Jack's Diary

Hi Marisa - well, it's like I take a while to fall asleep, then after about a little bit of light sleep, I'm wide awake. This is only when I don't take the pills, which I tried for the first time in a while this weekend. Part of the problem is the World Series games going so late - it pushed my bedtime back to like 2 a.m. Before it was maybe 1 or so. Yes, I do drink coffee in the afternoon, although not on the weekends. I'll switch to decaf for that. Yes, dinner is my largest meal of the day. Aerobic is good, but the brief 5K I do once or twice a week obviously isn't cutting it. I used to play a lot of tennis on weekends like your husband, but concerns about my knee have kind of eliminated tennis for the time being until I figure that thing out.

I'm going to try cutting down to 1/2 a pill, tonight, I think. My wife wants me to do more yoga. She says it's helped her tremendously. The problem is, I don't really enjoy yoga. I'm kind of inflexible, plus the knee, but I could live with that. I actually took a course called "The Art of Living", it was this thing where you do all this stretching and relaxing for a couple of hours a night. It was amazing, I could really fall asleep after that, and in addition, I could wake up after just like five hours feeling fully refreshed. I also tried something called "7 minutes of magic". which is about 15 minutes worth of stretches in the morning and before bed. I think that helped, and I keep threatening to go back to that.

I let my wife take care of my diet too, and I think it's pretty good - like you, lots of greens. But since I only eat lunch and dinner, I don't know how to get around the bigger dinner, though.

Anyway, I just took a nice little nap, so recovered a little of the lost sleep.
 
Good news, I have dropped my iPhone off at the plaza, and it will be done at 6 or so. At $120, it's 30 bucks cheaper than Apple charges, too.

The bad news is the health plan went up 70 bucks a month. I'm going to move to the cheapest plan, but man that situation is out of control. Just have to suck it up until I'm 65, although my wife at six years younger has a longer to wait.

The good news is her hearing device is working again, so that staves off a big expense for a while.

The bad news is since I got in a fender-bender last summer, the insurance went up, and it's due this month, almost 2k. So, the budgets going to be over 5K this month.

The good news is that I'm alive and breathing and in good health, and the Pats play tonight and I'm gainfully employed. So, it's all good for today, and that's all that counts.
 
Jack my son is 20 . He's had a few up and downs but hopefully on the up again.

Sounds like you have lots of good news and bad news but it seems to me the good outweighs the bad especially that you are alive and well and optimistic.

I too have bad periods of sleeping . Am doing way better now although having a mini bad spell again. Marsia speaks a lot of sense about exercise and eating well and that helps . Trying not to worry too . I'm an over thinker and a worrier and that's getting me right now . Hope all goes well with the boss today .
 
jackbenimble said:
Hi Marisa - well, it's like I take a while to fall asleep, then after about a little bit of light sleep, I'm wide awake. This is only when I don't take the pills, which I tried for the first time in a while this weekend. Part of the problem is the World Series games going so late - it pushed my bedtime back to like 2 a.m. Before it was maybe 1 or so. Yes, I do drink coffee in the afternoon, although not on the weekends. I'll switch to decaf for that. Yes, dinner is my largest meal of the day. Aerobic is good, but the brief 5K I do once or twice a week obviously isn't cutting it. I used to play a lot of tennis on weekends like your husband, but concerns about my knee have kind of eliminated tennis for the time being until I figure that thing out.

I'm going to try cutting down to 1/2 a pill, tonight, I think. My wife wants me to do more yoga. She says it's helped her tremendously. The problem is, I don't really enjoy yoga. I'm kind of inflexible, plus the knee, but I could live with that. I actually took a course called "The Art of Living", it was this thing where you do all this stretching and relaxing for a couple of hours a night. It was amazing, I could really fall asleep after that, and in addition, I could wake up after just like five hours feeling fully refreshed. I also tried something called "7 minutes of magic". which is about 15 minutes worth of stretches in the morning and before bed. I think that helped, and I keep threatening to go back to that.

I let my wife take care of my diet too, and I think it's pretty good - like you, lots of greens. But since I only eat lunch and dinner, I don't know how to get around the bigger dinner, though.

Anyway, I just took a nice little nap, so recovered a little of the lost sleep.
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Hi Jack, it sounds like you have a lot of good things to try already, but if the "7 minutes of magic" doesn't turn out to work as well, could you modify the "Art of Living" exercises so you would want to do them frequently, like maybe just do a third each day or something?

Can you see someone about a professional quality knee brace or find a good sports therapist? Our daughter saw a sports therapist for painful knees from sports and we do nightly exercises for them now.

Maybe you would want to try making your lunch the biggest meal and eating light at night or pushing dinner back a little earlier? I do that and it works well for me as far as fasting.

