Taxes(!) and Other

So my last stressful week came and went, and now I can prepare for finals. Or I can take some time for myself. The latter sounds so much more attractive right now. But taxes are worse than either option. Easily. My parents just shipped me my tax information. Whee! Ideologically, I love taxes. Government can't run without money. But in practice I hate taxes. Thankfully my dad's around to help me figure it all out, but in general it is just a giant pain in the rear. Last year I ended up paying a grand total of $8 in taxes. What's even the point of me giving money? It probably cost the country more than $8 to have someone look over my information. But taxes have to get done. So that's what I'm doing tonight.

In some other news, I've become a huge fan of Led Zeppelin recently. And by huge fan, I mean that I am listening to Led Zeppelin IV over and over. I appreciate their other stuff, but when it comes to choosing songs, there is no competition (except for maybe Kashmir).

I've registered for classes next quarter. It looks like they'll be almost exactly the same as this quarter. But there's a class on baseball that I would like to take if at all possible. We'll see how that works out. Based on what others have told me, lots of people are trying to take that class. Oh, well. There's only so much I can do about that: I can try to register for the class and that's it.

Speaking of baseball, Saturday is our first game! It looks like the whole team is going down to Springfield for a doubleheader for a day trip. I'm looking forward to it. Considering I probably won't be playing, I look forward to warming up pitchers in the bullpen and keeping score. If I'm lucky, I'll get to take a bunch of pictures, but that could be a bit optimistic. Regardless, I'm really excited.

And finally, though I haven't been playing board games or solving cubes at all recently, I have rediscovered my 8th and 9th grade obsession with Super Smash Bros. Melee. This could be a problem, but thankfully I don't have constant access to a GameCube here (yet). I played something like 40 hours a week in my prime and showed some withdrawal symptoms when I forced myself to stop. I got pretty good at it and I wonder if my fingers can keep up with what my brain wants it to do. Way back when I could almost do this (separately, no problem; put together as a smooth string of attacks, difficult): How Fast is Melee?. I'm reading up on frame data right now because I don't want to do taxes yet...

Saturday Morning Practice (Student)

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen! The last stressful week before finals week!

This post is titled in honor of the brutally early Saturday morning practices we have for baseball. Actually, I don't mind, but the rest of the team looks like their really suffering out there. I just do a bike workout (and get soaked in sweat), throw a 25 pitch bullpen session (learned how to throw a slider today), and usually get out early, so I don't mind at all. But the idea of 8 AM practice is not a fun one.

Monday involves a presentation on Thomas Nast cartoons in my America in World Civilization class and a midterm on RC circuits in physics. Friday involves a short paper depicting a debate between John Locke and Rene Descartes. After that I have two weeks to study for finals (which are going to be very long, but oh, well). Other than that I have some important announcements for the world to hear!

First off, I hope everyone had a fantastic Valentine's Day. I, for one, am not a fan of such "holidays" (I mean, we don't even get a day off!) but understand when people need excuses to go out and buy things for each other.

Next, my high school's team for the We the People competition we chosen as one of the wildcard teams to go to the national-level competition in Washington, D.C. in early May. Last year I got to go and it was one of the greatest times I have ever had in my life. I have tried to be at least semi-active in helping out this year's team and I'm really proud of the hard work they put in. Constitution Team (or Con Team, as we call it) is the only activity in my four years of high school that inspired any sort of school spirit in me. I wish them the best of luck in May!

Finally, I have a friend from last year's Con Team coming to visit me during finals week! She will split time between myself and our friend at Northwestern, but it'll be great to catch up, even if it is finals week. I feel a little weird saying this, but I really can't wait for finals to come!

And in completely unrelated news, formatting USB memory sticks sucks. Especially when you have to set them back up afterwards. Ugh!

Suicide Prevention Day!

Technically it's called 'College Break Day,' but it's more fun to call it suicide prevention day. Call it what you want; I call it a day off.

This week was pretty rough. Monday was my birthday, and even though I don't like celebrating them, I was still unhappy to have to take a calculus midterm on my cakeday. The next day involved a physics quiz, and then Thursday I had a 1500 word dialogue due for my humanities class. I know I'm not getting much sleep anyways, but this week involved even less sleep than normal.

I needed today. And so far it's going well. Baseball practice is already over (I got to catch for a bit today!), meaning I have the whole day to relax now. And what better way to relax than to go through 12 glorious hours of Lord of the Rings? You really can't do much better than that.

