On napping and 24

Useful sleep info

As I've gotten to know more people, I've come to realize that I've been blessed with a pretty good "sleep biology." I fall asleep easily, I'm not overly sensitive to noise, I'm not such a deep sleeper that I miss alarms, and I can sleep most anywhere. I generally avoid naps, however, unless I happen to be in the car or a moving vehicle of some sort (I sometimes snatch a 20 minute nap on the train ride back from work).

According to the MetroNaps website (which supplies special corporate sleeping pods for our tech support people working at odd hours and weekends), there are a few interesting facts and tips with regard to naps and sleeping:

- your body's natural rhythm will dip between 6-8 hrs after waking, which can be counteracted with a 20 minute power nap. For most engineers, this would correspond to around the 2-4 pm timeframe... which I guess is when food coma hits post-lunch
- to avoid grogginess, nap less than 30 minutes, or 1.5-2 hrs to make sure you don't interrupt a sleep cycle
- to avoid jetlag flying east, sleep on the plane, arrive in the morning, eat a substantial healthy breakfast, and stay up all day
- to avoid jetlag flying west, avoid sleep on the plane, arrive in the evening, eat dinner, and go to sleep early

Springtime TV in jeopardy

On a completely different note, the writers' strike in Hollywood has postponed "24" indefinitely and Lost only has scripts for around 8 episodes ready. Will the absence of serialized dramas lead to a ton more reality shows on TV? I guess I'll just stick to the NBA. The Warriors can't lose every game this season. The Celtics look awesome, and the Spurs haven't gotten off to their usual slow start. Side note, not playing fantasy hoops means that I'm not reading box scores daily for the first time in 7-8 years. It's actually kinda freeing.

For the folks who are bracing for 24 withdrawal (although with last season's craptacular plotline, there probably aren't too many), here's an amusingly hilarious spoof from collegehumor.com - "24" set in the year 1994:



The early 90's era references I could spot:
- Kiefer's long hair grunge-style
- pager/pay phone
- huge wireless phone
- dot matrix printer
- lycos
- floppy disks
- AOL/hourly internet
- Nancy Kerrigan
- modem
- dropped internet from the phone pickup
- VHS
- film photography
- Windows 3.1 system clock
- Prodigy
- geocities