Do herbal supplements for insomnia like valerian root work for you? Are your thoughts racing when you can't sleep or are you sleeping lightly so any noise or light source wakes you up? If it's racing thoughts, do breathing and relaxation exercises help? If it's light sleep, do noise machines or black out blinds or a sleep mask help? Also I bet you can get the benefits of yoga through other gentle means like tai chi or chi gong if the other things you mentioned aren't working. Maybe you could find a form of gentle stretching to do a few minutes while your wife is doing yoga and you can keep each other company so you remember to do your stretches?
 
Hi Marisa - I had a good night the last couple of nights, especially last night. I went upstairs at 1230, did "7 minutes of magic" stretches, and took 1/2 a pill. After the stretches, both nights I laid down on the floor with a pillow and a little blanket and just start breathing. I used to always fall asleep doing that, and sure enough it worked both nights. Then, when I wake up after whatever, say 1/2 hour, I go to bed. Worked like a charm and this morning I was up at 6. I'm going to roll with the 1/2 pill for now, may try to go without it over the weekend. But I feel like the 12:30 to 6 is a good sleep time to shoot for. That's about what I usually do when I'm right.
 
(skip this unless you want to see my ramblings about guitar)

I'm still kinda confused. I thought I had it nailed when it came to the theory on modes, but that was a little premature. I think it's actually better, at least on "Can't you see", if I switch the root of the scale on each chord change, and base it on the Mixolydian scale (b7) on each one.

I don't know why it works, because two of the notes on the C Mixolydian fall out of the D Mixolydian scale, and on the G one of them does. The one that falls out of each time is the flat 3. I saw a guy say the b3 is one that borrows from another key, and don't worry about it. Maybe the flat 6 on the C that also fits is borrowing from another key, too? But why does it just so happen to be the same notes the fit the Mixolydian scale for each chord?

This is where the pentatonic would come in handy because that limits the scales to just five notes, the 1, 3, 5, 6 and one. If you skip those notes, even if you move the root, you're still ensuring every note you hit will be on the D Mixolydian. Yes, ideally you would throw in some of the 4 and 7s because it makes for a more interesting sound, but for now, I want to settle on a basic approach for any song.
 
jackbenimble said:
Hi Marisa - I had a good night the last couple of nights, especially last night. I went upstairs at 1230, did "7 minutes of magic" stretches, and took 1/2 a pill. After the stretches, both nights I laid down on the floor with a pillow and a little blanket and just start breathing. I used to always fall asleep doing that, and sure enough it worked both nights. Then, when I wake up after whatever, say 1/2 hour, I go to bed. Worked like a charm and this morning I was up at 6. I'm going to roll with the 1/2 pill for now, may try to go without it over the weekend. But I feel like the 12:30 to 6 is a good sleep time to shoot for. That's about what I usually do when I'm right.
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That's great! What's really nice is that you already have things that work that you can have confidence in working because you have already tested them out! Happy sleeping!!
 
Jack, that's a good excuse...biking can be downright dangerous. Particularly when there are parked cars lining the streets. But yes, keeping a car is expensive and it will be good to get down to only having 1.

Hope you had a good week! Enjoy the weekend!
 
Whooh, that a busy week. I really like P, but somehow he manages to slip me assignments that have ultra-short deadlines and I end up working the weekend. This one I found out about Wednesday, with a hard deadline of COB Friday (due to a guy being on-site for an install at 4 a.m. EST Monday). I had meetings all day Thursday, so basically a couple of days.

Seems like a minor change, but the proof is in the testing. And unfortunately, due to an update in the security profile of the company, the anti-virus scan deleting the Windows Services install module on the fly, making it impossible to test. The Windows 7 machines which don't have the AV also didn't work due to an issue with MySql install. None of these had anything to do with my change, but if it doesn't install, you can't send it out.

In the end, I ended up buying a Windows 10 laptop over the weekend for testing. And sure enough, there were problems with the data path that I was supposed to enable. I finally tracked it down to some hardcoded code, but I didn't fix it. Screw it, there's a manual workaround for that, it's easier for them than for me. I can do it right and take my time to get it right.

I'm not even sure about the code right now. The MySql Installer is really tricky. But it worked the very first time I tried on the new Windows system. But I can't remember if I was online or not. This is supposed to be an offline install. It's code that I didn't touch, but now that I gave them something, I own it.
 
Hi Mols,

Lol, they postponed it by a day, which gave me some more time to test and it looks ok. Of course, give an inch and they take a mile, and P wanted me to get the data path working. I tried, but it turned out there was a pre-existing bug. P didn't believe me, but I had him install it and sure enough, the data went to the original location. I tried a quick patch, but it wasn't working and I told P I didn't want to screw with it at this late point.

Strange, I told J about it, who programmed the rewrite of E's code, and he didn't tell me he had hardcoded the paths. It seems strange because he is a legit genius and the last guy to hardcode something. Anyway, he's helped me out so much I will never bitch about anything to him.
 
Good news on the house front. For years, until we cleared our mortgage, we had to pay flood insurance because we were on a FEMA flood plain. The banks make you pay it, so finally I paid off the mortgage when the bills got ridiculous, like 2K to 3K a year for something that basically only covers your house if it's washed away into the ocean. I live 3 miles from the beach, although pretty close to a brook.

