I am very tired this morning.

Custom Box Service has an alarm system which includes motion detectors. For whatever reason, at least once a month these motion detectors are activated during the middle of the night and I have to get out of bed to drive out to the shop and turn the alarm off. Last night was one of those nights, and my REM sleep was disrupted.

This used to make me nervous, but I've become inured to it: The phone call comes some time between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. — I hop out of bed and tell Kris that I hope that nobody has died. Nobody has. It's the alarm monitoring service informing me that a motion detector has gone off. "Would you like us to dispatch the police?" No, I would not like them to dispatch the police. I pull on whatever clothes happen to be handy (usually shorts and a t-shirt) and step into my Birkenstocks (without strapping them) and groggily drive the six miles out to the shop. I cautiously pull into the driveway, attempting to detect signs of anything unusual (there never are any), and then creep up to the back door and into the office.

It used to be that Yertl, the shop-cat, was the biggest culprit. She'd accidentally get shut in the office over night, and when she awoke from her catnap, she'd set off the alarm. Lately, though, I'm not sure what is causing the alarms. Last night's was caused by a junk fax (LEARN THE NEWEST, MOST EFFECTIVE MARKETING, ADVERTISING, & SALES STRATEGIES!), which pisses me off.

After deactivating the alarm, I drive home. Despite the fact that everything was okay, I'm never able to get to sleep. I think that some small amount of adrenalin must be released into my blood stream by these false alarms, and that prevents me from obtaining a good night's sleep after them. (Of course, those that occur at 5 a.m. are even worse. I generally don't come home, but just stay at the office, after an early morning alarm.)

So, I'm tired.

I've been hoarding miscellaneous links, but haven't found time to post them. I don't have them all with me, but I'll post as many as I can find:

• I hope this isn't a repeat. I love this story of how computer games have an impact on professional athletes.
• Bo pointed me to adcritic.com, a site where you can view various commercials. Why would you want to do that? Because some of them are hilarious (and you don't get to see them on TV). "You wanna buy my cookies?" Heh.
• Blizzard is releasing animations from the upcoming Warcraft III. Looking good!
• Dane pointed the way to a cool geek toy.

Things I need to get done include: write to Nicole Lindroos (an old friend that contacted me via e-mail, but whose address I don't have with me at work -- I always forget to write her when I get home and it's going on a month since she wrote to me!), go up to OGI to help Robert with debugging Cormix, instruct Wilcox Arredondo on the use of their CD-burner, mow the lawns (should get done tonight), finish pressure-washing the sidewalks, reread the book group books for this month, and sleep.

I'm tired.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2003 — Medical Update   In which I provide photographs of my knee surgery, and of my rehabilitation, and I describe the status of my recovery.