For as long as I can remember, I've slept on my stomach. Occassionaly I'll sleep on my side, but never on my back.
It doesn't seem too odd, except that the reason I don't sleep on my back is that it always seems like I would have a nightmare whenever I would sleep on my back. Even today, if I have a nightmare, I would wake up and be lying on my back.
Now there's something that to the untrained just seems wierd. What possible corrolation could there be between sleeping on my back and nightmares? Why no nightmares when on my stomach or side?
Since we're adopting, we've taken to watching Adoption Stories on Discovery Health Channel. So now the channel is in the "there's nothing on" rotation. The other night, we discovered Mystery Diagnosis. It's essentially true House stories told by the patients and docs.
Last night, on the episode "Lethal Diet", the final story was about a preacher who had heart racing problems. He also had serious headaches and severe nightmares. After going round and round with meds, a parishoner mentioned to him that he should get a sleep test because of the nightmares.
So he goes into a sleep test and they find out that after about 75 minutes, his airways are blocked and for about 30-60 seconds he can't breathe. His oxygen drops and the brain sends a signal to the heart to make it pump harder and push oxygen around. His oxygen level drops 20% which can easily explain headaches and nightmares. They fixed the problem by hooking up an air pump and mask to prevent the sleep apnea from occuring.
After seeing this episode I freaked. Although I had never had headaches, I had experienced the heart pounding. I just thought it was due to the nightmare that made the heart pound. It might just be that I couldn't get enough oxygen into my body. It seems though, that something about sleeping on my back is causing the condition, because I haven't had a nightmare in months and I haven't woken up on my back in months. I'm actually getting very good rest as well, I don't feel excessively tired or have issues with sleep.
So for now, it seems like things are at least OK, since I have a preventative solution of continuing to sleep on my stomach. But on the next yearly checkup, I'm definately going to look into this, or at least see how my insurance will handle it and take steps from there.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Housewives a Comedy?
So I'm watching LOST last night, and I notice during the promo for Desparate Housewives that it won Best Comedy at some award show.
Who made that show a comedy? Sure it gets a chuckle here or there, but there are shows that pass themselves off as dramas or mysteries that are miles funnier than that show. Heck that Grey's Anatomy show is funnier, and I don't think it's calling itself a comedy.
I mean, if House was in the same contest (and I'm guessing it wasn't), it wouldn't even be a remotely close contest. House is hysterical, and it's trying to be a drama first, comedy second.
Who made that show a comedy? Sure it gets a chuckle here or there, but there are shows that pass themselves off as dramas or mysteries that are miles funnier than that show. Heck that Grey's Anatomy show is funnier, and I don't think it's calling itself a comedy.
I mean, if House was in the same contest (and I'm guessing it wasn't), it wouldn't even be a remotely close contest. House is hysterical, and it's trying to be a drama first, comedy second.
I don't need CRUD, just Read
So I was thinking again about Java Web Frameworks and realized my problem.
Most Frameworks ship or are "tested" using a CRUD example. Create, Read, Update, Delete.
What happens if all you care about is Read. I'm not going to Create, Update or Delete via this interface, since they all occur via a backend or use a separate administative web application.
All I want to do is Read and present as quickly as possible with an extremely flexible application. So I guess my real question is, what framework provides the best flexibility in quickly implementing Read functionality? I don't want or need the overhead provided by frameworks that need to support the other three parts of a full app.
There are fine examples of this on the web. Most news sites are read only. Perhaps they do some "preferences" settings, but that's nothing substantial. They use something else to do the publishing. Blogger is an example.
The main difference is I need very flexible dynamic JSPs and object references. Perhaps implementing a facade will be the main work that I have to do, but I'd like to find the best framework to help me here. Something like JSF/Shale seems like too much.
Most Frameworks ship or are "tested" using a CRUD example. Create, Read, Update, Delete.
What happens if all you care about is Read. I'm not going to Create, Update or Delete via this interface, since they all occur via a backend or use a separate administative web application.
All I want to do is Read and present as quickly as possible with an extremely flexible application. So I guess my real question is, what framework provides the best flexibility in quickly implementing Read functionality? I don't want or need the overhead provided by frameworks that need to support the other three parts of a full app.
There are fine examples of this on the web. Most news sites are read only. Perhaps they do some "preferences" settings, but that's nothing substantial. They use something else to do the publishing. Blogger is an example.
The main difference is I need very flexible dynamic JSPs and object references. Perhaps implementing a facade will be the main work that I have to do, but I'd like to find the best framework to help me here. Something like JSF/Shale seems like too much.
Monday, January 16, 2006
G4TV's New PrimeTime Lineup...GeekTastic!
What a lineup!
Two hours of Star Trek The Next Generation, followed by two episodes of "The Man Show".
What a combo! Brillant!
Two hours of Star Trek The Next Generation, followed by two episodes of "The Man Show".
What a combo! Brillant!
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Thinking About Java Web Frameworks
So I've been thinking a lot about ways to solve a problem I'm having at work. Simplifying JSP templates without having to build backing bean/classes for every page.
From what I can tell, and my knowledge is very limited due to time constraints, most of the frameworks that do a good job of simplifying front end development require the developer to build some sort of class that backs that page. As an example, it appears that Tapestry, not to pick on them, requires you to have mypage.html Mypage.class and and a mypage.page config file to map bindings.
