My bladder woke me around 12:40am this morning. I wasn't able to actually sleep after that, but I was able to lay in bed with my eyes closed, which is good for partial rest, anyway.

I haven't been taking my pills since Wednesday.

If I'd been taking the pills, I would have been in bed for perhaps fifteen minutes, jittering, until I finally got up at 1am and played games until it was time to go into town. This assumes, of course, that I could sleep until 12:40, of course. Remember, on the pills I was going to sleep bone tired and then waking up after an hour with too much energy to sit still.

I'm considering hypnosis for getting past the midnight wake up period. I just need to figure out how to word it, that's all.

Last night I found a second site on food. The first one was one _pollox sent me, here. The second one is much more serious, here.

Time for breakfast.

I think I'm ditching. I might be able to sleepwalk my way through the day on a single hour of sleep, but I'm not sure that would be the wisest course.

I read my previous entry to whatthehay and she seemed to respond with: "Well, why didn't you tell me you were doing that?" My response was somewhat lackluster: "I guess my brain wasn't working then."

What was my brain working on aside from informing Sweetie of what I was doing instead of medicating? A brief sample follows:

On Amazon I notice the Wacom Intuous 3, brand new, is down to $199, which is a whole $100 cheaper than it was when it was full price. At this rate I might actually be able to afford one of those. Granted, and Intuous 4 tablet would be nicer and prettier, but I could get by on a 3. Right now I have a Wacom ArtZ-II, which is 9-pin serial, not USB. This means I can't use it with my laptop at all, and I need a $15 expansion card with my desktop machine because desktop machines no longer come with 9-pin serial ports ...it's THAT old. The last card I had was apparently fried because we had a power outage before we had our current Uninterruptable Power Supply, and now I'm going to have to buy another card (if I can find it) to replace the old one. This is apart from the fact that the current drivers don't seem to want to work with my ancient tablet. If the presence of a new expansion card doesn't fix the problem I have no other options aside from buying an all-new tablet.

There's a series on the new changes to EVE Online here, here and then here. They go into how the development team is going to alter the game conditions and user interface, the why of these changes, and how this will effect the money trail. If you know anything about the game, it's fascinating reading, and addresses the main problems I had with the game when I was playing it. Once these changes go into play, I might actually have a reason to go back to that game.

There's this new teaching approach on Math called JUMP. Its author claims EVERY child can be taught math. It's so far listed as being for Elementary School kids only, which is a real shame for those of us born much, much earlier. Nevertheless, I downloaded the PDF Introduction and am going through it. The Intro centers on how the weaker students will tend to live down to whatever low expectations you may have for them, and how the presence of confidence is one of the traits that makes students learn math faster and more completely. So the Intro starts students on Fractions as a way of building confidence, and then introduces extra credit work as a way of keeping the faster students busy until you're sure everyone comprehends the basic material. JUMP also stresses how teachers are part of the learning environment, which is just one of the approaches in the Intro which can then be applied to ANY subject, not just math.

I went to sleep at 10pm and awoke at 11pm, unable to sleep. No REM sleep at all, just BOOM, awake. Obviously, this isn't good. Apparently Strattera is not the medication for me if this is what it's doing. Mind you, this is on 50mg (two 25mg capsules).

I'm finally starting to get tired after four hours awake. The trouble is, it's 3am, and at 5am I'm supposed to be out the door, if I'm going to go see my therapist and be anything like helpful to ssatva and valasia. I'm undecided at the moment.

There are some other disturbing things about the effects of this drug on me. My psych problems include physical depression and rages. Strattera exacerbates rages in the warning literature. I'm starting to notice rage patterns over the last couple of weeks, and each time I experience them strongly enough to damage a door or some other defenseless object, I have always taken medication the previous night.

To test this, I tried going without for the past several days in a row, since this drug is one of the ones with which you can do that, and for the days I hadn't taken my capsules I was able to sleep all the way through the night and there were no rages. Irritations, yes, but no rages.

ssatva thinks this is obviously the wrong medication and I need to find something else. This has been his opinion ever since he found out that at 80mg (the first dosage) I was sleeping 2 hours a night and somehow REMming in that time, beats me how. Right now that would be an improvement. When I dropped dosage levels down to 40mg, which is not considered a therapeutic dosage, I still notice the effects but the energy benefits are almost nonexistent. The main difference at that level is I sleep 7-8 hours a night.

Mind you, the Strattera is not supposed to cure either my rages or my depression. It's an ADD drug, intended to alleviate the problems of distraction and inability to concentrate. What I really wanted it to do was help me be more aware of the time and help with forgetting tasks, which, perhaps at age 46, I should not be surprised I am doing.

