I just went through an odd web surfing journey:

I was reading one of Cracked.com’s funny lists and I ended up with copies of published papers on work I did as a staff scientist 15 years ago. Cracked -> linked article->book article uses as reference->my old workplace->my old boss->published papers. What an odd journey from silly to serious.

The Cracked.com funny list is 6 ways your office is literally killing you

http://www.cracked.com/article_18654_6-ways-your-office-literally-killing-you_p2.html

Because my old profession was lighting, the bit about how fluorescents and over-lighting causing problems peaked my interest and hit my research button. Almost everywhere I have worked, I end up reducing the overall lighting. No one had done it before and generally people found they really liked it to the point it would end up too dark and lighting would need to be added back in.

(Lighting story and geekiness)
At one job where I worked for five years, I would unscrew the lights above me. I would be moved to a different desk since corporate reshuffling happens a lot and the person getting my old desk would find they like the light level as is and wouldn’t want the lights screwed back in again. I would unscrew the ones above my then current desk and things repeated each shuffle. Eventually the entire floor became too dark because no one wants theirs to be the lights turned back on to provide lights for everyone. A lot of people coming to see us would remark on how dark our space was. We started calling ourselves Mushrooms. The dark was our choice, the BS was typical corporate type BS.

The Cracked.com thing was posted today (July 26, 2010) and the article they use as reference was written in 2008. The book the article uses as reference has a 2nd edition available via Amazon.com published in the 80′s. All of them claim how bad fluorescent lighting is for you. Which is our of date. It is interesting to see how something continues on and is completely supported by references and is still wrong. Their claim may or may not be valid but because of some major changes that are not taken into consideration, the claim doesn’t have a base.

In the 90′s legislation went through outlawing the types of fluorescent light bulbs that the 80′s book talks about. This happened for energy efficiency reasons but has the benefit of higher quality lights. Fluorescent flickering went from 60 cycles a second to 3,600 cycles a second. The compound in the tubes that give off the light was changed from one spectrum of light to a more complex mix of minerals which gives lighting better suited for our eyes than before. The ones that are comparable to full daylighting are more expensive but the regular ones are so much better than when many assumptions about fluorescent lighting were carved into stone.

I have a lot to say about overlighting but am not going to go into it now. A lot of it boils down to the idea that more is better than not enough. From some of the other stuff the article said, it may have been found that the opposite is true, more is much worse than not enough.

(End Lighting geekiness)

From the book referenced the Lighting Group at LBNL which is where I worked in 1996. I found links to published papers of projects I worked on. Since I was there for 7 months and worked on the end of one project, the experimental phase of another project, the beginning of another project, and was not part of any project from beginning to end, my name is not included on any of the papers. The project where I was the one that collected the bulk of the data wasn’t a government project and there was no government paper released on it.

From there I looked up my old boss and found he stopped publishing in 2000 and left in 2004 to go to UC Davis and form a Lighting Group up there. It was odd finding him on Linkedin. I can find no record of my co-worker after our boss left. I can’t find him out working on his own. I admired my boss and liked him. Towards the end of my time there (funding for my position was cut) he did something that really stepped on my toes. I find now that I think I still admire him and have fun stories to tell about him to others but with the possibility of reaching out and reconnecting with him I find that I really don’t like him and view him as a snake in the grass that will strike with a poison bite without thinking and maybe even without noticing he has done so. He is using the same pictures that I saw of him 15 years ago. I can remember seeing those pictures and smiling and thinking how cool, unique, and quirky he is. Now I see the exact same picture and he looks sinister and not trustworthy. He isn’t a bad person, I just feel he is harmful for me to deal with.

This started as a light hearted post and got a lot deeper. Not getting a chance to talk to people for days means it gets stored up, I guess.

Many science fiction stories and studies show that humans have a hard time with schedules that are not based on a 24 hour day. I am using this as evidence that I am not human (OK not really but it is a fun idea to explain my “natrual” default schedule).

