Insomnia

I've suffered insomnia for years now. For as long as I can remember I will have some nights when I just can't sleep. I've never been able to pinpoint any one reason why.

Sometimes I think it's due to depression. I've spent nights staring off into the existential void worry about what happens after death. I've spent sleepless nights lying awake worrying about finances, or how I would break a particularly embarrassing bit of news to someone. These bouts will last for days, until I’ve worked my way through whatever mental quandary has kept me from rest.

Sometimes it's a matter of comfort. I toss and turn all night unable to reach any sort of body arrangement where I don't feel irritated. When it's warm I lay and sweat, unable to rest because of the heat. Eventually of course the weather will clear, and I’ll get rest when things are cooler and/or lest humid.

Some times it is less easy to define. Some nights I'm just not sleepy. About once a year I will be awake the whole night without feeling tired. Thankfully these nights are usually isolated incidents.

I used to think the problem was a lack of physical activity. I lead a relatively sedentary lifestyle. I've tried to change that in recent years. I choose to walk now instead of drive. I ride my bicycle whenever I can. Even on nights where I should be physically exhausted though I will occasionally be completely unable to sleep.

I thought for a while it was a diet issue. I am awake most nights, and the odd snack after work means that I will sometimes eat well after midnight. I have a taste for caffeinated drinks and chocolate, and I used to think it would keep me up nights.

These days I’ve mostly stopped worrying about it. When I can’t sleep I’ve learned to cope. Some times by self-medicating with a sleep aid, or NyQuil, or if I’m desperate even alcohol. Some nights I just don’t bother sleeping. I’ll get up and keep busy by reading, or writing, or watching TV.

I’ve learned to mitigate the problem by keeping my mind active even in rest. Rare is the night when I don’t go to sleep listening to the radio, or to a podcast. It distracts me from concentrating too much on things that keep me from sleeping. Temperature I control with a fan or an AC unit.

I could see a doctor about it I suppose, but I’ve never been a fan of medication. It’s something I’ve had to learn to live with. It is probably something I will have to endure the rest of my life.

A lazy evening with alcohol and video games

Kind of a lazy day today, so this is likely to be brief. I’m also posting from the CR-48, which means that I’m using a keyboard that I have never been comfortable with. Apologies in advance for any typos.

I enjoy playing video games, but I also enjoy watching them. Right now I’m watching two friends of mine play though the co-operative campaign for "Ms. ‘Splosion Man". Why, you might ask?

Because it’s freaking hilarious, that’s why. The game itself is full of all sorts of humor. Some are funny background events. Some are the one-liners the odd main character spouts (she talks almost entirely in one-liners from female-performed pop songs).

Mostly though it’s to watch the players. Carlo and Bryan (the two friends currently playing the game) are having tons of fun making their way though the game. Seeing them celebrate at getting past a particularly difficult section or nearly pull their hair out from a section the designers clearly intended to be nearly impossible is pretty entertaining.

I actually do this sort of thing a lot. It lets me get an experience with a game I probably won’t play. I usually sit and surf the web while i watch. Today I’m taking the opportunity to put up a blog post. It’s a lazy, entertaining way to spend the early part of an evening before moving on to more exciting things.

So, nothing profound today. I’m just sitting here enjoying my day off. I have a glass of wonderful bourbon in my hand. I’m watching two friends swing between frustration and exultation. Not a bad night.

Student loans and college

I've been under a bit of stress lately. I've been on a leave of absence from college (I am a non-traditional student) and while I haven't been in school my loans have started to come due. While I do work, those loans are quite the burden to have in addition to all my other bills.

It's my fault, of course. Back when I first got to college after high school I didn't pay attention in class. I played video games all day. I slept through early classes. I didn't do homework. I was, in no uncertain terms, a bit of a fuck-up.

I dropped out. I worked retail for a while. This wasn't as awful as it might have been, and it did force me to face several problems I had socializing with others. It was still pretty bad though, and it never paid well.

Then I got into working tech support. I started my tech support career by working at a small boarding school in my hometown. This job paid well, and I was OK for a while. Then I got laid off.

The school just couldn't afford to keep me on as full-time technical support, particularly because they were already paying my boss to do it too. They wanted someone who could work as technical support and teach kids at the same time. Since I didn't have a college degree, I couldn't take on the additional responsibility and they had to hire someone else.

