Posted by Raul on July 30, 2010
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After making a comment in Lori’s Blog post “front porch: Dreams, Laughter and Comic Inspiration” about Tony’s Blog “Trottersville” Lori asked why I sleep so little, so here is the answer:
Some time ago I posted a thought called “Don’t Sleep Before You Die!” where I was talking about saving time by sleeping 6 hours instead of 8 as recommended by the experts. That was my ideal!
Today, and for the past 8 years, I had been sleeping an average of 3 hours a day, 1 at night and 2 in the morning.
What happens is that I have a delivery job at night (I wrote a short fiction tale about that in “Reunion”) so sleep one hour before going to work and two after, so not to waste too much time in the morning just sleeping.
Then work by day either fixing cars, doing several things around the house, spending time writing, blogging, reading posts in other blogs, commenting, trying to learn this computer thing and the writing craft (I want to learn to write well so more people would be interested in reading this blog, not just “Mom and the Poker Club” 
), spending time with my son and wife and so on, so not much time left really.
Sometimes I oversleep and have 2 hours instead of one before going to work and had to rush so not to be too late in order to “preserve the schedule” and not getting behind during the day.
It works fine except for a couple of things: Memory, Vision and Energy, that’s all!
Memory has become crappy, I still cannot find the control panel of my brain so to uncheck the box that say “Automatically delete thoughts when a new one appear”, although I do have problems with memory since I can remember (don’t laugh!) I believe I suffer from CRS (Can’t Remember Shit)
Vision, once very sharp, is also becoming crappy. I still can read a street sign from a block distance but now I need glasses for reading (sigh), otherwise cannot distinguish the words.
Energy is also down; it reminds me of my childhood when being “high” with medicine and no energy to move due to sickness (“Why Alien Ghost”, “Loving Life”) so it takes a while to get energized after waking up in the morning and I’ve notice that, in those rare occasions when I have the time to sleep as much as 4 hours in a row, my focus and memory get better.
Another thing with short sleeping is that I don’t dream (not enough time) It’s been many years without dreams, which is sad because several years ago I read somewhere that we can put our dreams to work.
If we concentrate very hard in a thought when going to sleep and remain in that thought until we fall asleep, with practice and time, we dream related to our thought; it works! I tried that many years ago and after several attempts I was able to “advance” thinking done over a problem; I even dreamt a short tale that as soon as woke up wrote in one stand without stopping and needing no corrections! That was so cool!
So short sleeping is nice to save time and do more things, but too short sleeping is not a good thing (duh). Now it’s about organizing things in order to get organized (see people how it can affect you?!)
But seriously, soon I should be able to get some more sleep and hope to recover some of the memory, maybe vision and definitely energy!
Life is good and the future can always be brighter!
Raul
NOTE: The picture is not me but that’s how I look like when just waking up
Posted by Raul on July 29, 2010
It is surprising when we see love from the outside.
When in love, we see a different world, a different society, things seems to be in the right place; there are smiles and good intentions everywhere.
When in love, falling autumn leaves are poetry and spring flowers are good intentions popping up everywhere.
When in love, noise is music and polluting smoke a reason to laugh while holding hands and running away.
When in love, smile is the face we carry around as our introduction to the people we meet.
When in love, caught by rain is a moment of happiness and problems are jokes to laugh about.
But then…
When love is missing, solitude is the companion and tears are always ready to reflect the feelings inside.
When love is missing, walking through life is like walking in mud and every muscle in the body aches and every movement requires so much of the missing energy.
When love is missing, everything new is another task to complete that waste time and prevent forward movement.
When love is missing, we walk around in a lost society that goes smiling to its own destruction.
Not a physical form or a measurable element, yet so powerful that can make us laugh, wonder, imagine and extract everything good we have inside.
Love is like a drug that keeps us “high” and allows us to feel powerful, invincible, with a winner’s attitude all the time.