I slept off and on through Sat. I woke at 2am on Sunday morning and was awake until around 5am Monday morning. I woke around 9:30am and felt good. I got my shake and nuzzled down in bed because it felt good, not because I was drowsy. At 1pm, a phone call woke me. I had been dead asleep. I drank my shake and watched some tv.

After watching both parts of the final Dollhouse episodes I ended up crying hard and wore myself out. I guess it could have been around 4pm. Exhausted, I fell asleep again. Woke and am finally moving again at 8pm Monday evening.

It appears that it is relatively easy for me to adapt to a longer than 24 hour day even with the light dark cycles at 24 hours. A wild guess would put me as adapted to a planetary day of 36 hours.

The thing is that it appears that my dad has the same inertia issues I do. He loathes to go to bed when he is awake and loathes to get up when he is asleep. This issue is what has made my schedule what it is. I don’t have an external schedule placed on me. He has always had someone around that is on a 24 hour schedule to keep him there.

I am sure some of it is my depression or whatever. But I wanted to record my observations (and what fun I can have with them) somewhere to find again later. (when my real origins are found, I can then claim I always suspected it).

Figured it would be a good idea to make note that something I have accomplished over the last few days is meeting with two agencies to get me up and running with them. They were uninterested before but called me this time.

I have done some updating on my samples and have not heard if I did enough or not. I find this annoying.

I now have a Facebook page and a twitter account for my “real” self on the web so that those can be found if people google me. I am working on forming the idea that they will be a limited version of me rather than me pretending to be plastic like I have learned doesn’t work for me in the past.

The model I am using for my real name facebook page it to be much more open to casual contacts instead of people I actually know and are active in my life. The “real” version will be limited to socially acceptable and work related interests whereas my real version is about any part of me that comes to the surface. This here is my real LJ and it gets all the dark and light stuff. Weeee.

I doubt that I will be creating a public LJ. I just don’t have much to say that I want people who will be judging me to see without context. Before I could trust that people who would look for me would actually want to know what I have to say and who I am. Now the internet is used to find info on people to judge who they are before even meeting them. This I am not to pleased about but see how it can be useful. Ergo, I am creating a personal brand. I am not selling myself this way but am limiting my output to the parts that are publicly appreciated. I thank yndy for the example of how to do this without pretending to be something I am not.

Maybe this is where I am getting my ideas about going back to limiting myself and my connections to only surface levels.

drowsy and dropped off until 2am. After 3am, I put food into me. I took my meds which I had missed for two days.

I feeling more like I normally do lately but still wondering about the usefulness of cutting off connection to become functional again.

I feel so drugged. I have slept hard. I went to sleep around 5am to be woken up at 10am by the fix-it-guy to fix my sink. Around 11 or noon, I was dropping off again. I finally woke up around 7pm and just want to go back to sleep again.

My sleep has been off for days. I think I have been getting by with 2-4-8 hours a sleep at odd intervals. I know that I have gone 36 hours without sleep and it felt just fine. I have been wondering why I feel drowsy at 6pm and wide awake at 10pm when I keep a normal schedule.

The dream this time involved me working with a danish guy (tall, thin, named something like John or Joseph, reminds me a lot of an old dear friend of mine that opted out of my life) on some spy type mission where we posed as a married couple in Denmark.

The part that is sticcking with me is my energy running down after a day spent exploring the town we lived in and shopping. I didn’t have any local currency and they didn’t take credit cards(the totals were given in powers of 2. Some very simple things I was buying ended up cominig to 2^30 which is beyond unreasonable. We were waiting for my brother (who was visiting) toget out of the bathroom and I woke up finding myself alseep on a store display and both of them gone. It was late and I had needed to eat when we were waiting before.

I went the few blocks to the car and found it was stil there. As I managed to get out of the parking lot and try to get out of the center of town, I spied him in the window of a restaurant. I stopped and confronted him. He said that he and my brother didn’t want to disurb me because it looked like I needed the rest and that they were going to walk home so that they could leave me the car so I could take care of myself and not need a parent. The parent thing got me. It was the idea that when I run out of energy, I need someone to step in like a parent and take care of me and that is sort of the way it really is. Life is so so so much easier when I have someone that can and will do that for me.