I was resolved not to have this sort of thing happen again. To fix it I had to go back to college. My parents (god bless them) hadn't left me saddled with previous student loan debt, and so I was able to get a student loan to go back to college full time. 

I started at my current job about the same time. At the time I was per-diem. I was the guy who got called if someone called in sick or went out on vacation. I worked the Saturday morning shift no one else wanted.

Eventually I was able to start working full time. I picked up 4 weekday shifts to add in to my Saturday shift. This was great for covering my day-to-day bills, but not so great for going to school full time. I kept going, but with a full-time job AND full-time school I was forced to drop my classes down to 3 a semester.

This turned out to be something of a mistake. The college thought that I was not completing my degree fast enough, and it removed my eligibility for federal financial aid. Unable to afford to go back to school, I took a leave of absence and worked on an appeal.

Then the bills started showing up. I took a year's worth of private loans to stay on my feet in the year that I wasn't working full time. This loan on it's own is around $9,000. In addition I have about $20,000 of federally-backed student loans. 

I feel like they hang over me like the sword of Damocles. If I am not able to get back into college for the Fall semester, my bill will be considerable, well beyond my current ability to pay. If  do go back, I have to take on additional debt to do so.

College in general is looking like less and less of a deal. I have friends who have degrees who cannot find jobs in the fields that they have degrees for. I could change to a less expensive school (I currently am a student at a state run college in NH), but online colleges and private colleges aren't that much less expensive, and their degrees seem to get significantly less attention from prospective employers.

I am hardly the only person with the loan issue either. I know many people who have accrued thousands of dollars in financial aid with the promise of a better job though education. Some of them found those jobs, but have discovered that they don't quite pay enough to make the monthly payment. Some haven't found the job at all, and are making ends meet by doing other work. Some haven't managed to finish college, but find themselves buried in debt all the same.

The ballooning cost of higher education is a problem. It is very nearly impossible to work full time and pay your way through college now. I have a good job, that pays an otherwise-livable hourly wage. Even with my skills however setting aside the money for a full semester of classes is an impossibility. I could take classes at a rate of one per semester, but it would take me years to obtain the education I would otherwise be able to get through in two semesters, and at the rate of over $1000 per class (not including books and other required supplies) it would still require a significant amount of budgeting to even afford that.

I'm not really looking for anyone to blame here, just expressing a little frustration. Since I'm already into this degree for as much as I am it seems like stopping now would be the worst thing I could possibly do. I'll keep going, but sooner or later the bills will come due, and I'm not really sure I'm going to be prepared to meet them.

Caffeine! Reducing the urge to set critical components on fire since 1943

Working on broken computers is not usually fun. This is particularly true when you work on them for a living. People with broken machines usually only find out they're broken when they need them for something particularly urgent, and the more urgent the task or complicated the problem the more likely they are to take their frustration out on the IT guy.

The next time you feel the need to freak out at how long something is going to take to fix, or scream at the IT guy that "I need this back now!" DON'T DO IT. IT workers are like any other service industry worker. The more poorly you treat them the less likely it is your problem will get the level of attention you want it to.

This is not to say that I or any of my brethren will drag our feet at fixing your problem. Some of us might of course, but that isn't really the primary issue is that you're distracting me from doing my actual job.  IT workers have emotions just like every one else. Like you we don't do our best work when we're pissed off.

Here are some other tips for dealing with your local IT guy:

1) Don't call repeatedly for "status updates". This one should be simple. If we're talking to you on the phone, chances are we aren't fixing your problem. If we tell you that we're working on something, we're working on something. Unless it's been an exceptionally long time since you've notified us of the problem you can safely assume we're doing our best to solve your problem

2) If we ask you to do something, do it. We know you think you've already done whatever it is we're asking you to do, but there's a reason we're asking you to do it. You might not have done something in exactly the way it needs to be done. We may have made a change that allows that particular fix to work. Don't argue. Don't say "I already did that". Just do as we ask.

3) Be available. This one is something of a pet peeve of mine. What you called us to fix is YOUR problem. If we need information, we need YOU to be available to give us that information. Please do not assume that we have every piece of information we will ever need to fix the problem the moment you call us. We might need further information from you. We might need you to do something on your system so that we can diagnose it. We understand that you are busy doing other things, but we are not magicians.

