Polyphasic Sleep - Days 4-8

So I have now been doing this sleep schedule for a week and I have things to report. First off, I'll enter in the data from the previous few days. I was at my grandma's and didn't have access to the internet for a little bit there.

Day 4


Alertness: Pretty great, actually. Went and saw quite a few friends and hung out with them and their families for a while.

Memory: Decent. It was there, just not the best.

Initiative: Not bad. I got some stuff done, and I got to hang out with people. I've decided that being social is the easiest way to stay awake. And that's why it's so hard to get up at 6 in college: no one else is up.

Sociability: Very high. I saw people pretty much all day and I loved it. I even saw people I didn't know and still had fun.

Day 5


Alertness: Bad. But I was well aware that I was not doing so well. Overslept in the morning slightly (not by much, maybe 20 minutes) and my naps were a little long each (closer to 30 minutes) but I really needed them. Zombie mode: activated.

Memory: Decent. I got in a blindfolded cube solve today, but otherwise I didn't really strain the memory.

Initiative: Eh...I was lazy today. Just stayed around the house. I learned some stuff, though, so it wasn't bad.

Sociability: Not high. I avoided contact for the most part because I felt so gross.

Day 6

Merry Christmas! I don't want to go into what I got for presents, but being with grandma and the cousins was really nice. I missed Thanksgiving because I stayed in Chicago, so I finally got to see them. And I can always use the chocolate.


Alertness: Pretty high. Again, social situations seem to make me more alert. It's just the issue of getting yourself into social situations.

Memory: Great. I could remember a lot of things, though unfortunately I can't remember what I remembered. Though it is very close to bedtime right now and I need to crash. I just completed a blindfolded cube solve, so that's good news.

Initiative: Very, very low. I really didn't take the initiative with anything. I'm still in zombie mode, just now it's social zombie mode. I was very willing to do things, it's just you had to tell me to do them.

Sociability: Very high. I like being around family, especially during the holiday season.

Day 7

Today I got to see a house getting built into the side of a hill. Well, the house was already there, but they were renovating it and we got the full tour! Seeing as my dream house is Bag End from The Lord of the Rings, learning how to build into hills seems like essential information. Anyways, on to the report!


Alertness: Difficult to say. In the morning I have found that I'm typically in really bad shape, but then by nighttime I'm in great shape. That repeated again today. Though it seems that zombie mode is gone. Am I over the hump? Did I adjust?

Memory: Not that good. Struggled for a while to get some things out.


Initiative: Decent. It's the holidays. I shouldn't have to do anything.


Sociability: Pretty good. Talking and laughing with people is always good.

Day 8

Unlike all my other entries, this one was not written right before my core nap. As explained below, I had to make up for a lot of missed sleep today and decided to just wake up when my body wanted to wake up. It's about 8 in the morning right now as I write this.


Alertness: Great. I missed 2 out of 3 naps, which is not good. In the end, I decided that to stay sane I had to take back-to-back naps. My mom convinced me to just sleep in hibernation style and just see when I woke up. Well, that's what I did. And boy did it feel good! Most of the day I was pretty alert, though.

Memory: Great. I was able to play board games with friends at a pretty high level.

Initiative: Not bad, but not good either. I didn't really want to plan anything, but ended up doing so.

Sociability: Pretty high. I was having fun with people for quite a while. My friend and I went to making bad food for a little bit. I'll get the video up sometime before New Years on our blog (yes, I shamelessly promote myself). The brie tea was really bad...

I'm a little bit worried now, though. I slept for about 6 hours last night before waking up. Without any motivation to cut my time to the 3 hour core (seeing as I had just broken that rule) I just stayed in bed and fell asleep again eventually. That's not good. On the other hand, I feel great right now. I heard some people saying that maybe once per week polyphasic sleepers should just fall asleep and wake up whenever. I'm not sure that's the best option when I'm still adjusting, but it sure did feel good today.

Polyphasic Sleep - Day 3

So today was a bit weird...

I woke up at 6. Not an issue hung out under the covers until about 7 when my parents started bugging me. I can't remember what I was thinking about but I was very distinctly awake for that period. Then until about 9 I was in and out of consciousness. I remember forming thoughts, and I can remember my train of thought, but it was distinctly interrupted by sleeping. As a result I decided to skip my first two naps of the day.