I thought that this guy would and I realized that he didn’t really know enough about me to be able to do that. He really thought this was a good solution and didn’t have an idea how bad it was to leave me in a foreign country with no usable currency, no way to contact him, and no idea where he went other than to eat.I had no backups and after I got back to the car, I realized i didn’t know the way back home either. I felt like I was not able to ask him for anything like money, directions or help. I felt like I was on my own and that I would eventually be ok but it was going to cost me.

I didn’t feel betrayed or hurt or anything. I felt mild disappointment like an entire branch of options just got erased and they had looked like really useful options and it was a shame they didn’t really exist. I was disappointed that I had depended on those options enough that I didn’t have other options worked out and I needed to do that while at my lowest point.

It felt very natural that I didn’t have any back up other than the most superficial (like what a store clerk would offer), nowhere to go for help and had to do everything by myself.

I don’t know if this is an attitude that is a goal I should be trying to get to or something I am trying to work to get away from.

“So I don’t need someone to parent me.”

Now that I am at the end of typing this out. I don’t feel drugged anymore and like all I can do is drop back to sleep again. I am getting the idea that the place where I ended in the dream was my logic only self with no emotional connections and not caring for any emotional connections. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I have not seen anyone for days and will not be seeing anyone for days unless I work hard to contact people to set things up. The thought of going into that mode again feels exhausting to me. Right now it feels like the only person that want to connect with me is my mom and I have to fight to keep her from not overwhelming me. Other than that, I am on my own. I feel right now that I want to just accept that fact and start working out what options I need to just take care of myself without having any space open to allow anyone else in. To prepare for only the most surface level of connections. To plan on anything more than that is to set myself up for only the type of things that happened in the dream.

I know one of my major life goals is to have real connection to people. I have put a lot of work and suffered a lot to have this. From where I am right now, I can’t see this working or have any purpose. I “know” better but the filter is thick right now. It is very much an abstract knowing.

I feel that I can get myself out of my hole that I have created if I stick to this attitude. I don’t know if this is true. It feels like a position of power. I believe that this is where I have lived most of my life and what I swore to not go back to because that spark that makes life worth living can exist in this mode. But that spark doesn’t show up much or doesn’t have a lasting effect if it has managed to show up living it the other way either.

I didn’t realize how deep this went until I started working it out via writing it out. I am very tired and want to either go back to being strong or get some of the reward of being weak. Because I know how important my Work has been to me, I want to just turn myself off, go back to sleep and see how things are later.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/memory/

From the BBC science site: Memory test:

results

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml

The BBC science site has an interesting test to find out what sex you brain is. I ended up with exactly 0 between Men and Women. Balance, yeah that’s me. Some of the areas were strongly one gender or the other and they averaged out to even. Other areas where in the middle of the gender lines.

Here is the breakdown:

Today I went with C&K to see Caravan Parade at Stern Grove. They are like a cross between Triplets of Belleville and Rosin Coven. They call their music electro swing with some jazz thrown in. I like some of their songs very much but they do wear on the nerve over time. My favs are the ones without the girl singing, just the guys playing and the DJ guy doing weird things to his voice in a microphone.

Friday was going to see Richard Lewis at Cobb’s comedy club with a friend. I remember Richard Lewis from years and years ago and he is getting on in years. His act was stories that wandered all over the place and he had a hard time remembering what he was talking about before he went of on a tangent. There were lots of laughs but I felt unsatisfied because there were at least 6 threads left hanging that I could remember. A lot of story set up without the punchline conclusion.

Before the show, my friend and I had loads of time to find dinner. I got a chance to explore without needing to worry about my food issues. I forgot how much I love that. We wandered many blocks in North Beach and on a side street we found Cafe Maria (http://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-maria-san-francisco). I am hesitant to give it rave reviews because it will become packed and unavailable. It gets as many stars as I can give. It is very much a local’s restaurant. Some patrons told us it was good and relatively cheap while we were wandering by and checking out menus. One of them gave us some parmesan from a big wheel. It was the customers welcoming us that sold me on the place (and the prices were a step under the prices we had seen on Columbus).

