One of my goals for 2015 is to take some online courses, and I already wrote about it earlier. I knew of Coursera, and thought it was one of the few decent “biggies” for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Somehow though I completely skipped over EDX, thinking it had merged with Coursera or all of their courses were included. Apparently not. Let’s see, another 409 courses to consider. Oh joy, oh bliss, oh joyful bliss! 🙂 Let’s see what’s out there:
PSYCHOLOGY: UC Berkeley has one on the “The Science of Happiness”, part of the positive psychology” field that is self-coalescing / emerging. It is self-paced, start anytime, which is attractive;
ECONOMICS: Cornell is offering “Networks, Crowds and Markets”, which combines some of the other areas I looked at earlier – economics, psychology, game theory. It starts in mid-February. Equally, UofT is offering “Behavioural Economics in Action”, although might be just as useful to read one of the texts;
A WIRED WORLD: “Wiretaps to Big Data: Privacy and Surveillance in the Age of Interconnection” looks interesting too, also at Cornell but self-paced. Uof Cambridge has one on “Economics of Cybersecurity” and Notre Dame has “Understanding Wireless: Technology, Economics, and Policy”, but it looks a little basic and dry.
COMPUTING: I already have plans for computing courses, but Harvard has one called “Introduction to Computer Science” that surprisingly uses C, Java, etc. One of Harvard’s largest courses? Ooook.
ASTRONOMY: Near the end of the year, I might aim for “Exoplanets”, a self-paced one offered by Australian National University. It is part of a larger series that starts with “Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe”. There’s also one called “Super-Earths And Life” at Harvard, which is attracting some press as it is one of the new ones with a decent professor.
PERSONAL: I could file this under psychology, but it looks much more like a personal power-type course –> “Unlocking the Immunity to Change: A New Approach to Personal Improvement” from Harvard. Not currently active, unfortunately. I also see a course in “Jazz Appreciation” by UTex @ Austin that looks interesting, but I’ll probably stick with the Great Courses version. Given my interest in stress, there’s an interesting course called “Becoming a Resilient Person – The Science of Stress Management” that could be good, but not completely compelling. Heck, I even might consider doing Dante’s Inferno as a personal study of freedom and identity. It would be on the weird side of the plan though.
I’m blown away by a couple of other things I found though.
First, a brilliant version of something that I’ve seen in amateur or “open source” format of course — an online book club. Namely BerkeleyX Book Club. Except it isn’t wine, noshing and conversation, these are discussions of famous titles led by English profs. For example, The Picture of Dorian Gray or Dracula. Looks like they do one a month, with Jane Eyre for this month. Fascinating model, but none of the books were on my list for this year. Might give it a whirl after September though.
For philanthropy, I’ve been on the LearningbyGiving site in the past, and look, they have a course to take — “Giving With Purpose: How to get the most out of your charitable giving”. Perfect for my goals for the year. Not sure when to do it though.
Finally, there is one that looks relevant to the stuff I want to do, and maybe is a sign as I actually thought earlier today about ditching the area from my official list or at least moving it to the bottom. UofT has an extension course starting in just a couple of weeks called “Library Advocacy Unshushed”. Looks pretty cool. Might have to consider committing to it.
Let’s check in on how I’m doing on my goals…Spoiler alert — the big news is under the yellow goals!
Starting with the Blue / Mind goals, I’ve done a bit on both of my two big goals: re-engaged with astronomy (Mercury and Venus observing with the naked eye, collimated my scope, charged batteries, and sorted out my astro gear) and exchanged emails with the contractor for the kitchen renovation –> green for the past two weeks. On day-to-day stuff, I’ve started using the tracker, organized a photo book, did a partial backup, and enrolled in a Coursera course, but nothing official on the Honey-Do list, photo scanning, or ripping –> yellow for the past two weeks. On my bucket list, I started doing some origami, but nothing on photography, knitting, juggling or the meteor shower –> yellow for the past two weeks. Overall, I’d rate my mind goals at YELLOW for my early progress.