And I felt great all day. Actually fantastic. No signs of sleep deprivation, even though I didn't even eat breakfast (mostly because I forgot). Then I went to hang out with some friends, then to some holiday parties, and home. And I really can't get over how great I feel. Leading up to my big sleep, I'm actually a little worried I won't be able to fall asleep on time. We'll see what happens with that.


Alertness: Very good after I finally got up. As in absurdly good. I spent a lot of the day worried that I was delusional, but looking back it was clearly just a really great day.

Memory: Great. I remembered where people lived, who their names were, and what my schedule was after Christmas. I call that a success.

Initiative: Far above average. I was out and about for almost 12 hours today.

Sociability: Really good. I find I'm much more awake when I'm around people I like talking to about random things. My mom is fine company, but not someone I seek out when I want to have fun. Friends fill this gap very effectively, and today I went out to take care of this.

Probably something I should note: I feel like I have an accelerated heart rate. Though the holiday party food could have something to do with this, it could be the sleep. I'll keep an eye on this and think it is something I should write down, just in case.

Polyphasic Sleep - Day 2

So I overslept slightly this morning and may have taken an extra nap during the day. But as a result, I feel great right now. Really great. All of my naps were extremely productive and always came right when I needed them. I almost skipped my evening nap to make up for the sleep earlier in the day, but I ended up taking it and it was the best 10 minutes of my life. I love the feeling of being asleep, but I hate waking up and I hate spending time asleep. But boy did that feel good.


Alertness: This morning it was very bad. But by the time I was playing board games in the afternoon I was up and running. Today felt like a very productive day. I played a few board games and feel I did as well as I normally would.

Memory: Good. Right before my naps I had rather foggy thoughts, but at all other times I was both alert and capable of remembering things. I managed a blindfolded Rubik's cube solve, so things are working well in the memory department. I learned how to play Agricola today (pretty good game, I might add) and didn't have problems remembering the rules.

Initiative: Much higher than it's been all break. I got together with my friend Cole and then had his family over for dinner (yes, he and his family had to deal with a 20 minute nap in there). I'm getting things together tomorrow and maybe even Saturday. Maybe I'm a little too ambitious, but that goes to show how good I feel about today.

Sociability: Pretty good. There were moments when I really didn't want to talk and the sleep deprivation headache (though not bad at all) kept me from being as friendly as I could have been at times. But for the most part I had no issues and even wanted to be around people.

I figure I should note that I will not be editing these entries at all. What goes in, stays in, typos and all. I figure if I can't type correctly, you would want to know. I hope it doesn't come to that...

Polyphasic Sleep - Day 1

It's about 2 in the morning and I'm nearing my bedtime, so I figure now is as good a time as any to report on the day. Waking up at 6 was brutal after waking up at 10 and 11 for most of the break so far. My 11:00 nap was much needed, and I turned it into 40 minutes so I wouldn't suffer too much. That may have caused me to miss my next two naps (I tried to sleep but failed for 40 minutes each), but it was the boost I needed. Basically, this was a day in which homework kept me up late. Not too bad, but pretty uncomfortable nonetheless.


Alertness: Pretty good. I was in not-so-great shape up until my first nap, but after that it turned into a normal day. I don't think I missed anything important...

Memory: Decent. Thinking was kind of a strain, and the slight sleep deprivation headache I have doesn't help, so my memory was noticeably weaker than yesterday. Still, though, nothing a late night of homework won't do.

Initiative: Very low for most of the day, but very high right now. Despite being very tired and looking forward to my 3 hours of sleep, I am currently trying to schedule a get-together with old high school friends and am planning dinner for tonight (that'll be a fun evening). Stayed indoors, but that isn't very different from how I've been all break.

Sociability: Very low. Maybe due to the fact that my mom is the only person around to talk to, and talking to her can be problematic. We just don't see eye-to-eye on anything. My companion for the day was the intro computer science class on iTunes U.

First day is done, and I'm not feeling too bad. I'll go get something to drink here soon. I always forget to drink when I'm around the house, and dehydration can be an issue with little sleep.

The Sleep Schedule Begins

So I am now fully recovered from all of my sickness from the quarter. Or so I hope. Because I'm going to take an ambitious leap and go for polyphasic sleep. I tried it during the quarter and it just didn't work out: I always forgot to nap, never obeyed my alarm, and ended up sleeping more than I would otherwise because I wasn't willing to adjust. But that's going to change.