Usually I like to not engage in chit chat with the staff but it felt very warm and welcoming here. They gave us a table in the back near a door that could be opened (I was overheated from walking). They gave us olives and bread w/ butter. When I finally got around to tasting the bread, it melted in my mouth. Oh, it was good european bread. The place was mostly seafood but that didn’t bother me. I was in a really good state. I got to explore and find something new and good. I felt comfortable and welcomed. I felt safe and like there was something I would be able to eat without worry. I was really happy, like I haven’t been in a long time. I would get bouncy and bubbly and other times I just sat there with a smile on my face soaking the feeling it. I had cheese and spinach ravioli with half cream tomato sauce and half pesto sauce. My friend had the pasta bolognese which looked and smelled wonderful (but was too spicy hot for me sadly). The waitress took good care of us even though she had two tables of 13 she was also taking care of. The owners would check in with us and talked with us. They are trying to figure out what they want to have for their dessert menu and was interested in suggestions. Half the staff is Brazillian. I would love to see it serve pasta and the meat on a stick. That would be fun.

It has great reviews on yelp already. I am sure it will get swamped and will no longer be a great tucked out of the way place, *sniff*. I will remember it fondly as a place where I was actually happy.

Wed, a friend treated me to Mrs Warren’s Profession at Cal Shakes. I can recommend this as well. Cal Shakes is a wonderful site for plays, they have food which is reasonable for captive audience prices. Mrs Warren’s dresses were incredible and I loved watching her move in them. It takes place in Victorian England. The accents were so well done that I had a hard time remembering I wasn’t watching something on PBS or listening to NPR. The evening was perfect. I had been warned it gets very cold and it was a warm night and needed a long sleeve shirt over my tank top. It was hot when I got there but cooled off enough by the time the play started. It was nice to see a performance.

Besides mooching bridge toll, all this was damn cheap. My friend treated me to the play because he had comps and liked to have company. Stern Grove was free (a friend gave me a dollar to donate). I paid $6 in fees for the free ticket to the comedy club and I paid $12 for dinner. Really, all I need is people to do things with. I really wanted to go to the Neverwas Haul open house which was free (they were selling food and drink for $5 to raise money) and because I was on my own, I never made it out of the house. I had people to meet there but they would be there with or without me. It feels like a switch: With someone=go, just for myself=don’t move.

There is a science comedian that I would like to see for $10 coming up. Shows I can get free tickets to (pay just the fees) is a show about filming the Life of Brian with Monty Python’s Flying Circus Aug 15th and another one I think from the Netherlands called Men: A User’s Guide Aug 20th. Both of these are part of the SF Improv Festival. I have a party to go to in two weeks that I really hope I can get myself to. Last year I was in the zone and it was wonderful. The year before, I was so out of step that I felt awkward and miserable. The year prior to that, I couldn’t get myself to go at all.

I have therapy on tues and maybe a get together on Fri. That is all I have for the entire week. One more therapy session next week and then that party. I feel like I am putting so much effort into finding people to do things with and am always needing to put more energy in and that I am starting to run out of steam.

Pretty good day today. I didn’t have any plans and figured I would be having some down time to make up for the pressures of Thursday and Friday. I woke around 10 am, checked email and drank a shake. Then I fell back to dozing. I love LaLaland I got a 3pm phone call from H. Back when I was being productive on Friday, I had emailed him asking to use his computer and software to update some work I had previously done. He was calling to tell me that yes his computer was available today.

Well I had some other ideas that were bobbing around in my head. I was very out of it and couldn’t sort out reasonable and over the top so I told him all the ideas. He said they all sounded good. Since we both needed to eat, I headed out to pick him up. More ideas poured out.

We loaded up at the grocery store and since H agreed to do the cooking more ideas show up in my head. H finally called a halt to it because I was getting rather manic. I was still slightly out of it from not quite making it back in to reality from dreamland.

