November 2005

I found this psych article interesting. Now I know I’m not that wierd. I always have a habit of waking up 5-10 mins before my alarm clock goes off. Usually I hate this, since when I wake up it’s hard for me to go back to sleep, only if it’s for a few more minutes. I guess I won’t be escaping stress soon.

Ever wake up five minutes before your alarm rings? This mysterious phenomenon isn’t just bizarre coincidence. We are all equipped with our own internal alarm clocks and, best of all, they even have snooze buttons.

Jan Born and fellow researchers at the University of Lubeck in Germany have discovered what may be the first biological evidence for the curious ability to wake up at will. Anticipating the time you want to rise seems to trigger the release of hormones normally secreted by the body in times of stress. About an hour before you’ve planned to get out of bed, these secretions increase in preparation for the “stress” of waking.

Stirring Sound of Stress

Other strange sleeping habits of mine is that I never learned to use the “Snooze” function and I have problems taking naps during the day.

When I have time I plan to add more stuff to the navigational menu like RSS feeds, seperate categories for some links, etc…

I also want to add a random banner rotator or just theme switch.

This of course will happen once I decide to take a break from my school work. Yeah, these things are quick to implement, but once I start working on it, I end up wasting more time being unproductive.

So at 12 AM Friday morning my cousins and I ventured to CompUSA. We didn’t expect to see the 200+ people waiting in line of the front door for the midnight opening sale. Instead of being crazy we just waited inside the car for the door to open and hoped that the line would move fast. While sitting in the car, several more cars came into the lot in our section and then suddently after 5 minutes that lot was full. CompUSA is also right next to Best Buy at Braintree, so you could see how far the line stretched. I’m sure there was even some people beginning to wait at BB for the 5 am opening.

So after CompUSA opened there doors, we went in. I think I wasted too much time since I really didn’t memorize what was on sale beforehand and being the fact that I haven’t stepped in the store for awhile I didn’t know exactly where each item was located at. I ended up with an Antec Notebook cooler, 100 blank DVD+Rs, Logitech wireless notebook mouse, and a Netgear USB wireless network adapter. That line for the cash register was long. Luckily one of my cousins also happened to be at the store and was near the front of the line. That was great otherwise, I would have been in the store for another hour. I think my cousin needed my help also since he managed to get 2 200GB hard drives, but the store only allowed one per customer.

I also managed to do something stupid, since I’m usually aware of my surroundings but I was thrown off by the rush of the crowd. Lesson learned.

Other than that I really didn’t purchase anything else, nothing has been that appealing this year. Also, I think my wallet got smaller this time around since I haven’t been going to work as much for the past few weeks due to my busy academic work.

I have to say I really feel relaxed being at home for these few days. It’s nice to be back in solitude. I’ve been able to sleep easily and not worry about too many things at the moment, despite that next week will be some what hectic. Although with this in mind, I haven’t taken care of much work as I had intended to. So I guess tomorrow might be a trip for a few hours to the campus to straighten my mindset.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Some relatives have gathered to my family’s home for dinner. There’s no turkey, but it’s good to catch up with my older cousins realizing how much time has flown by.

I’m thankful for the usual family, friends, and good health for the year. I’m also thankful for the slightly newer perspective that I’ve been able to adopt that’s allowed me to grow more personally.

There’s no wishbone though.

I guess I need to throw in a regular post from time to time.

Most of the time I’ve been kept occupied by all of my school work. Senior design project, VLSI, and microprocessors have me spending a great amount of time in the lab. Kind of scary thinking that this is the last year of school for me after so many years of being in school. At the moment, I don’t plan in jumping into grad school, I want to work for awhile and decide on what direction I want to take. The only problem right now is that I haven’t been as productive as I should in the job hunt.

Aside from the academic work, I’ve been trying to make this senior year more memorable by spending more time with friends and picking up some new learning experiences.

This is going to be a busy week with an exam and lab due. Next week will be Thanksgiving break, I don’t have anything planned for those few days yet.