First off, some very basic information on how this will work. Our sleep cycles are typically 90 minutes long. This gives us a full does of NREM and REM sleep. The goal of the extreme versions of polyphasic sleep (such as Dymaxion, uberman, and even everyman - see the Wikipedia article for more information) is to break that through serious sleep deprivation. When sleep deprived, you enter REM much faster than otherwise, and thus a 15-30 minutes "power nap" will give you the REM you need to continue functioning. Over time, your body is trained to enter REM immediately. You only need 2 hours or so of REM every day, so using six 20-minutes naps spaced evenly in the day is all you need to function at your best. There are a few blogs about people starting the uberman sleep schedule, some more successful than others. One of the most descriptive writers I've found is Steve Pavlina's blog. His entries start HERE.

I'm not going to go with full uberman. I don't particularly like suffering through sleep deprivation (believe me, I've had my fair share of it), but I hate having to sleep a full 7-8 hours every night. That's why I choose to get up early. But my schedule, particularly when baseball starts up in late January, is pretty tight. I figure if I can break through the sleep deprivation now, I can adjust later to suit my schedule better.

My options are fairly limited because of my schedule. I absolutely cannot do more than three naps in the day, so uberman, Dymaxion, and some variants of everyman are out. I can do biphasic, with 4.5 hours in my core sleep and a 90 minute nap in the day (6 hours total). Or I can go with everyman with the same core but two 20-minute naps (~5 hours total). Or everyman with a 3 hour core and three 20-minute naps (4 hours total).

Each of these options has some serious limitations. For biphasic, not only am I still sleeping 6 hours a day, but I have to find a 90 minute block to sleep in the afternoons or evenings, which is a huge pain. For everyman, though the sleep is less, it means running back to my room to for a quick power nap between classes. Manipulating this schedule with my rather random baseball practice schedule and annoyingly long Thursday physics lab is going to be tough no matter what. But I think I can get it to work best with the everyman-3 (that is, 3 hour core nap and 3 naps in the day), mostly because I see that as being the most flexible option.

In order to fit this into my schedule, I need to plan it out and get started right away. I figure I'll start tonight. My schedule, in order to fit my classes and baseball best, will look like this for a while (Central Time, so while I'm in Portland I'll subtract 2 hours):

                Core sleep: 5:00 - 8:00 AM

                Nap 1: 1:00 - 1:20 PM

                Nap 2: 7:20 - 7:40 PM

                Nap 3: 11:40 PM - Midnight

I'll update here every day I can. I might not be able to right around Christmas because I'll be at my grandma's, but otherwise I'll keep close tabs on my adjustment.

Every day I'll track my progress with the following criteria:
Alertness: My general awareness of world around me and comprehension of those events.
Memory: My ability to remember things. Also measurable by blindfolded Rubik's cube solves.
Initiative: How motivated I am to do things.
Sociability: How willing I am to participate in human interaction.

Here we go...

A Note About Grades in College

I finally found out all of my grades. I won't be sharing exactly what I got where, but I want to give a short explanation of grades in college. It's not that my grades are bad or anything; I just don't like sharing this kind of stuff with people I don't know. I think my mom prepared me appropriately for what grades in college would be like. She is a professor at Reed College and knows a thing or two about students being disappointed in their performance.

Grading in college is not like high school at all (well, at least my high school). Your final exam or paper in college will consistently count for more than 40% of your overall grade. In high school all my finals counted as regular tests, or maybe a double test at the most. The only class I had with a grading system anything like college was precalculus and statistics (same teacher). Homework only counts for 20% of your grade, which is what all my classes were like this year.

But it's not just the weighting of assignments that makes such a difference, it's the difficulty of the classes. Wikipedia has a great article on grade inflation that is interesting in itself but also gives some very interesting statistics about grades in colleges around the country. Basically, the average grade has gone up significantly since my parents were in school. But the average GPA in many very high ranking institutions still tends to hover between 3.2 and 3.3. That means that the average grade per class is a B+ (remember that those +'s and -'s next to your grade actually matter with college GPAs). For places like the University of Chicago, these were kids who were (or were very nearly) straight-A students through all of high school. The moral of the story: you can't expect to get straight-A's through college, no matter how smart you are. The highest average GPA at any institution I've seen was at Harvard at 3.5. This still means that the Harvard students are averaging between a B+ and A-. For those of you applying to medical school, that GPA will still not get you where you want to go.