H do the core cooking and I did bits and pieces around the edges, mostly prep-cook stuff. We ate sloppy joes, corn on the cob, and fresh peaches and bananas on angel food cake with whipped cream sweetened with honey. I have four flavors of honey right now.

In addition to our meal, we made Noodles by the Seasnore (family name for hamburger, velveta, pasta, tomato soup, etc.) and little hamburgers sealed with Kitchen Bouquet. I am stuffed and am having a hard time not digging into the other meals because they are childhood favorites. I am very pleased.

I was still somewhat frantic and throwing myself at things to get stuff done, shaking a little. Mostly good. H dozed out a little from food coma and I kept sorting and cleaning. I have even more living room floor and my tv project is about a third done. I also got the software issue taken care of. I think we got done most of the things from my list of possibilities and made three different foods for me to use as leftovers for the next week or so. I need to separate some of it and put it into the freezer. H had a good time from getting to hang out and do stuff together and be at my place instead of his for a change.

All in all, a successful, productive, and good day. Until I got home from dropping H off, I felt like I was a little out of step. I didn’t really have a chance to get my head before my feet, it was a little lagging. But it ended up being ok. I am not sure if someone that doesn’t know how to get along with me would be able to deal. Basically everything that I was thinking ended up getting put out there and sorted through by both of us. We are used to this idea so it wasn’t a problem. I can imagine a number of times I might have stepped on someone’s foot with how I was running today.

It is an odd cap to this week’s events. I feel like I have been spinning up like I do when I am having a blast but without the fun bit. The fun level is down near the ground like when I am grounded. It is pleasant and good without being hyper and running at full tilt. So the feeling of spinning is at odds with my actual experiences and it feels weird. I sort of don’t know what to make of it.

Another friend was suppose to come north to go to Sunday Service with me but he opted out. I am sad because I was looking forward to it and I don’t have any other plans for Sunday. I felt it would be good for me to go but I don’t want to go alone.

I am doing much better. I have been awake for at least 40 hours. Spent 3 hours doing an intense enneagram download (an emotional slam of a different sort than previous ones) and have just spent 2.5 hours soaking in PPT on the PC and Mac.

Damn, I feel I should be worried about how much I like that program. I feel calm and smart and almost ready to kick some computer butt. Some people soak in hot tubs, I soak in PPT.

Today’s consumables have been a burger and fries from In & Out, 2 chocolate pudding cups, delightful mushroom/cheese/pasta and an ear of corn, and a mini 1,000 grand candy bar. I haven’t really stopped moving since I got home from shopping to find everything coming together all at once.

Dinner with a friend and enneagram education took me to an edge that I could feel very deeply. It was no more pleasant that the other emotional slams but it was the complete opposite direction and the type of thing I am more than pleased with to be doing. It is something that feeds me deeply. It is a very good thing.

I was able to visit another friend and his wonderfully large computer monitors and play with both a Mac and a PC, PPT 2004 and 2010. I cleaned up and made so much better the PPT animation sample I have. I have a hard time believing I spent over 2.5 hours doing that. Not being at home when I am working seems to be a big deal. Or it could be the computer system. So much larger and at an actual desk. At home I have a laptop and a mini while sitting on my couch where I sleep. I do take the laptop (which seems HUGE after the mini) to the library to work sometimes but that hasn’t seemed to be that different than working from home. *Gasp* could it be that I actually like the newer version of PPT? That Microsoft did something right when they released an upgrade? Don’t get too excited. Something I loved that they added to PPT 2007 seems to have gone away in 2010.

I am thinking that maybe everything coming together like it is/did might be to tell me/show me that not only will I survive hurting like that, I have the ability to handle it and make things work. I would rather not do it over and over. I still am shaking and I don’t feel like sleeping. I don’t want to try not moving. I still have the stuff from the store to put away. Good thing there is nothing to melt or go bad.

Still here. Still functioning (as well as always). More in touch with why it is all worth it after tonight. Still feels like crap but it seems more like worthwhile crap.