Day 14 - Naps 1, 2, & 3

Nap 1 - Alarm: 3:50am

Ah... nothing beats a perfect nap. I'm not sure exactly what that bump-without-noise is at 3:42am, but I don't think it affected my nap at all.

Nap 2 - Alarm: 7:20am

Another perfect nap! What away to end this 2-week adaptation period!

Nap 3 - Alarm: 12:50pm

After having lunch with my brother, then dropping seeing him off back to the mainland at the airport, I needed to take a bus over to a car shop to pick up a repaired car for a friend that had just deployed. Luckily it was a 45 min bus ride that should have started at 12:15pm, however buses are always late. 

I was in a comfortable window seat by 12:25, when I realized that if I could quickly fall asleep on that nearly-no-seat-left bus ride from the airport, that I wouldn't even have to change the alarm for Nap 3 and would still wake up within 10 minutes of my ETA.

So I did and it was brilliant. The graph is all over the place with movement and sound (as expected), but as that became the "norm" my body/mind found peace and I merrily drifted off into a comfortable dream about the new Elon Musk idea, the Hyperloop. 

I was a bit stiff after waking, but I totally avoided all symptoms of sleep loss until about 8:00 when I began to feel the slight pressure behind my eyes again.

Day 14 - Post Core

Alarm: 12:00am

Geez, what a bumpy night. At least I don't feel completely horrible; just a little dizziness and eye pressure. I hope that I don't develop further sleep dep. symptoms through out today because of this interrupted core.

For the last week or so, laying down for sleep has meant slipping almost immediately into a dream with some degree of lucidity. Lucid dreams aren't by themselves unusual for me, however when I was a mono-phasic sleeper, they usually occurred in (or I only remembered) the last dream cycle.

I think that it is likely that I am so quick to wake up after early REM cycles during core sleep because, while I'm used to lucid dreams only being in the last REM cycles, I'm now experiencing them in the first REM cycles, therefore subconsciously I think that I must be close to missing my alarm and thus wake up once I drop back up to light sleep.

This effect, I imagine, is probably intensified by my recent adaption to nap sleeping; as I am waking after falling up into light sleep after but a single REM cycle characterized by a lucid dream experience. But why I am actually turning off the SleepBot when I do wake up early? I think that is because my phone's clock is set to 24hr display and in that foggy state, I'm not being quick enough to realize that 2200 isn't 2400.

8:30pm - 9:57pm

9:57pm - 10:06pm

10:06pm - 12:00am

Day 13 - Pre Core

In bed at 8:20pm:

An afternoon filled with web development, concluded with a quick 1.5mi run/jog by the marsh, then another episode of Battlestar Galactica (Yay Adm. Cain is gone! (I hate horrible bosses)) over lime BBQ'd chicken, steamed sweet potatoes, and Arnold Palmers.

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Cheers to a good day!

Day 13 - Post Nap 3

Alarm: 12: 50pm

Perfect Nap! I must be getting the hang of it (and getting lucky with the daytime noise levels). I feel great, have no symptoms, am very refreshed and am still getting lots of meaningful work done for the edX.org class that I'm currently involved in, SaaS 2 (Software as a Service/Engineering Long Lasting Software).

There have been ups and downs, but since nothing too crazy has happened during my adaptation period, I have decided to stop blogging on a per nap basis beginning with Day 15. I do plan to continue regularly tracking myself via the survey, however I haven't yet decided at what frequency I will continue this blog.

Day 13 - Post Nap 2

Alarm: 7:20am

Woot! Perfect nap!

It took a tiny bit longer for me to fall asleep than usual, as expected, but using proactive sleeping techniques like:

• regulated my breathing, 
• ensuring that the room was dark, 
• being completely still 
• in a comfortable sleep position, and 
• letting my mind wander about, 

I was able to fall asleep within several seconds.

Strange occurrence though, for the first time, I woke up with our new puppy curled up in our bed for the first time. She was curled up between my knees as I slept half on my stomach, half on my side with my arms crossed under my face.

She must have been a little ninja in getting up on our captain's style bed, because she can't even see on top of the mattress standing on her hind legs and yet she didn't trigger the SleepBot sensors.

Day 13 - Post Nap 1

Alarm 3:30pm

I slept through my alarm (I don't even remember hearing it sounding off) and we woke up at 6:10pm, just in time to get my wife ready and off to work. Also, there was no record in SleepBot of what transpired during that time frame.