When I was going to college, I noticed as long as I continued to do my martial arts exercises, I experienced no rages and was very even tempered. So maybe the solution is plain old exercise after all. The only trouble with that is I experience joint pain with walking every now and then, and the full range of martial arts exercises leave me totally wasted for the day because I'm so out of shape.

Hmmm.

I'd consult ssatva to see what he thinks of me ditching, but he's not online, or at least not on IM. valasia is on, but unresponsive (I suspect asleep and left it on).

On the plus side, I see my psychiatrist on Friday. I jokingly refer to him as my Pusher. I think it's finally down to either not taking anything and working on the whole exercise regimen or else trying something else. It would be helpful if I could get a decent night's sleep the night before I'm to go in to see him, too.

I am bleeding from my hiney again. This means I am not going into town after all, and will probably be keeping to a diet of soft, fibrous foods until some time after it heals.

Then I went to sleep around 11pm only to awaken mostly refreshed around midnight. I was awake until 2 when I managed to get back to sleep to awaken at 4. Then I went back to sleep and was awakened by the phone at 8:15 when hesperide called. I need to call her back, as I did not pick up the phone to answer. Then I slept until 11:35, when ssatva called. I didn't pick up the phone that time either, but at least I've now turned the ringer to Vibrate instead of Loud.

Between 8 and 11 I dreamed whatthehay and I were trying to escape from stardragan, who had used a short blowgun to dart the pair of us. We escaped when we awoke later by stealing her diary and reading it to find out what she had done in the meantime...we were apparently unconscious for that long. As it had turned out, stardragan had turned herself into a Goddess, a multi-layered collection of herself some hundred layers deep, one layer placed directly on top of the others. (This amuses me because that sounds exactly like Kali.)

Anyway, whatthehay and I escaped out to the parking lot, but someone who looked a little like lunarhawke with a Van Dyke (very dashing) got out of a car. I instructed whatthehay to lie low until he passed so we wouldn't get spotted and then could make our way out to freedom, and instead she begins to make a scene by yapping at him and anyone else nearby who will listen.

I am not going back to sleep. Well, not yet. I'm expecting a call from whatthehay around 3pm local time. As those who read her already know, she has been trapped in Florida for three weeks for training, this being the very last week.

No wanna sleep. Wanna bang on keyboard.

1) I'm flea bombing today and the house isn't ready.
2) Sweetie isn't here to help out or to calm me down.
3) I got three hours of sleep last night.

Ergo - Things aren't good right now.

PS:
4) I'm hysterical part of the time.
I don't know if this last part is implied or not by the previous three, but...
well...

She's gone to Florida for a three-week training session. Last time she did this it wasn't a good thing, and Mom had to come over and kick me into shape after the first week. Mom is now in Ohio with my brother, his wife and their kids, so that's not an option.

I was okay for the first day, but now the reality's had time to set in. I don't want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to sit and home, watch videos and mope.

The fleas have inexplicably gotten a lot worse, and I'm getting tired of picking them off me every few minutes or seconds. I put down the anti-flea stuff we got, but the fleas seem to be largely ignoring it. I don't know if I'm applying enough of the stuff. The label claims it's made of orthoboric acid, whatever that is. I suppose I'll have to look it up and find out (not particularly helpful). The places with vinyl flooring is easy to dust with this stuff, and are mainly flea-free, but places I tend to stay in for long periods have carpeting. It's bad enough I don't even want to touch the floor now.

I should really be in town by now. It doesn't seem to take much to get me to cry now. I feel awful, and the feeling just doesn't want to stop for more than a few minutes. I'm trying to involve myself in things, writing, getting rid of the fleas, organizing. I'm afraid to make value judgments about anything.

I'm not suicidal, which I suppose is a good thing. No doubt if I didn't have the Strattera I might be, but I don't really have coping skills for this. I've never been good on my own. I tend to get weird, needy, emotionally oversensitive, if I don't have physical contact every day. Men give me some comfort, women the most. I just want to curl up with someone for about half an hour until I feel better, and then I'm good for a couple of days.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to infest my friends houses with fleas, but I don't have the energy to deal with this by myself and I'm depressed as hell.

P.S. - Does anyone out there know where I can actually get my hands on a Wacom Bamboo or Bamboo Fun for long enough to try it out? I'm told they're terrible, but since $79 is so much cheaper than $320 and I'm on a terribly fixed income, I really have to know just how terrible.

Anyone?

I've discovered something new in the form of live (recorded) drawing process. It's fascinating!

http://www.justin.tv/fredrin <-- Draws the Megatokyo webcomic
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/qc-show <-- Draws the Questionable Content webcomic

:)

Grumpy day today.

