The New Sleep Schedule

So work has been keeping me busy but I have managed to start a new sleep schedule. It's working out very well so far so I thought I could update the world on what's happening. I am attempting to sleep as close to 8 hours as possible every night while going to sleep and waking up at the same time every night. I want to measure how long it takes before I can tell it's time to go to sleep without looking at a clock and when I start waking up without an alarm.

Of course there are some variables that have to be taken into account. My uncle visited recently and I was up after my bedtime a few times because of that. And on weekends and holidays I am letting myself sleep in. This is not just to catch up on any sleep that I might need (I find that I sleep a lot in the summer) but also serves as a gauge as to how I am progressing. After only 5 nights of going to sleep at 11 and waking up at 7 I found that I was awake at 7 on the weekend. But I felt like shit so I just went back to sleep. Still, I woke up at 7 all on my own. Pretty good for only a work week of practice.

So that's what I'm up to. I had some X-rays done on my ankle and elbow and have to schedule an appointment with the sports medicine people here. Gonna be fun on a bun. I might shift my schedule to 10-6 so that I have more time in the morning. And I really don't do anything after 10 so there's no point in waiting for 11. Maybe then I can keep going on my nuzlocke run. Speaking of which, I'm making pretty good progress. You can trace back all my progress from the video above.

Till next time.

Back in the USA!

So finals ended and I went to Slovenia. That's basically what's happened for the past few weeks. Nothing really happened there out of the ordinary: my grandma tried to get me to drink heavily and I only drank a little. The farm is no longer a farm out there because there are no cows, pigs, or fields of grains. Instead its just chickens and cats and a field of grass. Still, it was really nice to see the family again.

But now I'm back. And I'm ready to roll! I start work on Monday and couldn't be happier. As strange as it sounds I like doing work. I can't really explain it, but it's something that I've always had. Also, I'm getting a head start on my computer science class for next year. Why? Because I can. And because I realize that without some serious prior knowledge I will have close to zero free time next year. I also kind of want to read back up on my early American history for my early American history class (wow, so similar!) but that may or may not happen.

But what is definitely happening is that I am finishing up my goal of completing a nuzlocke run of at least the first 3 pokemon generations. I decided that I never really liked the newer generations, nor have I ever really played them, so I'll put that project on hold for now. But for those of you wondering, I now have close to 20 videos up. Start with the one in the previous post and keep clicking the annotations to move to the next one. I try to be entertaining, but you can only do so much.

And, finally, I need to give a shout-out to my amazing Audio Technica ATH-AD700 headphones. After using in-ears for the plane trip and all my train trips around Slovenia I had forgotten what it was like to listen to clean, crisp, lossless sounds (I encode to 256 kbps for my mobile listening because of space constraints). I had always forgotten what it was like to hear music mixed with the sounds of the outside world. Oh, how I've missed my real headphones...

Yellow Nuzlocke Part 1

Soooo I decided to start anyways. It only took about 10 minutes of my life so it wasn't a huge time suck, but we'll see how it progresses later. Anyways, enjoy!

Summer Preparations

Well, it's a little early to be thinking about summer, but that's just what I'm doing. From Chicago I will fly directly to Slovenia to visit with my family there for something like 10 days. It's one of the shortest trips I will ever take there. Usually I go with one of my parents for about 3 weeks. This year I'll be all alone. I'm looking forward to seeing the little ones again and talking to my relatives again.

When I get back to Portland I have a little less than a week to adjust to the time difference (not a problem for the early morning student, though) and then I'm off to my 9-5 job as a software tester. This will be my 4th consecutive summer working for Elemental Technologies, and I couldn't be happier. I hear they moved offices right after my spring break, so this will be my first time in the new office space.

My plans for personal time this summer is a bit ambitious. I am going to try and finally take the time to become adequate as a Python programmer in preparation for my honors computer science class next fall. The class uses Haskell but I have reasons for starting with Python. And I'm told that once you learn one language it becomes easier to learn others. I just hope that what they say is true.

My other major goal is to become stronger. My baseball season was mostly spent on the bench or warming up pitchers in the bullpen. During fall ball I could rely on my changeup to get the rusty batters out. During our winter practices it was clear that as the batters warmed up, my pitching was not going to be enough. So it is perfectly understandable that I rode the pine, er, aluminum, all spring. But I did get much more flexible over the course of the season, and slightly stronger. On our final day of practice we had an inner-sqaud practice game. Though I couldn't get anyone to swing and miss at anything, I was locating pitches much better than I had in the fall and my new pitch, a frisbee-slider (yeah, I would prefer if it dropped some, but what can I do?) worked well enough to get me back to my high school formula. My formula for getting batters out in high school was simple: I threw just hard enough that they couldn't make solid contact with my fastball but slow enough that they could actually hit it. I had an average curveball and a good changeup. If I threw the ball in the strike zone I could count on 2 things. (1) It would be a strike and (2) if they hit it the ball wouldn't go anywhere. I averaged something absurd at 10.6 pitches per inning. I threw to contact and they couldn't hit it. With my stuff at our last practice I followed this exact approach, except I was a little more careful with my pitch placement. I feel like if I get stronger and more flexible I have a serious chance at getting into games next year.