For the Green / Heart goals, my first big one has been re-engaging with Jacob. I have had two Boys Nights with him, although the project one was a bust. I had hoped to make snowflakes with him (construction paper with hole cut out for a picture, trimmed edges, wool on top) but I described the project to him on the weekend, and he did it without me, so he had no interest when it came to Boys Night to do it again. He liked the idea apparently, and couldn’t wait. This past week though we had an impromptu games night while Andrea was at NAC, and when we were done, we talked about what he likes in various games and what he wants in the game we’re going to design together in February. It’s a decent start. But I’m not stepping up for the night-time routine as much as I had intended, so overall of yellow. For the random acts of romance, my second big goal, I have to grade myself a Red so far…Andrea and I have done a few more things together, but it all came to a screeching halt on Saturday night when I was sick, and had to bail on our NAC date. Fortunately, a friend was able to go at the last-minute. Between the two, I’ll give myself an overall yellow so far. For the day-to-day activities, I’ve organized a wings outing for this coming week, updated the AstroPontiac site for the WP software, did a bit of work on my social campaign for November, and researched a bit of my charity plan. Nothing on siblings, corn roast planning –> Overall yellow. Which gives me an overall yellow for the category.
For the Red / Body goals, I pretty much suck. I’m way behind on my exercises and I’ve done almost nothing on organizing my physical journey — overall flaming red. On the day-to-day stuff, I haven’t got myself organized for french nor found a new dentist or doctor, but I did do my sleep test when my squirrels were knocking at the door, so I’m giving myself a yellow. However, I did nothing on organizing myself to give blood, use a rappel/zipline, or for a polar plunge, so again RED. Which leaves me with an overall red for the category.
Despite my “failures” above, I’m not really surprised. My priority for this month so far has been my goals in the Yellow / Soul category. I’ll go in reverse order, as I want to save my writing challenge to the end. I hit the ground running on my creativity challenge in the day-to-day stuff, working on clip art, two goals memes, finding a Daddy and Jacob project, posting photos from December, doing a photobook, and designing trackers for goals and the Creativity Challenge itself. On blogging, my goal was 10 new blogs; I did 32. In 18 days. For reviews of TV episodes, my goal was 10 for the yearly average but my Creativity Challenge boosted that temporarily to 25 for two weeks –> I did 35. With more pending. I’ve only done 4 memes so far, out of my 200 for the year, but I didn’t really expect to start this soon. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the first book (Monogram Murders), I’ve completed 11 entries in my Gratitude Journal with an impressive 8 entries in a row, and I’ve tried out 2 recipes with Andrea. And as mentioned, Jacob and I are working on the game design I wasn’t planning on starting until February. On the other side, nothing on movie reviews or book reviews, or the photography / movie weekend / HR guide. Nor have I done anything on my Spiritual questions quest for the year. Nevertheless, if this was my only progress for the month, I’d still give myself an overall Green. That list alone is enough to give me a sense of accomplishment.
But all of this has been a side-show to the main attraction, which is my ultra-scary, how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-reach “500,000 words” goal. Working it backwards, that’s 10,000 words a week x 50 weeks. So I have to put up about 10K words a week to stay on track.
Week 1 launched with a vengeance — 2 memes, 8 gratitude entries, 9 reviews of TV episodes, 26 posts, 35 e-mails, and innumerable numbers of Facebook posts and some other projects combined to give me, wait for it, 24,620 words, with 19,500 coming just from the blog. Week 2 was a bit slower, and I confess I didn’t meet my writing target — I only accumulated 7054 words, with 5500 coming from the blog and the rest coming from Facebook, emails, TV episode reviews and memes. But overall? My grand total for the two weeks is 31,674. Not including a few reviews and things that will post in the next few days already. That’s two-thirds of my previous total on the blog over the last few years, and way above my yearly average alone. That’s a big GREEN for the category by itself, although the others were already green.
