Balls Are Cool.

I missed posting yesterday, mainly because there was nothing to post. I was a lot more tired than day 1. That could be the apnea, or the fact that our 6-month-old baby got up three times during the night.

Today, though, about 4pm, I got a NASTY headache. By 4:30pm it had spread to the back of my neck. I bailed from work about 5pm because I knew it was turning into a migraine, and I wanted to get home before it got any worse.

800mg of Ibuprofen kicked it’s ass, though. By 7pm I was watching game 7 of the NBA Finals.

By the way, I hate the Lakers.

Tags: Random, Sports by Balls!
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Wow, it’s been two years since I posted. Like anyone is reading this! LOL

I have some pretty awesome sleep problems. I’ve posted about them before. I’m overweight and have sleep apnea. Despite being on a CPAP for something like 6 years now, I’m still pretty tired almost every morning.

And, like most people, I’ve been using caffeine to counter my morning sleepiness.

Only, over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed that I’ve been consuming a LOT more than just a “morning pick-me-up.” I’d have 20-32 ounces in the morning… then at least 20 ounces at lunch… and then another drink or two at 3 in the afternoon.

So, yesterday, I decided I was going to kick it cold turkey. I’m about 13 hours in — haven’t had a drop since yesterday at 3pm — and no ill effects yet.

Guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings!

Tags: Random by Balls!
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I have this wonderful condition called sleep apnea. Most people know what it is. It’s my own damn fault, really — I’m too fat, so my airway closes off while I sleep. This prevents my body from getting into REM sleep at all, meaning I wake up as refreshed as a wino after a night of drinking followed by a nap in the park.

Several years ago, when I was diagnosed, I got to spend a couple of lovely nights in IHC’s sleep center. The first night, they hooked me up to various monitoring apparatus which checked my brain activity, breathing, and blood oxygen levels. I felt like a freaking science experiment, and I have no idea how they expected to get a good reading on any of my stats. I mean, I wasn’t going to sleep very well when wired up, especially when I felt like if I moved, I would somehow screw up the readings.

About a month later, when I went back for the second test, they fitted me for a CPAP. During the night, they play with various pressure settings on the device to see which one brings my blood oxygen up to decent levels, while at the same time still allowing me to sleep. It was the best night of sleep I’d had in ages.

Unfortunately, my experiences in the sleep lab did not carry over to in-home use. I still wake up feeling like total crap. I’ve been to a pulmonologist, who told me “Lose weight, there isn’t anything else we can do for you.”

If I don’t get eight hours of sleep in a night, it exacerbates the sleep issue even more. And let me tell you — getting eight hours of sleep in a night is far from the norm around here. We’ve got three kids under five, and anyone with kids knows how fun it is trying to get them to sleep through the night. Also, anyone who is a sysadmin can attest to the fact that sometimes, shit just breaks at the worst possible time (as was the case tonight, hence the reason I’m awake).

I’ve been attached to this damn machine now for almost four years. Like I said, I hold no illusions as to WHY I have this condition — it’s my own fault. I’ve been going to the gym now for almost 2 months — woo hoo! I’ve noticed I’m slimming down a bit, which motivates me even more. For the first time in those four years, I can actually see a light at the end of the funnel. I will get healthy and get rid of this thing for good.

Tags: Random by Balls!
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My wife and I just got done watching a National Geographic special about 9/11. They focused on speaking with the people that were actually there, and in a lot of cases talked to the emergeny operators and survivors.

I was surprised how emotional the whole thing made me. A lot has changed in my life since that day, most especially the fact that I now have a wife and kids. I think it hit closer to home as they talked about speaking with people in their last moments of life, and how most of them just wanted their families and loved ones to know they were OK.

Another  emotion that erupted from within, which somewhat surprised me, was anger. That there were people in this world capable of inflicting that kind of damage on an entire society, merely because we believe differently then they do.

This is not anger with Muslims, Arabs, or any particular race or culture. This is the same anger I feel when I read about the man in Utah County who shot his wife, Kristy Ragsdale, as she was getting out of the car to go to church Sunday. Or when I read about Verne Jenkins, who was shot and killed after chasing a would-be thief out of a convenience store for stealing, of all things, a pack of gum.

It leads me to ask the question: What the HELL is wrong with these people?

Sometimes, I think people like this should be taken somewhere and executed. Painfully. Or tortured, or something far worse. Think of the pain and suffering these people and countless others have evoked on the friends and family these people have left behind.

And on the flipside of that intense hate, I wonder what circumstances could possibly have led up to these tragic events. What types of environments could these people have lived in to cause them to feel that these actions would somehow grant them a paradisiacal afterlife with God? Or, that shooting this person was the only way out of their current situation? What drives a person to kill?

In some ways, it’s why I fervently hope there is a God with the power to dish out punishments worthy of such offenses.

Unfortunately, all I can do is hope.

Tags: Random, Religion, Stupidity by Balls!
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Seems like blogs are full of “here’s what I’m changing for my new year’s resolution.” Man, that’s so cliche.

So I’m gonna do the same thing.

Mostly it’s about health for me. I’m overweight, and I have sleep apnea. There’s a little cause and effect going on there. So I got a gym membership, and I’m giving up all forms of soda (and anything else that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or aspartame in it).

I tell ya what, I’m rockin’ it right now. I didn’t think I’d make it this far.

Tags: Random by Balls!
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I took the fam to Burger King for lunch today. As I was eating, I noticed that my “medium” cup looked very much like the cups we called Large cups when I worked at McD’s 15 years ago. It was a 32-ounce beast, so small is now 20 ounces, medium is 32, and large is a whopping 44. Jesus.

After lunch, we headed over to Shopko to return some baby clothes my wife bought for the little one. Turns out whichever sweatshop  made them had forgotten to put buttons on the sleeves (whoops). While we were there, I perused their abundant clearance section, and realized they had a LOT of XXL and XXXL sized clothes on the rack (which is probably evidence that America is, indeed, getting fatter, but that’s a subject for another day).

I had this wild thought: What if clothing companies started doing the same thing fast food companies have done with drink sizes?

Imagine how much better we’d feel about ourselves, if an XXL was suddenly the “large” size. God, I’d be downright skinny in my medium (now XL) tee shirts and sweaters.

I should patent that. Too bad you can’t do that online with a credit card, eh?

Tags: Random by Balls!
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Yeah, I registered a new domain name. And started a new blog.

Why?

Because I wanted to. And with a name like “Balls Are Cool,” how the hell could I go wrong?

This is going to be the new playground for my weird thoughts and ideas. I’m going to try and write here every day. And I’m not going to tell anyone about it, we’ll see if anyone finds it.

Later then…

Tags: Random by Balls!
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