Finally, my personal goal to end all personal goals: I want to do a video series of me nuzlocke running every pokemon generation. For those of you not familiar with how the nuzlocke challenge works, the rules are simple:
1. If a pokemon faints it is considered dead. You can never use it again. No ifs, ands, or buts.
2. You can only catch the first pokemon you encounter in an area. If it flees or faints, tough.
3. You are strongly encouraged to nickname your pokemon in order to build stronger bonds with them.
I've already started setting up my pokemon yellow for recording. I might try my hand at drawings so I could make a comic or something but I imagine it would only turn into stick figures (which might still be cool, I guess). Anyway, my summer would be: Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, Emerald randomizer, and Platinum. I doubt I can get all the way to the end, but I really want to get through as many of these as I can.

Anyways, just 2 more weeks of school! Everybody get pumped!

Hell Week is Over!

Yes, hell week is over. The papers got done (eventually), the midterms got done, and now I prepare for the scavenger hunt! I missed out on quite a bit of sleep last week and will miss out on quite a bit this week but I think it will all be worth it in the end.

The midterms did not go as well as I would have liked. Calculus just beat me. I'm not sure there's any other way to say it. Last quarter I understood what was going on. First quarter I had a decent idea but couldn't put it into words. This quarter I knew nothing of what was going on but had the words to fake it. I'm not sure that I'm thankful that we've switched into linear algebra. I think I understand it more than the last part of calculus, but it's very different territory and I'm not really comfortable with it yet. Oh, well.

Physics midterm went decently, but I ran out of time. I find that to be the most frustrating thing about my midterms in the physics department. I can do all the problems, but I need about 10 minutes more than is allotted. This time I had to scratch in equations to pull off partial credit on the last 2 problems. Pretty frustrating.

But it's all good. Because Scav is coming! I don't know how much I will remember or how much I will actually participate, but I'm really excited.

Happy Monday Student

Unlike my childhood hero, Garfield the cat, I love Mondays. Or at least most Mondays. This Monday was a good Monday. Classes were interesting, food at the dining halls was good, I've finally gotten rid of my cough, and I found out how to (possibly illegally) get my old GameBoy games onto my computer. Not that I really have time to play them right now, but I certainly look forward to having some free time. Whenever that may be.

A few things have happened in my life recently. First, I joined a fantasy baseball league. It's just an in-dorm league so we're pretty casual about it, but it forces me to follow baseball like I haven't for many years. I remember when I would open every morning with the daily Garfield and a scan of the baseball box scores. Those were the good old days: I was far too young to worry about the world and was able to just sit around the house listening to the radio and reading. Now I go to the internet for my daily source of news thanks to resources like Reddit and Google Reader. More and more often I find myself looking back at my days regretting not being more productive.

I only have to look back about 12 months to see myself as the hyper-productive person that I wish I could be now. With Constitution Team finishing up its preparations for nationals and baseball in full swing (not to mention preparations for AP tests and the end of high school) I was busy somewhere between 15 and 18 hours a day. Somehow I managed the sleep and still have time to plow through every Mystery Science Theater ever made in about 5 months, though I fully admit to a large crash in the summer. Even more amazing was that this wasn't my busiest time of the year; it's just the most recent example.

Though I've recovered from my polyphasic experiment and look forward to attempting it again soon, I am having issues sleeping. It seems my body just doesn't want to sleep the correct amount: I either sleep too little and feel miserable all day or sleep far too much and am restless all day. Today was a good day in part because I slept just the right amount.

And as a result, I am a very happy Monday student! The baseball team also did well this weekend down in St. Louis, which means that we theoretically have a shot at the postseason now (however slim those chances may be). Next week will be difficult with a calculus midterm on Monday, and humanities paper due Wednesday, and a physics midterm on Friday. But the week after is the great University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, and that's enough to bring up anyone's spirits.

Happy Easter (Student)!

I don't really know what to say here. It's been a long time since my last update and this update will not be particularly long. Baseball eats away my free time like no other. It's a lot of fun to be at the games, but sometimes it's just too much to do anything else. Still, the fun outweighs everything else, and soon the traveling team will be taking off and I will have free days. Not sure if I'm looking forward to that or not. The team has done pretty well so far, but defense has been something of an issue for us. In that way games proceed very similarly to the way that they did in high school. Except that in high school I was good enough to get on the field.

My sleep, despite my busy schedule, has skyrocketed. I'm getting a full 7-8 hours of sleep every night. Honestly I don't know how to feel about that. I would love to sleep less, but with my slight temperature all of last week and baseball I try to max out my sleep. However, I am on an early riser program, which for me means that I get up at 6:28 AM whenever I can. Reason for that time? Well, 6 is the first perfect number and 28 is the next. What better way to start the day than perfectly? What is unfortunate is that the dining hall is not open that early, so I don't have as much motivation to get up as I would like. I like the schedule, though, as it keeps me on top of my work (what else am I going to do that early?).

Speaking of work, I'm not sure what to think of it. There's as much of it as I want there to be, I guess. Which is a fair bit, but I leave time to work on learning Python. It's going fairly well, but not as well as I would like. The hope is to take some computer science classes next year, and I want some programming background for that (and other things, but that's my short-term rationale).

And in weird people news, I turned 1 kiloweek old yesterday. 7 kilodays. 70 hectadays. 700 dekadays. 7000 days. 1000 weeks. And I still got it.