So, summing up, Yellow / Yellow / Red / Green. Since my green is as impressive as my red is sucky, I’m going to call it a very promising yellow so far. I have to admit, I’m surprised. I lost momentum after the first 11 days, as I started week 2. And this week I’ve mailed in my performance in a few places. Yet, overall, it’s already looking promising for my month-end report, with two more weeks of progress to come!
I like this new PolyWogg 4.0. He’s a productive little tadpole. I feel almost giddy! 🙂
Since my big goal for the year is 500,000 words worth of new writing, and I share most of that through my blog, I also need a way to then share stuff through my Facebook profile, Twitter account, and Google+ page if I want to “get the word out” about anything I’m blogging.
There are essentially two ways to do that. First, the manual way, I just paste something into FB, Twitter or G+ to say “hey, here’s a post”, or second, the automated way, which is to use a social media post manager.
A social media manager (SMM) is usually set up as a site or an app that you give permission to so that they can post to your FB, Twitter and G+ profiles/accounts for you. Put simply, you post in the SMM site, and it populates the feeds to FB/Twitter/G+ or a host of other media sites. You choose, you grant permission, you post. Sounds simple enough. But there are three complications to that simplicity. Call them “features”, if you will, as most sites pretend.
First and foremost, if you were only doing it with FB or Twitter or G+, it wouldn’t make much sense to use it (one exception below). Generally you would just go into the main social site and simply post. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. No muss, no fuss, no need for a manager. But if you have more than one social site to target (I have the three I mentioned above), it helps. But with that service comes the complication — cost. You can do it for free on the social site, or pay for options on the manager site. I am not willing now to add much cost to my web presence. I already pay for the internet registration for three sites (PolyWogg, ThePolyBlog, and AstroPontiac) plus a business package for hosting (unlimited sites, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, 24/7 support, unlimited emails) that works for me most of the time (occasional technical limitations). Add in unlimited internet at home, with a decent speed, and some online backup storage, and it adds up. Most of the social media managers run anywhere from $10 to $25 per month to run their full options. So, for me, I had to choose one which had a free option (with all the limitations that go with it).
Second, this won’t apply to most people, but I had to use one that wasn’t likely to end up being blocked by my workplace firewall. From time to time, I suddenly realize that something I posted the night before, and which I thought was ready for “broadcast”, actually has a nuance or something about it that means I need to cancel the post. There are lots of examples online of groups or organizations that ended up with ill-timed posts — maybe announcing Bill Cosby for a fundraising activity on the day the more recent news broke about his alleged sexual transgressions. Maybe it was a “Meet at the top of the tower for a blast!” invitation back on 9/11. Not always “big” oops like that, but just things you don’t want to post because of something else. Or maybe you just realized there’s another angle to something you wrote and you want to stop it going live. Whatever the case, I need to access it via my phone (sometimes limited access for the apps) or if necessary, my desktop at work. One of the managers takes a very different approach from the rest, heavily tied to Google+, might even have been an option except my work blocks G+. No access at all. Not even for me, and I have access to a lot of sites most people don’t. Ergo, not a sustainable option.
Finally, the last complication really comes down to features. I gave a try to four separate social media managers, and here are the results.
I was already using HootSuite. I confess I thought it was “okay”, seemed to be doing the job and I used it easily for a whole week. But there was a problem with the scheduling feature. Most of the sites are somewhat similar in allowing you to “schedule” a post for the future. After all, that’s part of the game. Setting it up so that you don’t send 10 posts out at the same time and look like a spammer. Instead, it spaces them out throughout the day. Some professional sites have it set up really aggressively. For example, a goal-setting site might send out a “start your day right” tip at 6:00 a.m. Maybe then, around 8:00 a.m., it sends out a reminder of anything you entered into their tracker that’s due that day. Going further, at 11:00, it might send you a tip about eating healthy if you follow their “EatRight” twitter account. Late in the day, it then sends you a tip about “What to think about on the drive home”. A communications strategy tied to your day. And almost all the sites allow you to manually set a time and date for a post to go out.
