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Reducing Afternoon Fatigue Without Coffee
04/18/2011 - 20:09

 Ever since I quit coffee, I've had some issues with afternoon fatigue. Around 2 I would just feel sleepy. I thought about this a little and concluded that lighting might be the issue. You see my office has standard craporific overhead lighting. Since most programmers have OCD or some other neurosis, they turn it off. I had a crappy desk lamp, but it wasn't very bright. So I splurged and bought a Verilux desk lamp.

 

I'm not going to pretend it's beautiful and it did cause some heckling from officemates, but I've been using it for two weeks and so far my energy levels are much better. Of course going outside would be even better, but it's been kind of crappy outside lately. 

It might help my mood, but this afternoon it failed to counteract the effects of listening to the new Radiohead album, which made me feel emo. 

I also got some nice blackout curtains. I had been using aluminum foil because I was being cheap, but it fell down and made creepy noises in the wind. I noticed that the price for the curtains had dropped on Amazon and I bought these. They are MUCH better than aluminum foil. 

I also noticed that the price for those light-alarm clocks had dropped and I bought the cheapest one, but I noticed it's gone now and I understand why. It's SO much better than my cell phone as an alarm, but my model is truly buggy. 

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We are going to have to rethink things, won't we?
04/16/2011 - 10:43

 When I was a freelancer and I worked from home it wasn't so obvious to me why Americans are so unhealthy. Now it's tottally obvious. Cooking and the housekeeping the accompanies it takes time and when every adult member of the household works 40 hours a week, that becomes very difficult. It's even worse because most people don't particularly enjoy their jobs and would like to come home and do something they enjoy. Wouldn't it be great if everyone loved cooking? But it just doesn't work that way. 

I don't have children and I struggle to cook every day. What's the point of all the productivity gains we've made if we all have to work the same amount of hours? When I first started working I once tallied up the percentage of my life that would be spent at work or commuting at the current rate and it was too depressing a calculation to repeat. 

Housekeeping is very difficult when there is no one keeping house, when it's an afterthought in an exhausting day. Me? I'd love to work fewer hours and while I'd have to cut back on some things, I feel my quality of life would be higher. But there aren't many jobs available for 15 or even 30 hours a week and almost none provide any kind of benefits. 

Perhaps we should just give up and acknowledge that the price of the American workforce is that few people have time to cook healthy meals. Then we need to focus on having better restaurants. Right now if you are eating out a lot, you are probably getting tons of vegetable oil. Even Thomas Keller, Michelin-Starred Chef, uses canola oil at his enourmously expensive restaurants. 

Workplaces could also pick up some slack, but in an era of budget cuts, few will. You are lucky if your workplace has a microwave and even luckier if it has a fridge. I know a few highly-skilled technology workers at very succesfull companies where they have excellent food, but that's an exception. 

The idea that career is a form of fulfillment is a fantasy for all but a lucky few. In reality, this idea is just a way to make people feel better about having to give their lives away for trivial things. By the time they retire, their health is so battered that they spend the remaining years shoveling pills into their mouths in a nursing home. It's time to put work back in its place- it's a way to make a living for most of us and a lot of us would be willing to trade off some income for more time. More time to acquire healthy food, cook it, keep house, spend time with our own children, enjoy life...

This article in the NYtimes just bolsters the fact that our lifestyles are untenable: sitting is deadly. Um, that's a problem since most jobs involve sitting. i'm not sure that standing in one place at a standing desk is really that much better, though it's a start. 

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Unemployment Vs. College, Pizza Vs. Food
07/26/2010 - 07:59

The Becker-Posner Blog asks whether unemployment compensation should be extended:

However, the actual large extension poses a major risk of creating an unemployment culture where men and women remain “ unemployed” for years. Once the period of unemployment becomes long enough, people begin to get the habits from being unemployed for a long time: they sleep late, develop various leisure interests, and at the same time their work skills depreciate from not using them for an extended period.

Ummm, when I read that I couldn't help but substitute:

However, the actual large extension poses a major risk of creating an college culture where men and women remain “in college” for years. Once the period of college becomes long enough, people begin to get the habits from being in college for a long time: they sleep late, develop various leisure interests, and at the same time their work skills depreciate from not using them for an extended period.

My parents would be delighted if I went to grad school, which is tempting, but I have many older friends who did long stints in grad school and come out with jobs paying the same as mine, bad work habits (which I also suffered from thanks to college), and mounds of debt. The only thing drawing me in is the actual desire to learn more about subjects I'm interested in, but I've seen too many people get burned by that. They get to study something they like, but under professors who aren't any good. What would make me go to grad school? The chance to study under a specific expert perhaps. That's how it was in the days of people like Plato. You didn't go to school just to go there (or in the case of some friends, to attempt to ride out the recession), but to follow a great scholar or two.

I'm feeling much better, but this weekend I was at DrupalCamp NYC, which is a conference for the web platform I develop on. It powers this site, though I definitely have neglected other features besides the blog. I presented a couple of sessions- user interface, LAMP/MAMP stack, and Drupal for small business/education/non-profits. But the food was a big challenge. I managed to get gluten-free options this time, but the option was gluten-free pasta with tomato sauce— not exactly a source of calories or nutrition in general, though definitely more nutritious than the conventional offerings of cheese pizza and bagels, though there was some fruit provided. Next year I'm going to push for either not doing food at all or doing food that isn't made of refined flour. The problem is that people want to spend as little as possible...when are people going to learn that cheap food mostly = bad food? Paleo, the idea that humans should eat human food, is very popular in the tech community, but this reminds me that it's still a small movement. I ate the gluten free pasta, bananas, and coffee... and ended the weekend bloated and fatigued.

What would a better option consist of? I think a salad bar with loads of greens, good calorie-rich dressings, nuts, fruits, and meats would be an awesome option that would please everyone from vegans to celiacs.

P.S. Another instance of government crushing the small farm movement- this time not raw milk, but a home-slaughtered pig. The government is scared because they are realizing that the jigs up- people are realizing that government inspected and approved does not equal safe and that individuals can often do a better job.

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