Anyway, being in a flood plain devalues your house, because who wants to by a house where you're forced by the bank to pay 3K a year extra on insurance? For a 30 year mortgage that's 90k extra! So, a buyer could ask you to take 90k off the price of the house, potentially. Definitely a weak point from a selling angle.

So, long story short - the flood plain has been changed and my house is no longer on it! It turns out the FEMA has been screwing it up the whole time. The city fought them on it and made them justify their zones. I just made it by the skin of my teeth - the street in front of my house is in the flood plain, still. So, whenever I end up selling the house, that sword of Democles won't be hanging over my head any more. It also opens up the possibility of a home equity loan - like, I could borrow on it to buy a rental unit or something, couldn't I? I dunno, are there rules about that? I'm unlikely to do it, anyway. I hate debt.

I finally finished watching the "Undercover Law" or whatever it was called in Netflix. it turned out to be a decent series. I feel like I learned some spanish.
 
Sure enough, around 10:30 this morning got an email from Europe saying the on-site install had failed. So, P and I got online with them. They didn't have the right hardware key, so had to use the program I send them over the weekend, and that part went great.

The next part, moving the data, was harder. Fortunately, I had spotted the bug in the install code and blocked the program from allowing the path to be input. So, if there was any issue, my modification could not be the cause. However, the manual move didn't work. Fortunately, P has done this before, and after a while, he figured out it was a permissions issue on the target folder. So, everybody was happy and we're over the hardest part. I can relax a bit now, after a rough 6 days leading up to this.
 
Nice easy day at work yesterday. No more questions from the install in England, I'm pretty sure we're over the hump. I spend the full day actually programming instead of trouble-shooting or testing, it was nice. I'm fixing a bug where the entered path for the data isn't actually working. There were a number of issues, still not done. 1 - Path was hardcoded 2 - the routine to substitute the new path was returning the old path 3 - the copy of the new m.ini file wasn't working. Sounds simple, but it takes a while to track these things down and fix. It's still not working if you specify a different path than the default, so more work to do on it today.

I cleverly circumvented my company's draconian security policy on file-sharing sites (dropbox, google docs and the like) by using Amazon's S3 service. I think we actually have our own file-sharing service, but I didn't feel like dealing with the hassles of getting it up and running when I could get it up to S3 and shared in just a few minutes. I feel like an outlaw, lol. If they offer me a full time job, I might stick with company policy.
 
Had B over last night to watch the game. He likes to come over on Wednesday's because that's when his de-facto in-laws come over for the Wednesday night visit. It's already a hassle since they're around all the time, but Wednesday's the official time. Apparently, they like to talk politics, how awkward.

He's fun to hang out with, low-key, witty, loves basketball - he was a star player in high school - and we have a very similar way of thinking. We just watch hoops and have beers and snacks and talk hoops and joke around. I value my private time, but I do like hanging with B.
 
Hiya Jack! Sounds like fun to have a friend over to hang out and watch the game. Sports is a great catalyst for that.

Hope you made it to the gym. It's snowing here today and I've been under the weather but your post motivated me to try to get to the indoor track later. 2 or 3 miles would be better than no miles, thats for sure!
 
Hi Mols, no, I didn't make it to the gym :) I have a comp day today, so I'm definitely, definitely going. I swear.

We had snow last night, but grace a Dieu it's warming up and I won't have to shovel. My daughter is back for a visit. I didn't realize how much I missed her. We watched a show on Amazon Prime she likes called "Patriots". She's so fun to hang out with. She very much into tv/movies/books, always has been. She was an English major and she analyzes these things to the nth degree. I barely remember the name of the characters. She kindly explained what was going on in the show, which actually was pretty good. A lot of deadpan/black humor, very reminiscent of the Koen (sp?) brothers.

We're going to see a move today, probably Widows but we'll see.


There's a couple of family parties this weekend, one tonight and another tomorrow. I'll probably jam with C on Sunday.

I gotta get to the gym!
 
How lovely that you can really connect with your daughter & share similar interests. Enjoy your family weekend, Jack :)
 
Thanks, Cate! She's a dream, she's off to friends for the weekend, but will be back Monday.

So, my knees bothering me - I think I overdid it on the treadmill this morning. But at least I got there. I also dropped my daughter off, got a haircut, filled the wiper fluid, and went to the family party. It was pretty good, my aunt's 90th. Nice to see a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles.

I have my knee wrapped in ice, so it's feeling better. I'm watching the Celtics. They had a great win last night, which I missed due to my relatives coming up from Fla. for the 90th party. But it was great to see them. I used to play tennis with my uncle when we were younger - he's 86 now, can't play anymore. I can't either, or I haven't been.

Ok, I at least have to practice guitar. Looks like the wife isn't coming home till later - she must've gone partying with her "girlfriends". Hmmm...
 
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