For me, the problem with Hootsuite came in the “after-scheduling” management. Most of them also have an “auto-schedule” feature. You tell it, for instance, you only want to send messages between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and no more than 3 during that time. It will then figure out a good time to send the message in there, auto-scheduling it. If you pre-write five or six on the weekend, and auto schedule them all, it will put the first three on Monday and add the next 2-3 on Wednesday. Easy peasy. But suppose then you decide that you have a NEW one that you really want to send on Monday. This gives you two options — either manually schedule it as a 4th one to send on Monday or schedule it for Monday and reschedule one of the other ones. If you do this latter option, HootSuite fails miserably at the change in schedule. You see, Hootsuite didn’t manage it as #1,2,3 to go on Monday, it manually set the time for those three. So you can’t simply “bump” it down in the queue, you have to edit the time itself. Which if you had them going on Wednesday in a set order (i.e. 1,2,3,4,5 should go in order), then you have to edit #3,4,5 manually. Not a huge deal for some people, but critical for the way I write. I also went in and changed my scheduling to only do 3 a day, only in the afternoon, expecting the auto-scheduled ones to update. They didn’t. I couldn’t find a feature to fix that. I also have some concerns with the way the site handles shortened URLs, but all the sites are the same on that front, so hardly a deal-breaker.
After searching for alternatives, I gave MavSocial a try. Set up was relatively easy for Facebook and Twitter. I ran into a problem with Firefox and my anti-virus that it thought one pop-up looked like MalWare but the scan was clean, and I popped over to Chrome to complete the FB account addition. With paid membership, the site has an interesting collection of extra features such as allowing an RSS feed to be posted automatically (so for example, my blog feed could link to the site and get auto-shared) or managing photos that would go with the posts. They even have options to buy/link to some stock photo sites. A social inbox turns comments and retweets into an email-like interface. Nifty. But auto scheduling is almost non-existent, although it does have manual. A must for me, and the end of its consideration.
FriendsPlus.Me has one of the most interesting approaches of all the social media managers. Rather than give you an interface that has you post your info into the site, it pulls your info from your Google+ page. If that sounds cryptic, here’s the difference. For most sites, you go in, add your accounts, and post on that site instead of G+, Twitter, FB. You post to MavSocial or Hootsuite, and it sends your updates to the other three. For FriendsPlus.Me, it has you enter your posts on your Google+ page, and if you add certain hashtags, it will then pull those posts into F+ and copy them to your other accounts. The benefit is enormous. If you use Google+ for your email, and regular contacts, you’re already on that site or in that app. Once you set up FriendsPlus with the links, you never need to go to that site again until you want to change something. FriendsPlus will just follow you on Google+ and if you put in a special hashtag, it will copy that entry and that entry only to another account.
For example, suppose I only wanted to share my TV reviews to my Twitter account and not my FB account. On FriendsPlus.Me, I would add a control hashtag that said “#TVreviews” for Twitter. Then, when I write a post in Google+, if I add the hashtag “#TVreviews”, F+ will copy that post to Twitter. A very different approach than the other sites. And while I like it, and I might even be willing to try it, it’s a no go for me. Google+ is blocked at work. I can’t access it. So if I wanted to block a post, I would have to do it on my phone only. Equally, it also complicates the scheduling features (since you would set any scheduling on G+, not on F+).
That left me with what some consider the biggest rival for Hootsuite: Buffer. I was a little disappointed with FriendsPlus and MavSocial, so my expectations weren’t high for Buffer either.
Sure, it has a “free” option to get you started. Like most of the sites, it limits how many accounts you can add for free (usually one FB profile, one Twitter account, etc.), but it is usually enough for personal, non-commercial use.