Super Sleepy Student

So it's been a little while since I've updated here. This week was not particularly stressful, but for some reason I had issues falling asleep, and as a result I'm very tired. More than half of my 20-minute naps involved no sleep, and twice I woke up after 2 hours in my core nap. On the other side, Tuesday was a bad day, and I missed my morning alarm and my alarm for my mid-afternoon nap, giving me a total of 9 hours of sleep.

It's fascinating how well people can function on very little sleep. I also find it interesting that sometimes we feel more tired after a long rest than a short one. But the purpose of my little self-experiment is to see if polyphasic sleep schedules are sustainable for normal people. There are people out there who do not need to sleep very much at all. This is a very brief article on people like this. Currently I have not found any accounts of normal people sustaining polyphasic sleep for more than a few months. There are several reasons for quitting the cycle. One is that it is simply too much work to keep up. The covers are so warm and cozy. Why would anyone want to leave them. Finding the time to nap can also get very tedious, especially when the rest of the world operates on monophasic cycles. This is especially true for people working. I've put in some thought about how I'll be able to work this in over the summer, and so far I don't have an answer. I guess I could sleep in the server room... So far at school I've managed to allocate time to nap every day (except this Thursday when physics lab went long).

Baseball, while giving me a schedule, does not provide me with much of a break. At this point I am just hoping to adjust. It's better than last week, but I'm worried about the sleep. I'm coming up on 7 weeks of polyphasic sleep here. It's been tough at times (Tuesday mornings are the worst), and even though I'm pretty tired I have settled into a rhythm. I know my tolerance for missing naps (not high) and I also know that if I just let myself sleep I will be asleep for a very long time (yes, 9 hours is a very, very long time). My goal right now is to finish the quarter like this, but we'll see how that works out.

First Baseball Practice!

I'll try to stay on just one topic, but I know how that turns out most of the time. I think the title says it all: today was my first ever baseball practice in college. Yes, I know, it's quite exciting. Though it was only 2 hours, and was mostly just to get us organized, it was still good to have it out of the way. It was almost exciting, though. I forgot my shoes on my way to the field house. That involved a rather panicked run back to my dorm, but it ended up being just fine. After that exciting start, everything settled down and baseball proceeded as usual. Anyways, very excited for the season to start!

Healthy Thursday Student

So I got sick less on Tuesday. There is some 24-hour bug going around my dorm and I managed to catch it. I really don't want to go into details, but it was really bad. Also, never look up symptoms on Google unless you want to be scared for your life. I thought I had cholera for about an hour, though that could be because I read the Ghost Map last year (fantastic book, but a little gross at times). Anyways, I was out and about like a normal human being today after sheltering myself for all of Tuesday and as much of yesterday as I could. But now it is (well, 3 AM means that technically it was) Thursday, and all is better.

In a way it was the best time to get sick: though I had physics homework, calculus homework, and a 2-page paper due yesterday, this could have been much worse. It might have been during midterm season, which starts up next week. And baseball starts up on Monday. This was the last week where I could afford to be sick. And I took full advantage of it!

But the thing that I'm really worried about is the effect that this illness had on my sleep schedule. I was unable to sleep more than a few minutes Tuesday night because of constant trips to and from the bathroom. Then I slept for as much as possible Tuesday and Wednesday. So while I might be very well rested, my cycles have almost certainly been shifted. Today was a little bit tough, actually, but I'm looking forward to my 3 hour sleep coming up.

I still find the best thing about polyphasic sleep is that I go to sleep after everybody else, eliminating distractions and leading to a very productive Simon. Then I wake up before everybody else, eliminating distractions and leading to a very productive Simon. I am no longer stressed about long homework assignments. Even when I was sick I was never hit with the panic of it's-due-tomorrow-oh-no!-itis. I am able to free up pretty much the entirety of my day to whatever I feel like doing, whether it be getting a head start on homework, socializing, or just vegetating. Of course there are tradeoffs to each option, and I have to find time to nap every day (which is hard when socializing seems like a better idea) but I think it's paying off. We'll see if I can properly readjust after this stomach bug.

Also, for those of you who don't know, it's getting cold in Chicago.

Dat Donut

My dorm decided to celebrate the day off by getting donuts from Dat Donut. I think the picture speak for themselves. Basically, these donuts are huge!