The moral of the story: your grades in college are not going to be straight-A's. Even the chance of you pulling off a complete set of A-'s is very low. I got a 3.25 in my first quarter and I'm very happy with that. Considering that at UChicago there is no such thing as an A+ (+4.3 to your GPA), getting 4.0 here is nigh impossible.

First Days of Winter Break

It's been an interesting few days back home for me. Portland was extremely foggy when I flew in, and it was just as wet as I remember it being. My transitions between Chicago and Portland have been seamless. When I left Portland it was raining and in the 60s. When I got to Chicago it was raining and in the 60s. When I left Chicago it was rainy and in the 40s. In Portland it was raining and in the 40s. Amazing!

It is pretty cold in Portland, and colder than Chicago right now, which is pretty weird. But thankfully I'm bundled under blankets in my room. I should probably eat breakfast, but I've found that after 12 weeks of college breakfast can be overrated.

I've started up with my programming again, making basic functions in Python. There is a great iTunes U MIT class on python programming. Though I don't have access to the assignments to work through, there is no textbook for the class, meaning that everything they cover in class is all they cover. This is much better for me than a textbook-oriented class where I don't have the textbook.

I've been solving some cubes recently, but haven't had any really satisfying times. I'm thinking about ignoring speed and going for straight ZBLL, but that might be too much. My 2x2x2 times are improving, but that's to be expected. The biggest problem with solving cubes at home is that my parents don't particularly like it. My mom gets really irritated with all the clicking and sliding noises.

Speaking of noise, I've been working on my music collection. You never know when you're going to want old Serbian rock or traditional Zimbabwean songs. So it's all going on my computer. The iTunes rippers leaves something to be desired, so I've started using XLD. Max is also a good option, as is the upgrade to Max, Rip. With any of these you're better off than the iTunes ripper, especially if you want to encode your music in MP3 format. The LAME encoder is so much better than the iTunes one. But I don't have to worry about that because I rip in lossless ALAC. Still, the iTunes ripper falls behind because it does a very poor job of dealing with issues in the CDs.

It's amazing to have a free schedule for once. I don't have to do homework, and I certainly don't have to wake up early. I'm still recovering from school, but so far I've woken up at 10:30, 6:30, and 9:30. That's still earlier than most of my friends. The quarter system is a bit weird, though, because many of my friends are still off at school. It's kind of strange to realize that I start later and end earlier than everyone else in the fall. But in the spring it's reversed: we jam two quarters into one semester, and so we start earlier and end later. Bleh. I'm going to be playing a lot of board games over break to make up for that.

On a side note, my grades still aren't online. GRRR!!!!

Finals Are Done!

My first quarter at the University of Chicago is done! Wooooo!!! It's very exciting to be done, and this means I can spend a whole 3 weeks in Portland doing what I love best: nothing. My finals schedule, I'm told be some, was brutal, so I figure I should let you guys know what it looked like:

On Thursday reading period started, which meant that professors could not cover any new material and most classes were canceled. Some professors decided to go about business as usual (I had a rather large calculus assignment due on Friday, for example) but instead of lecturing they held mandatory study sessions. On Tuesday my humanities professor gave us the prompts for our final paper: a 3 page essay due on Friday. I chose to write mine on the differences between Aristophanes' and Plato's accounts of Socrates. Though only 3 pages, it meant that a lot of time that I could have spent studying was instead spent writing.

I then had a lot of time off before my physics final at 8:00 in the morning on Wednesday, universally recognized as the worst time to have a final. That final went rather badly, to say the least, but apparently my physics professor curves grades (he said he never curved anything when we took the first midterm) so it all turned out alright. Then, also starting Wednesday morning, my civilization studies professor posted the prompts for our final paper online, giving us 48 hours to complete a 3-page paper that covered the entire quarter. Again, while 3 page papers aren't really a problem, they have to be extremely concise if you are going to cover an entire quarter of material. Mine ended up being about 4 pages, but with some margin manipulation and size 11 font, I got it down to 3.