I quickly found a nice feature I wasn’t expecting — it lets you post to Google+ pages. Hootsuite doesn’t. There’s a limitation on the Google API control that won’t allow direct posting to Google+, and most managers are itching for access, but so far they only allow linking to the G+ page and not the full G+ profile. I confess that I haven’t done much about G+ since I started using it. I feel it is a huge untapped resource or channel delivery, but I just haven’t spent the time figuring it out. I kind of feel the same about Pinterest and the new Ello. They’re on my list to check out in more detail this year, see if I want to be involved in any of them.
Buffer also has a pretty simple interface. Not a lot of “extra” features cluttering up the landscape. Almost all of which I don’t need, at least not yet. The sidebar contains your list of accounts, pretty straightforward. Across the top is CONTENT / ANALYTICS / SCHEDULE / SETTINGS, plus your own MY ACCOUNT link and the requisite “click here to upgrade” to a paid option.
In the CONTENT menu, it’s relatively simple too. There’s the list of your scheduled posts — but unlike the other sites, they are in a queue. Not formally scheduled, queued. Which means I can move them around, rearrange order, etc, and it doesn’t affect the overall posting schedule for when SOMETHING goes out — that’s up to another tab to handle. Fantastic option for me. The only downside is if you want to create a custom schedule for certain days (i.e. 2x on Monday, 3x on Wednesday, 1x on Thursday), you have to upgrade for that option. The other limitation is you can only schedule 10 items in the queue. When I’m blogging, that’s not a problem, I wouldn’t have that much content queued. However, the tweet reviews of individual TV episodes don’t take very long, I don’t care exactly when they go out other than not all at once, and I tend to write them in batches as I clear stuff off my PVR. So now, I have about 15 pre-written, ready to go. Except the queue is limited to 10 in total. Small annoyance, easily made up for by the benefit of better management within the queue.
The analytics aren’t terribly useful to me as most of my posts also track the other end at the blog, but if I got into more curation, it might be nice to know how much is being clicked. Not essential though. Under Settings you can customize Link Shortening, using 3 different shorteners. I suspect I’m going to use my own off the PolyWogg domain, but good to know the options there. There have been challenges with both Twitter and Facebook that at different times they have blocked certain links. Not a huge concern for me as there are workarounds (including 3 different types of links to my site just from my site itself), but a cautionary concern. The MY ACCOUNT option allows for email settings (post from email), and some extra browser / phone and tablet app options.
I skipped over a feature that I’ll need to explore … it’s called SUGGESTIONS, and it is links that Buffer suggests I might find interesting. I don’t know if they’re tailored in their recommendations or not, probably not as I just joined, but the list wasn’t bad. Out of 25 suggestions, I saw at least 10 that were of clickable interest to me.
Overall, I think Buffer wins for now. I’ll give it a go this week and see how the bugs shake out. I like the idea of scheduling 3 general posts per day, maybe between noon and 5, and then doing “custom” posts for the 8-12 shift. Haven’t decided yet, and I’m not in full meme mode yet, will have to see if that changes things a lot (the links will go to my PhotoGallery page).
Hah, click bait worked again! Except it’s not really click bait. I did spend last night at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. Sometimes called the Royal (mostly by them, it’s their brand). Sometimes called Royal Ottawa. Sometimes called the nuthouse by insensitive twits.
I was there for overnight observation, which will generate curious thoughts from some readers, worried thoughts from some close friends, and relief from some of my relatives. Like my brother Mike, who’s probably thinking, “Finally! I’ve said it for YEARS!”.
When they find out I left in the morning as scheduled, everyone will be confused. Sorry to disappoint, but I wasn’t there for anything “psych” related, at least not really. Instead, it is one of the centres in Ottawa that does sleep tests, making use of the beds overnight and hooking you up to innumerable electrodes. And heaven knows I need a sleep test — it was on my tracking list for this year. I sleep like crud regularly, often waking up multiple times in the night, often having insomnia in the middle of the night, only to hit a perfect deep sleep about 20 minutes before I have to get up in the morning. So I went and got hooked up.