While I do feel refreshed, I have a thick feeling in my head, not unlike before when I was still on monophasic sleeping, those rare times when I would oversleep on the weekends for 10+ hours after a week of not getting enough sleep.

Even though it is less than an hour until Nap 2, I still plan to sleep then because I don't trust the extra sleep enough to rotect me from possible sleep deprivation symptoms.

Day 13 - Post Core

Alarm: 12:30am

As mention in Day 12 - Pre Core, we set our alarms forward by 30 minutes. Judging by the SleepBot, it would appear that finishing SWS, I began moving around in my sleep roughly every 20 minutes... does that mean that I got 4-5 REM cycles in?

When I woke up, I could remember more than one dream (one in which I decided was not very entertaining and consciously stopped it and restarted a new one), saw that I was 30 minutes past regular wake time, and was anxious that I had over slept until I remembered the temporary schedule change.

I also felt "thick-headed" for lack of a better work. For the next 20 minutes, I paced around the house switching on and off light switched in different rooms because I couldn't remember what I was doing, or going to do, or should be doing instead.

After that extended spin-up period, I felt great! and indeed was extra productive all the way up to Nap 1, which I was reluctant to stop for, but knowing that I would only be down for 20 minutes and what the repercussions for delaying a nap can by, deciding that I should go nap was not too difficult of a decision.

Day 12 - Pre Core

In bed by: 9:00pm

Spent the afternoon working in yard and moving our driveway fence line forward 6 feet so that we can open have our front door open all the time allowing the dogs access to the backyard at all times.

We saved time making dinner by reheating left-overs and adding a delicious salad and steamed spinach from our backyard aquaponic garden, so we decided to enjoy a few episodes of Battlestar Galactica, Season 2 episodes 22 and 23, which ended on an intense cliff hanger. 

Arrrggh! We had just enough time to watch another episode so we did, but episode 24 is another "to be continued", they're about to attack the giant Cylon resurrection ship. It took a bit of will power not to hit next!

Were were in bed in time, but by the time we relaxed and were ready to sleep, it was already 9pm so we reset our alarms. 

Day 12 - Post Nap 3

Alarm: 12:50

Decent nap that was just a little snafu. Though SleepBot doesn't show it, I could clearly hear a telephone conversation and laughing drifting in though my bedroom windows, and I a fairly certain that I did not fall asleep immediately as I usually do.

My wife also tells me that the dog was whining loudly outside our window because we put her outside while we slept because we had just fed her and didn't have a chance to walk her before nap time. 

Perhaps those are reasons why I don't remember hearing the alarm and slept right through it? With a total time of 38 minutes, I awoke a bit dizzy and felt sluggish (but not sleepy) for at least the next 30 minutes.

Day 12 - Post Nap 2

Alarm 7:00am

Perfect nap! Good-timing and uninterrupted, I awoke even more refreshed than after a good core sleep.

SleepBot decided to only record for the first minute though, so perhaps I squished the "Wake Up" button with my pillow before my screen had a chance to turn itself off and lock.

Day 12 - Post Nap 1

Alarm: 3:50pm

Bam! That's what I'm talking about! Another perfect nap + exercise = more feel good hours for me. : )

Day 12 - Post Core

Alarm: 12:00am

Despite the bump at 9:30pm (which I don't remember), this was a perfect core sleep and I awoke with practically no symptoms. I laid my phone between my wife and me (which I don't normally do) so there are few extra bumps from her. She just informed me that one at 9:30pm was when her phone crashed to the floor.

Some ice-cold lemon+water and a couple of pieces of chilled cantaloupe later, and I'm very much looking forward to the rest of today. :)

Day 11 - Pre Core

In bed by: 8:15pm

A great ending to an interesting day. 

Feeling sleepy, yet no-longer abnormally so, my wife and I were able to get to bed a bit early after eating a scrumptious meatloaf dinner while finishing up a contraption on which we were collaborating in Minecraft, an auto harvesting wheat/carrot farm.

Lesson Learned:

Perfect naps and/or a recovery schedule can salvage even the worst days, ensuring that you don't have to suffer those nasty sleep-deprivation symptoms that you experience on a fluctuating/interrupted schedule. Oh, and exercise makes a big, positive difference too.

Day 11 - Nap 4 (Recovery)

Alarm: 3:30pm (smart)

By 1:30pm, I no longer felt the symptoms that convinced me to switch to the recovery schedule, so I decided to keep working a bit in the yard with my wife; we are preparing a tree for planting at a neighborhood park tomorrow morning.