4) Lastly, show some gratitude. IT workers are not saints. We are not automatons. We like to feel as though we have made some difference. If your IT guy feels that you appreciate the work that he does, then he will be more likely to work above and beyond his usual methods to fix whatever is wrong. And there will be less stress all around. I'm not asking to be placed on a pedestal, but a little consideration goes a long way.

I actually like most of my users. This makes me feel a bit blessed. I know others who go into work each day and want to bask their head into the wall dealing with some of their users. Following these suggestions can help make everyone’s experience better all around

Also, better choices in the vending machine can’t hurt.

I heard a really good short story today

No soapboxing today. I'm just not in the mood to get on my high horse about something. Instead I wanted to pass along a short story I listened to today.

Instead I want to mention a podcast that I’m a big fan of. PodCastle has been in my RSS feeds for quite some time. Each week it delivers me a different fantasy fiction story. This week it brought me a story that I truly enjoyed, and made me quite emotional.

Today they ran a story by Ken Liu called "The Paper Menagerie" that I absolutely loved. I won't spoil it here, but it's a story about the connections between a man and his parents through the lens of his childhood toys. The story was wondrous, and I enjoyed the imagery.

By the end I was nearly overcome with emotion. The story brought to mind memories of my own mother, who passed away in 2002, and my father, whose company I am happy to say I enjoyed over the weekend. While I never faced any of the cultural issues that the main character does (it isn't much of a spoiler to mention that he is bi-racial), I can understand the main themes of the relationship between parent and child.

I don't have kids of my own. Frankly, I don't suspect I will any time soon. I am some one's son however, and this story did a good job of reminding me of that.

PodCastle is an excellent podcast that you should definitely check out if you like fantasy stories. It has two sister podcasts; Escape Pod for science fiction short stories and Pseudopod for horror. I subscribe to Escape Pod and Podcastle, though since I'm not much of a horror fan I usually skip Pseudopod. I will at some point likely do a full review of each, but for now I would at least definitely recommend this story.

Superhero comics

As some of you have no doubt figured out by now, I'm something of a man-child when it comes to certain things. I still play video games. I still love the summer time, even though I don't get the vacations I used to get as a child. And of course I still read comic books. Most of the comics I read are superhero books.

Comic books are more than superheroes now, of course. One of my favorite comics of all time is Transmetropolitan, which combines a dystopian science fiction future with madcap gonzo journalism. Another is 100 Bullets, a long-running film-noir-style drama made of equal parts cruelty and conspiracy. There are so many good comics out there that have nothing to do with superheroes that to list them would take not only a separate post, but a separate site.

Comics are still dominated by superhero (or "cape") books though, and I still love them for it. This isn't to say I love all of them. Like many comic geeks I've become unhappy lately with the direction that the two largest comic book publishers (the Warner Brothers owned DC and the Disney-owned Marvel) have taken their brands.

I love the idea of the superhero. There's a sense of wonder and ambition inherent with the idea of the superhero, who finds a source of power (be it mechanical, mystical, or through training) and uses it not only for himself but for the good of others. Lately though I see less of what I love about superheroes in the books that contain them.

This isn't a post to complain about a specific event. Both Marvel and DC have had huge, long-ranging misfires and they continue to do so. Rather than complain about the upcoming DC universe reboot, or remember the worst parts of Marvel's Civil War, I want to talk about what I think might be the biggest problem with the way superhero comics these days are made: They're not for kids anymore.

This isn't likely to be a popular opinion among my fellow nerds, and with good reason. People who buy comics have had to put up with the idea that such books were strictly kids stuff for quite some time. This hasn't been true for years. I am not claiming that they should go back to being only marketed to children either. What I am saying however is that they lack mass appeal. They should be for kids, but not ONLY for kids.

I am a big fan of Lewis Lovhaug's "Atop the 4th Wall" video series, where he breaks down the worst excesses of the comic book industry. Some times it's cheap commercialism, as evidenced in the giveaway comics from companies like Nestle or RadioShack. Sometimes it's well-meaning but poorly-handled "special issue" comics, that try to use popular characters like Spiderman or the Fantastic 4 to teach kids a lesson. Sometimes it's just the outright bizarre, like the Lady Gaga comic, or the infamous books starring the Ultimate Warrior.