No wonder why we all wish to be in that drug…
Raul
Posted by Raul on July 26, 2010
The thing is, I hate when people say “I’m sorry” because I think “why didn’t you anticipate the problem?” For me people who say sorry too easy is people who is used to not thinking of the consequences of their actions and just throw the “sorry” word to get “clean” and move on…easy life!
We can see how adults teach their children to go that way when, instead of teaching them to think before acting, just let them be anyway they want and later tell them to “say sorry”, so the child say sorry and keep going the same way without learning anything from the situation.
Then, when being an adult, the same situation occurs, only the wording can become more complex or have more variations: “Oh I’m terribly sorry” “I’m so sorry” and so on.
It is not just that in those situations it becomes annoying the continuous line of “mistakes and sorry sayings” but it is also how it affects in life. When we don’t learn to think before doing, in small things could be (could be) OK, but the bigger things are the ones to mostly worry about.
-Love relationships that go awry because each one acts without thinking, then the flood of “sorry” that leaves each one with the feeling of not being important for the other
-A 16 years old kid driving really fast without thinking ahead, then crash and burn, and even worst, taking someone else in the process.
-Should I mention drunk driving?
Learning to think ahead is not just about preventing problems but also is about considering those around in the equation so no longer it is all about “me” and “the situation around me” but it is also about learning to respect the others as equals; so teaching to anticipate consequences also teaches respect for the others.
“Not teaching is teaching selfishness”
Then, without learning to think ahead it’s easy to:
-Become selfish and egoist
-Not learning to give love and dedication
-Not being capable of receiving love
-Living confused about what’s really important in life
-Becoming a materialistic being (many times to compensate)
-Risking injury and life, own and others
-Becoming racist and segregationist
And the list can go on and on…
Teaching our children to think before doing or saying something not only is about good manners, have a more fulfilling life and helping them to develop better relationships in their future, but sometimes is also about making sure they will have a future at all.
Raul
Posted by Raul on July 22, 2010
The invention of the wheel against the invention of the tax declaration procedures
Simplicity please! Simplicity is the key for a better life!
Raul
Posted by Raul on July 19, 2010
It is my belief my laptop probably was built before WWII and being in service for the past many, many years, at least I bought it used on eBay, I believe around 2005 and have repaired it at least twice since then, including a new, slightly bigger hard drive and a complete reprogramming in XP Pro.
At first it worked great but then, gradually, it started go slower and slower until coming to a virtual crawl. Now, even if I want to check somebody else’s blog, the ventilation fan goes crazy, heat starts coming out from the vents and it all seems to be part of either a computer menopause process or a virtual heart attack and it scares me for my beloved laptop.
It is a Dell Inspiron 5100 with Pentium 4; 2.4 GHz; 1 GB RAM; 80 GB HD and about 30 pounds net weight!
Not being sure if the problem is the laptop or my internet provider, who gives a limit in bandwidth usage, I wanted to know how much bandwidth I was using so, following my son’s finding I downloaded and installed a free bandwidth meter from the net called: ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter 1.3.1 (101 KB)
http://www.shaplus.com/bandwidth-meter/
As you can see in the picture, it takes a little space in the lower, right hand corner, out of the way and it has proven to be very useful to know the “weight” of every page or site I visit. So far I discovered my blog has an average of 0.6 MB to download when opened and most of the blogs I visit range between 0.4 to 2.5 MB, with one or two going up as much as 6.0-8.5 MB (it all depends on how many pictures and moving stuff the page has). Now I’m checking everything I open to know what’s the “weight” (I know, new toy
One of the recommendations given when creating a blog or website is that it has to be a fast downloader or people will get bored and move somewhere else; this bandwidth meter helps to see if we are going too far in implementing our cyber space or if we still can do some more without making it too “heavy”, specially for people using 56K connections.
Some may say “who would be using 56k these days?” but I know that’s the main available connection in my country (using a phone line) and for those wanting to reach beyond the bigger countries boundaries that should be a point to consider.
Do you know how “heavy” is your blog to download?
Do you keep in mind a limit in size when implementing your blog?
Is it important for you to be able to reach other countries?
Let me know
Raul