At 2:45pm I decided that I should nap again anyway, but instead do so under a smart alarm, one that would monitor when I exited REM. The result was I only slept for 18 minutes, so my wife and I could still make our plans to go swim laps at the neighborhood pool. After swimming, I experienced near-perfect freshness.

Day 11 - Post Nap 3

Alarm: 10:50am

Ahhh... a perfect recovery nap was exactly what the doctor ordered; I'm already feeling so much better. I had just a slight headache when the alarm sounded, but a just little physical activity was enough to assuage the pain. I can't wait until after the next nap, its a big, whopping 1 hour kind!

Day 11 - Post Nap 2

Alarm: 7:20am

My wife and I were in bed 10 minutes early so that she could wind down beofre she was expected to sleep. I tried my best not to, but I dozed off 4 minutes early anyway. I did wake up 8 minutes later to engage my SleepBot and from then I was (thankfully) not interrupted.

Upon waking I again had a headache, pressure on and behind my eyes, a slight dizziness, vague discomfort, my eyelids were difficult to keep open, and the morning light coming in through the windows was only making my head feel worse.

I hasten my return to the living, I stepped outside, drank some cold water, then did 30 minutes of jumping-jacks, sit-ups, and push-ups. While that cured me of most ailments, it only made the head/eye aches worse...

I think that it is time to go to the beach!

Day 11 - Post Nap 1

Alarm: 3:55am

My wife got in bed late, so I pushed the alarm back 10 minutes to ensure that we still got 20 minutes of sleep in, however, she tells me that she didn't fall asleep at all, but myself, I still slipped right down into a lucid dream where we were swimming in the ocean so I convinced everyone to lose their clothes because skinny-dipping is more fun.

It was difficult to get out of bed (and not just because of the good dream), the headache is still here and obvious, my eyes feel tight, and I'm not in the best mood (neither is my wife!). 

My concentration is still faring pretty well though, surprisingly; and in fact, I installed CGMiner on our two Linux _ nVidia machines, our Windows 7 + nVidia machine, and am now working on adapting it to our Windows 7 + AMD machine. If you're wondering, the problem is because CGMiner utilizes the CUDA cores which aren't typically accessible; nVidia makes them available by default but you need to install AMD's APP SDK to get access to theirs.

I checked out http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/overviews/everyman/ to discover a good schedule to recover from that horrible Core sleep this morning. I'm going to try out what they suggest, which is:

Which equates to this on our schedule:

Start	Stop	Duration
20:30:00	0:00:00	3:30:00
0:00:00	3:10:00	3:10:00
3:10:00	3:30:00	0:20:00
3:30:00	6:40:00	3:10:00
6:40:00	7:00:00	0:20:00
7:00:00	10:10:00	3:10:00
10:10:00	10:30:00	0:20:00
10:30:00	13:30:00	3:00:00
13:30:00	14:30:00	1:00:00
14:30:00	20:30:00	6:00:00

*I'm pretty sure that the site was intending those .3s to mean 20 (not 18) minutes, which makes those .2s more like 10 minutes to balance out the rounding error.

Day 11 - Post Core

Alarm: 12:00am

Core sleep did not completely successful and I fear that today's requirement of SWS (slow wave sleep / delta wave sleep) may not have been fulfilled. 

Upon waking, it was extremely difficult keep my heavy eyelids open and when I did, I was punished with a strong sensitivity to any light. That was followed by a medium headache, some pressure behind my eyes, slight dizziness, and a vague discomfort overall. 

I found my self pacing from the living room to the bedroom, waiting for myself to "really wake up", which didn't happen until at least 12:10am (but it sure seemed 10x that long!).Depending on the severity of sleep loss symptoms, I may attempt an extended nap later today to ensure the integrity of my sanity.

According to SleepBot, I was physically active at 9:20, 10:15, and 11:30. My phone had found its was under my pillows, so even though no there does not appear to be much noise, there still could have been sounds coming from outside that caused me to wake up (even higher probability given that it is Friday night).

Day 10 - Pre Core

In bed by: 8:20pm

Great day. Combined two custom ROMs to finally get one working for Kirsten. Also had to manually flash an update to the modem. Sprint Samsung Galaxy S II is not my favorite phone!

Just now feeling sleepy (normal kind) as core sleep time approaches.

Day 10 - Post Nap 3

Alarm: 12:50pm

Huzzah! Perfect Nap! (and I feel great and have no sleep loss symptoms)

Without further ado, I'm going to get back to work :P.