I shouldn’t say innumerable electrodes, because there were seventeen to be precise. Two on my shins to see if I have restless leg syndrome and kick a lot at night. Two more on my shoulders. About five more on your chin and under your throat to see if you grind your teeth in the night (I do, but they didn’t detect it last night). About five to seven across your forehead and beside your eyes to tell if you’re in REM, when your eyes are open, etc. (they basically monitor eye movement by measuring the muscles around the eye twitching and convulsing when you move your eyes). And three to five more in your hair, although I have no idea what they were doing.
Most of the test though is to see if I have apnea — which is the lovely condition where you stop breathing and your body fights to overcome it, thus waking you up. It’s quite common with pregnant women (tied to weight gain), although oddly enough, Andrea’s sleep apnea was improved by pregnancy, not worsened. I told them up front I didn’t have it, because I never wake up gasping for air nor jerk awake.
For those who have never done a sleep test, here’s the deal — if you didn’t have trouble sleeping BEFORE the sleep test, you’re guaranteed to have it during the test.
First, no caffeine after 4:00 p.m. Not a big deal for me (well, I was thirsty a bit right at 4:00 by coincidence, but not after that).
Second, there were restrictions on smoking and alcohol which didn’t apply to me, so easily ignored, but hard on some.
Third, you have to arrive between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m., and get hooked up to all the probes/electrodes. The list of 17 above? They all come with wires too. So it takes time and you’re not the only patient. They have six beds, and two technicians doing the monitoring. You can stay up and read or something after they hook you up, but you’re not going to be doing very much else, so I decided it was easier to go to bed.
Most people who have trouble sleeping have compensated by going to bed later than average — making sure they’re actually tired so that they don’t fight for as long falling asleep. Falling asleep has never been my problem, it’s staying asleep, so I thought, “Might as well turn in early.” So I was in bed by 10:05 p.m. First time in a LONG time. They test the equipment, turn out the light, and then monitor your sensors plus your body position through an infrared camera. Oh, and you have an oxygen nose plug in, taped to your face and looped over your ears. With the 17 electrodes all having wires, plus the nose plug, plus four other wires running off straps around your chest and abdomen, it’s not exactly “comfortable”.
But you’re in bed, ready to go. As I was. Then at one point I was REALLY warm, so I wanted to take my socks off. Which meant I had to press the call button, she had to come in, make sure I didn’t disconnect anything, and good to go again. That was around midnight I think. Oh yeah, no clock in the room, and more importantly for me, no radio to fall asleep to. Plus you can’t take your own pillow. Did I mention they basically remove any of the existing coping techniques you have been using so that you’re guaranteed to have bad sleep? The bed wasn’t made of nails, but maybe they haven’t thought of that yet.
Then at 2:00 a.m., she came in and told me that I apparently do have sleep apnea. Bad from her perspective. So she wanted to try the CPAP — no, it’s not a gynecological exam. CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, and it is basically a nose plug on steroids. Did you see Star Wars Episode 5 / The Empire Strikes Back where Luke is brought back to the Hoth snow base and is in a big tube of water wearing a breathing mask? Well that’s basically what a CPAP mask looks like.
There are two kinds. First, one that goes just over your nose, and made me feel like I was suffocating. You can’t open your mouth at all while wearing it or it suddenly vapour locks to your cheeks and nose. Very disturbing feeling — air pressure to lightly force the air into your lungs so you don’t have to work as hard, but also air pressure that fights against it when you breathe out so that your lungs don’t stop working (I guess, not really sure). The second kind is like the Star Wars mask, it’s a long hose with a breathing mask that fits over your nose and mouth — just like them giving you oxygen in an ambulance, but instead of a thin 8 mm tube for air, this is a garden hose coming at you. Heavy. Needs a full harness to go around top of your head, wrap around to the back, drop down and then back under your chin, up to your mouth, straps on with velcro and seals shut. Kind of like a catcher’s mask.