Finally, Friday morning at 10:00 I had my calculus final. Looking at how other people were doing, I thought I did really well, even though my final score was not the best. My grade in the class is entirely based on the curve now. First quarter of Honors Calculus here guarantees you a grade of C- or higher, so I know I didn't fail the class (actually, I wouldn't have without a curve). I want to thank my professor now: he gets grades online 5 or 6 hours after we turn anything in. Instant feedback is great, and takes away so much of the stress involved with grades. I got back to my room at noon-ish. This gave me only 24 hours to clean my room and pack for my trip home. And boy did it get cleaned.

But now I'm home! Portland is just as gray and bleak as I remember it to be. For the first time in more than 4 months, I got to sleep on my bed at home under my own covers. I woke up and didn't have to trudge the block to the dining hall for breakfast. My guinea pig was there squeaking for me when I got home. I can sit on the couch in the living room and not have to listen to a conversation about Marx's views on pornography. It's a strange thing, to be sure, but being home has just eased all of the stress out of my veins. Even though I ordered all of my civ and hum books about an hour ago, I feel like I don't have to do anything.

That aside, I do want to do things this break. I hope to gain a better knowledge of Python programming and have some interesting things running by the time I get back to school. I want to study calculus, because I constantly make stupid mistakes and false assumptions. I also want to play some board games and get in better shape. And I need to make better copies of some of my music. It has skips in it sometimes and that should get fixed (the iTunes ripper is not a good one). I probably won't accomplish nearly what I want to in these categories, but it should be fine. It's good to be home.

Sheep-Loving Student

So some background is a little necessary here. I made the mistake of mentioning that I thought sheep were very huggable creatures (until you get close, of course). My friends decided to take that to its various extremes, and by the summer a good portion of them assumed that I was having regular sex with sheep. Early in the summer I got a very interesting email concerning my adventures with a rather sexy sheep named Gregory. Seeing as it is currently finals week and I really don't have time to write out anything else, I figure I should let you guys take a look at this. Warning: extremely inappropriate content ahead.


PART I

Thine fabulous Hay-Soos the sheep arrived on a flotilla of disposable napkins from the East, leaving tangerine-scented clouds of methy fumes in his wake.  And it was disgusting.  But this did not put the willful Simon off – if anything, it only intensified his lust for the rugged, hairy mass of woolly wonderment.  Like Clark Kent and Superman, Simon could no longer live confined to his ordinary persona. Simon the Sheepshagger was on a quest, and no man – or statutory bestiality law – could stop him in his quest for some wooly willy.

One evening in a dark, dark forest Simon was trekking along determinedly and contemplating the suppleness of his wonderful wooly sweater-- oh, the ECSTASY!  “Woooooooolllyyyyyyy!” he proclaimed into the empty night.  But then, from nowhere, was a faint reply:  “aYESSSSS????”  Deep within his loins, Simon was stirred like a vat of yellow pudding. He knew that his soulmate was close:  Simon and Haysoos ran to each other, gallivanting across the sticky mud flats in slow motion. The dark forest became a field of daisies and the rain into gumdrops and little tiny delicious sheep-crunchies that resembled cheetos.
Simon and Hay-soos opened their mouths wide to catch the gumdrops and sheep-crunchies. “BAAAAAAHHHH!!!!” they sighed. - Their gaping, salivating mouths soon became incredibly distracting to one another.
    “ Simon....” sighed Hay-soos, “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for this... for your... throbbing................................ love for me in your heart. Baaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.”
    Simon stared longingly at the woolly mammal. He couldn’t believe what was coming out of its mouth.... the words were so beautiful. It was so long--so long since he had felt this way about another mammal. There was that one passionate night in Cancun , with the lizard. But he didn’t really like to remember that one.  It had meant nothing to him. Scales are not nearly as sexy and lustrous as woolly wool.
    “ Haysoos, words cannot express how I feel right now. So I will have to show you my love in the only way I know how.” Simon thrust an eager hand into his fiery trousers.............. and pulled out a RUBIK’S CUBE! “This will come in handy tonight,” he whispered to Hay-soos, as he inched closer with his rubiks cube. “ I know all the cubing algorithms.... of LOVE.” Suddenly a raging storm of gumdrops and cheetos swirled around them, and thunder and lightning cascaded across the sky in an electric reflection of  the delight happening below. It was the Bam heard round the world.