A lot of times though the comics that he reviews tend to be bad because they try to take existing characters and make them into something that doesn't make sense. Please note that this is my opinion, and not his. Comics like "Cry for Justice" or "Ultimatum" try to take what are mainstream comics and make them "darker" and "more realistic".

Deconstruction is nothing new. It's also not always bad. Comics like "Watchmen" or "The Dark Knight Returns" are rightly considered to be classics. Both of those comics however take place in comic universes that are marketed specifically to the adult customer.

Those of you that do read cape books, think about what you've been reading. Would you hand Countdown or Civil War to an 8 year old? Would you be OK with handing a younger brother or cousin one of these story lines? If you did, would they enjoy it?

I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert on anything. I don't have to be one however to know comics have lost massive numbers of readers over the last 20 years. Part of that may be the rise of other forms of entertainment, like manga or web comics. Part of that may be because comics are expensive enough now that for young readers they are no longer an impulse purchase.

I think part of the reason they're in trouble though is the lack of mass-market appeal. Comics now seem to be chasing an audience that will take them "seriously". I feel that comics have gone so far in trying to distance themselves from the idea that they are only for children that they disdain the idea of being at ALL of children. Given the money and enthusiasm that those younger readers would bring I feel that attitude means a LOT of money is being left on the table.

Superhero books that are designed specifically for young readers do exist. Both marvel and DC have product lines specifically designed for younger readers. DC has comics based on their various animated cartoons, and Marvel has the Marvel Adventures line. Those stories might be fantastic, but in terms of marketing and attention they seem to me to be off on an island by themselves, distanced from the “real” comics.

It makes me wonder how long before their major publishers' parent companies are going to wait before they start enforcing changes to the main continuity. Comic book movies have become far more popular than they pages that their subjects sprang from. Sooner or later though those companies are going to want to have a new property ready to go from their subsidiaries, with as much mass market appeal as possible.

There are wonderful superhero books still out there. Many (if not most) have nothing at all to do with DC or marvel. Invincible, PS 238, and Astro City (all favorites of mine) are all amazing reads, and I think would all have mass appeal if properly handled (though I will say that Invincible gets gory enough from time to time to warrant a parental advisory). If I wanted to get someone interested in superhero books I would start with these.

So, what do you think? Am I off base? Am I full of hot air? Am I missing something? I am open to the idea that I may be wrong, and that my concerns may be all just a matter of perception. Feel free to let me know in the comments.

To alcohol!

I went to visit my father this morning, and he gave me my birthday gift. I had asked him for a wort cooler, so that I can pick home brewing beer back up, but what he gave me might be much, much better. When I drove up he presented me with a bottle of Michter's 10 year single-barrel bourbon. This stuff isn't cheap, and it's a good example of how my father taught me to drink.

Now, I don't mean that in the sense that he sat a beer in front of me and told me to drink. While my father does enjoy an adult beverage from time to time he never made any indications that he expected me to join him. In fact, I didn't start drinking until I was in my mid-20s, and I didn't start drinking beer until a couple of years after that.

What he did teach me though was the value of quality. I don't particularly enjoy being drunk. Having a nice mellow going is a wonderful experience, but being out of control doesn't really appeal to me. Even without a next-morning hangover drinking to excess doesn't really float my boat.

He taught me that if I'm going to drink I might as well enjoy what I'm drinking by always spending a little more to get something he could sit down and really enjoy. I know many people don't really care what they're drinking as long as it gets them to the state that they want to be in. I prefer to pay the extra to get there the right way.

When I get beer, I spend a little extra to get a beer I could enjoy even if it weren't intoxicating. I love bourbon, and I will always pay a little more for something that's a little smoother, or a little more complex. No matter what I'm drinking I drink it as much for the taste as for the intoxication.

This isn't true for everyone I know. I have friends who are just as happy drinking down a Bud Light or a Steel Reserve as they would be drinking a Sam Adams Oktoberfest or a Stone Brewing Company Smoked Porter. I don't look down on them for it. Everyone is entitled to their own tastes.

So whatever your preference this evening, enjoy. If you're like me and you want something a little more uncommon then have a Buffalo Trace bourbon or an Old Rasputin Imperial Stout or a single malt whiskey or whatever you prefer. If you're into it, enjoy a Bud Light, or a Jack Daniels, or a wine cooler. If you don't drink alcohol raise a glass of your preferred beverage, whatever it may be. Here's to the people who made us who we are. May they always get what they deserve.