Sure, that won’t be distracting or hard to get used to wearing while sleeping, will it? Of course not.
Some 45 minutes later, I was still counting sheep and wondering what time it was. I did eventually drift off to sleep, only waking one more time before the 6:30 wake up call. Oh yeah, I forgot that part too. They wake you up around 6:00 and kick you to the curb so they have the space back. Great, very restful. Oddly enough, I actually DID sleep okay in that last 3 hours or so. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be wearing the mask, I think it was more the other things that were distracting (it’s hard to move around and get comfortable in a strange bed and no favorite pillow when you’re connected to 17 wired thingies).
The end result is that the very evangelical technician thinks me (and everybody on the planet, incidentally) should rush to the nearest medical centre and get a machine. But this is no small decision. It’s meant to be worn EVERY night. It also makes mostly white noise while you sleep, not very loud, but I don’t know what Jacob would think the first time he saw me in it. It’s not a simple “grab and go”, or drift off. This is very much sleeping with intent.
On the positive side, cost isn’t really a factor. While the machine is about $900 for the base model, 75% is covered by the government, and my work coverage would cover 80% of the rest, leaving me about 5% normally but we have double-coverage with Andrea, so hers would pick up the remaining 5%. I might have to buy some accessories, like a case and some cleaning cloths, but that’s about it.
I just did the test last night, so I still have some thinking to do. It is intrusive, it is disruptive, it is a bit claustrophobic. It also might make very little difference to my sleep. Lots of people rave as the technician did, but Andrea’s sleep wasn’t much better even with hers on, as others have said too, so it isn’t a slam dunk for everyone.
Plus there’s a psychological element. About 70% of overweight people have apnea, and that is the most likely cause for me. The extra weight basically leads to an enlarged tongue, narrower pathways, and/or extra skin at the back of the throat, and those three possible “blockages” screw up your breathing. To fully accept that I have sleep apnea requiring a serious mechanical intervention rather than an occasional challenge sleeping is to more broadly acknowledge that it is simply because I’m fat. That’s a hard pill to swallow for a whole host of other reasons, and triggers no end of self-defense psych reactions.
In the past, that would be enough to seal the outcome, no deal. But this is PolyWogg 4.0 who said death to squirrels just 16 days ago. I have a follow-up appointment in two weeks to review the results, and if I already have my machine, for the doctor to authorize the government funding, etc. And they will likely invite me back in the future to do another test where I just use my machine plus all their little electrodes again.
Decisions, decisions. While the cost is basically $0 to try, I don’t like wasting anyone’s resources, including the government’s if I’m not fully committed to doing it long-term. I can however try it and see if it makes an amazing difference, generally with 30 days free trial. I could do that this month, next month, next October, whenever. Stay tuned…
And sorry to my brother Mike who got excited no doubt with my being in the mental hospital, even if it was only for a night. He was probably hoping I could entice some other siblings to join me.
Gratitude entry #11…Today I am grateful for planetary conjunctions. At the moment, in the sky, Venus and Mercury appear about two inches apart if you hold your hand straight towards them and measure. I’ve never seen Mercury before, or rather never realized it if I did. And for the last couple of weeks, I’ve looked at dusk and saw nothing. Mind you, I’m only doing naked eye visuals, nothing with a telescope or anything. But tonight, as I drove home, Venus was very obvious straight ahead of me, and faintly to the right, I could see Mercury. Nice of Venus to provide a simple easy arrow to find it.
I’m hoping on Sunday maybe, or possibly even Friday night, I might get a chance to try for it with the telescope. I’d love to see Comet Lovejoy too, and Orion is pointing the way, but just haven’t nailed it yet.
