WTF the 20 pounds I lost. PST. Read more

Good day. Its been a interesting few weeks with a lot of activity on several fronts. Geostock preparations continue to spin up. Tom’s got a cool shirt design all cooked up. Work continues to be wonderfully challenging, with its own sweet rewards as well.
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I need to steel myself. Read more

So after getting a nice break up in cold country, I return to Colorado, ready for work, D&D, Friday nights out with friends, pool league, and all of my usual procrastinations and obsessions await. Read more

I don’t even remember the last time I got to visit my Mom. Read more

Root canal this morning, bright and early. Need to get back in a week or so for the crown work. Nothing is as exciting to me as dental work. An a positive note, this guy made the anaesthetic shot completely painless. Thats a new one for me.

The years have not been kind. No … I need to rephrase that. I have not been kind to myself over the years. Yeah, thats better. In my advanced age of 34 (har), I am now starting to feel all the deliterious effects of the abuses of my youth, and the continued effects of my overall sloth.

And you know, its the stupid little things that remind you of it, that something’s not right, or that something needs to be fixed. Vaulting up 15 steps, and being winded. Bending over to tie your shoes and feeling uncomfortable because your gut is in the way. An afternoon spent walking around in a local shopping district leaves you tired, cranky and sore. Oh, not to mention the obvious of not having clothes fitting that used to, etc.
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