Helped Sweetie do the mopping today. It seems I didn't actually forget everything about mopping, as I had hoped. The floors are covered with boxes, which is just going to make me not want to do further mopping. I can probably keep up with the bathroom, laundry room and kitchen floors, and maybe from time to time I'll even do the hallway, but I hate all the spare objects in the living room and dining room. I don't know what to do with any of them, which is why I haven't gone through those boxes and put things away.

Sweetie leaves for Florida at the end of the week, and I'm not looking forward to having the house without her. Feeding myself appropriately is going to be the biggest challenge, and that position will be tied with not falling into a huge depression. She will be gone for three weeks.

Of course, what would really help with the depression part is getting out for regular walks, but that's not happening now, so why should it happen when Sweetie is gone?

Not looking forward to this.

Two games: Caster and Osmos.

Caster is a 3rd person shooter, but extremely simplified. And it's a five dollar game with the ability to make your own levels (I haven't tried that part yet). Available in Windows, Mac and Linux. And iPhone, Gods help you. And there's a demo.

Osmos is like an incredibly slow, one-celled approach to Katamari Damacy. You're a very pretty blue blob on the screen. to move, you shoot stuff out in the opposite direction from where you want to go, but every time you do that you get a little smaller. Your job is to become the biggest by running into other cells which are blue-tinged (thus smaller than you). And that's all. Osmos is a ten dollar game. Currently only available in Windows, although there's apparently a Mac and Linux version planned and in the works. And there's a demo.

I'd be posting this on Dreamwidth, but Semagic seems to think the responses from Dreamwidth are broken. I guess I'll be looking for an update, and failing that, making a complaint to the proper channels.

audiko.net is another website like wolfram designed to create ringtones, but instead of generating one with randomness like Wolfram does, Audiko does it by taking a tune from you and clipping out a chunk using tools on the site to create a distinctive ringtone. Further, it'll give you clips other people have made and let you listen to them, thus exposing you not only to other people's creations, but also to music you might not have heard before. Granted, you don't hear complete pieces, but you'll certainly hear enough of a tune to determine whether you like it enough to look for the rest of the tune.

Of course, if you'd prefer to create your own music, try this site. I'm sure there's a way to get music off of there somehow, which you can then clip into pieces or whatever.

Last night my music player (Sansa e270) temporarily bricked, which is to say it became an unresponsive piece of plastic that would not turn on or reset or react to being plugged in. The main problem I've had with it as a player is despite the 6gb holding capacity, it really wants to work with Microsoft Media Player (1)(2), and the people at Sansa made it so it re-encodes everything you put on it.

So, my player bricked, I went searching for another player. I found the Transcend 8gb player, which, if the music player ever really fails to work, will still function as a thumb drive. Since I've never filled my old player more than half capacity, I also figured I could get by with a 4gb player (like <ahref="http://www.amazon.com/jwin-mp3-player-usb-plug/dp/b002d0j5my">this one</a>).

Oh, breaking news: a 4-inch wolf spider came in, creating the response in Sweetie where she comes and gets me to get it out of the house. Mind you, fearful as she may be of it, she does not want it killed. She wants it captured and removed from the house, somewhere the cats are not. I put it under the house to play with the raccoons.

(1) which I don't use for several reasons, amongst which I really don't trust software designed to work with an OS so completely that it insinuates little tendrils into said OS such that it cannot be separated, not to mention Microsoft's whole authoritarian attitude. This is, incidentally, my same problem with IE.
(2) So instead, I use Winamp, which, after a new version or two actually would load and access the player. To replace IE I use Firefox for the day-to-day web browsing. I only use IE for updating Windows.

Can the heat wave stop now? Am I going to have to move north from here to get back into the climate I love so much? Can Congress now accept the stupid damned fact of global climate change? Or if they aren't up for that, how about mandatory air conditioning for all homes in this country, paid for by Congress until they can get their heads out of their butts?

I'm sorry. Heat pisses me off. I run warm already, and this weather is not helping.

Cooperative dischordency, thy name is mashup.

I kind of like the way the tunes try to go in their own respective directions, and yet somehow seem to complement each other.

Generic Names For Soft Drinks
http://popvssoda.com:2998/countystats/total-county.html

Free ringtones!

Actually, it's kind of interesting. Near as I can see, the tones are generated randomly to fit various styles of music, and then you just pick the ones you want for download. With the additional controls at the bottom, you can make pretty much any sort of music you want. :)

Why is it that when I watch a YouTube clip in LiveJournal, every later different clip appears to be that same earlier clip?

These people will tell you everything about this phone except what variety of microSD card it can handle. I mean, can it handle SDHC cards, or do I stick with the cards maxing out at 2 gb?