 
PART II


The miraculous conception of Gregory the Wondersheep is a sordid tale of romance, horror, and high adventure on the seas of pulsating animal lust. Thousands of years ago, in a dark gonadical recess, a gooey-eyed WonderSperm quivered, awaiting his destiny. It was a mystery as to where this Wondersperm resided, to which gonadical recess he belonged--but that is the great question of Simon the Sheepshagger and Fabulous Hay-Soos.

Spurred forth by the promise of discount insurance and twinkies in the world beyond, he journeyed a long, long ways to the succulent Cadbury Creme WonderEgg - and such was the conception of Good Gregory, and he was destined for grapeness.

    In a matter of days, Gregory grew and grew, from sheep-fetus to sheep, faster than any sheep in the world. Soon, he was ready to go out in the world and find his discount insurance and twinkies. He burst forth from his passionately conjoined parents (who had been that way since the forest of daisies and cheetos).  Suddenly, the Sheepshagger and Hay-soos sprang back in horror at their disgusting sheepmongersausagebeastchild that lay on the ground in front of them.
    “BAAAAAAAAhhhh! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN???” screeched Hay-Soos.
“ I can’t hold that wretched thing. It’s got a sphincter for  a face.” shrieked Simon, flapping his hands wildly in terror. “ Hay-Soos, we cannot keep this disfigured lump of offspring, or our eyes shall burn out of our heads by the time it’s twelve.”
“Certainly not. Let’s adopt a bucket of KFC as a child instead.” replied Hay-Soos. They wrapped the abomination-child in some newspaper and headed off to the nearest KFC, exchanging a family-sized fried chicken meal for the reviled ‘bundle of joy’. The baby was left at the counter as Hay-Soos and Simon leapt away, cooing over their newfound fried chicken.
An employee working at the KFC  came up from behind the counter to see what the freaky sheepy couple had left on the counter. She peeled back the newspaper to see the mess of sheephuman crossbreeding. However, she was not repulsed - she immediately saw that it was her grim duty to raise this creature , despite all odds.  
“ I shall name him Gregory’, she rasped through the cigarette hole in her neck. “And he shall be Gregory the Wondersheep, for he shall go far in life, and shall achieve grapeness.”
Such was the birth of Gregory the Wondersheep.


PART III - 17 YEARS LATER

    Many years passed after that fateful day at KFC.  One day, Gregory realized something. “Mother,” said Gregory to his emphysematic foster-mother, “I am a mansheep now... and I am heading out into the world to find the twinkies and discount insurance I have so long sought after. And my father.”
    So Gregory set off into the wild blue yonder with no more than a rusty banana and a fetid cactus to fend off the demons of the unknown. He knew his parent’s names - Simon the Sheepshagger and Hay-Soos - but nothing more. Were they still together? Had Simon left Hay-Soos for a newer, better, woolier sheeplover? Had Hay-Soos left Simon for a delicious salt-lick? Were they both - heavens good gravy- DEAD? Gregory searched near and far, high and low, sideways and backwards, from valleys to mountains, from nook to cranny, in every concievable place he could think of. They were nowhere to be found. Finally, he gave up, and sat down on a tuft to eat curds and whey. Then he saw his parents peeking out of Oscar the Grouch's trash can, incredibly drunk and angry. Gregory had found his parents at last.

" Dearest Parents!" cried Gregory.
" ADKAJDKJFDAskdfjduuughmanadahhahh" groaned the parents. Gregory smiled, for he knew that they loved him almost as much as discount insurance. Their family was together once again, and all was right with the world.


THE END

     

THE END.

Saturday Morning Ping Pong

It's been a hectic week. The week before finals usually is, I guess. I had an 8 page essay due on the evolution of independence in the America colonies, then a 3 page paper on the differences between Aristophanes' and Plato's accounts of Socrates. And my calculus professor thought it best to give us a massive problem set due during reading period. But I took care of all of that, and now I have a few days to relax. Or so it would seem. That 10 page humanities paper won't write itself...

I thought I would celebrate the occasion with some time in the rec room at the ping pong table. It turns out that I ended up joining a ping pong tournament. I certainly didn't win, but it was a lot if fun hanging out with other stressed out people for a while. No studying, no school, just good old-fashioned ping pong.