My requirements are a bit different I suppose than most. I have an API that is used to grab various values out of a hidden XML like structure. The structure is basically Containers and Values. A Container can hold containers to better struture the data.
So as an example:
Container - Name=Address
Container - Name=Line Count=0
Value - Name=Text [Joe Blo] - Value
Container - Name=Line Count=1
Value - Name=Text [ ] - Value
Value - Name=Text [ ] - Value
- Container
Apoligies for the format, Blogger's not XML friendly, and I'm feeling lazy.
So I've got a loosely defined object model, where what the object is and what it contains are defined by the Name of the object. The model is not static depending upon what customer the data arrives from.
So today, we use JSP with pure Java contstucts to pull the values out. I can do a getContainer(name) and do a getContainer(name).getContainer(name).getValue(name). I can do a getContainerCount(name) and use the value to create a for loop and write out each Address line.
What I'm wanting to do is remove this. It seems like Tapestry and WebWork could do this through OGNL. But If I have to author a new class for each of these guys, then my development lifecycle goes up, deployment becomes more difficult (don't get me started...it shouldn't be, but it is), and everything becomes more complex.
However, if it would be possible to say in Tapestry, bind multiple HTML templates to a backing page, and make the mypage.page config files be loaded dynamically so I don't have to recycle the server, hence making all of the guys on my team have to be up at the wee hours of the morning to make it happen....then maybe Tapestry would work.
Is there anything out there that allows a loose coupling between pages and backing objects instead of having it be very strict?
From what I can tell, and my knowledge is very limited due to time constraints, most of the frameworks that do a good job of simplifying front end development require the developer to build some sort of class that backs that page. As an example, it appears that Tapestry, not to pick on them, requires you to have mypage.html Mypage.class and and a mypage.page config file to map bindings.
My requirements are a bit different I suppose than most. I have an API that is used to grab various values out of a hidden XML like structure. The structure is basically Containers and Values. A Container can hold containers to better struture the data.
So as an example:
Container - Name=Line Count=0
- Container
Apoligies for the format, Blogger's not XML friendly, and I'm feeling lazy.
So I've got a loosely defined object model, where what the object is and what it contains are defined by the Name of the object. The model is not static depending upon what customer the data arrives from.
So today, we use JSP with pure Java contstucts to pull the values out. I can do a getContainer(name) and do a getContainer(name).getContainer(name).getValue(name). I can do a getContainerCount(name) and use the value to create a for loop and write out each Address line.
What I'm wanting to do is remove this. It seems like Tapestry and WebWork could do this through OGNL. But If I have to author a new class for each of these guys, then my development lifecycle goes up, deployment becomes more difficult (don't get me started...it shouldn't be, but it is), and everything becomes more complex.
However, if it would be possible to say in Tapestry, bind multiple HTML templates to a backing page, and make the mypage.page config files be loaded dynamically so I don't have to recycle the server, hence making all of the guys on my team have to be up at the wee hours of the morning to make it happen....then maybe Tapestry would work.
Is there anything out there that allows a loose coupling between pages and backing objects instead of having it be very strict?
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
House Plot Hole
So I'm watching what was by far one of the most interesting House episodes in a long time today and it stuck me that although the medical plot was excellent, the whole travel plot made about zero sense.
The show is set in Princeton, NJ, a few minutes from Trenton. Growing up about 30 minutes south of Trenton, I know it's about a 45-60 minute ride to the Philly airport, and probably about the same to Newark.
So tell me, why on earth would you FLY to Baltimore?
Baltimore's probably a 2 1/2, 3 hour drive from Princeton. So why would you drive an hour to the airport, only to deal with the travel headaches of the airports? If anything you take the train. It would be like flying from Columbus to Detroit or Pittsburgh or Indy. It is asinine.
Most people around here debate it when it hits about 5-6 hours. Chicago for example. If the flights weren't so inexpensive, most people would drive it because the time benefit isn't there from the flight.
They should have made him fly out to Boston or Atlanta. Someplace realistic in terms of wanting to fly.
The show is set in Princeton, NJ, a few minutes from Trenton. Growing up about 30 minutes south of Trenton, I know it's about a 45-60 minute ride to the Philly airport, and probably about the same to Newark.
So tell me, why on earth would you FLY to Baltimore?
Baltimore's probably a 2 1/2, 3 hour drive from Princeton. So why would you drive an hour to the airport, only to deal with the travel headaches of the airports? If anything you take the train. It would be like flying from Columbus to Detroit or Pittsburgh or Indy. It is asinine.
Most people around here debate it when it hits about 5-6 hours. Chicago for example. If the flights weren't so inexpensive, most people would drive it because the time benefit isn't there from the flight.
They should have made him fly out to Boston or Atlanta. Someplace realistic in terms of wanting to fly.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Cool CPU with Cooking Oil
Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil | Tom's Hardware
Leave it too a bunch of German Geeks to use cooking oil as a coolant for a computer.
Extremely Geeky. Read the whole thing
Leave it too a bunch of German Geeks to use cooking oil as a coolant for a computer.
Extremely Geeky. Read the whole thing
Alito Is a Ska Fan
BREITBART.COM - NOTEBOOK: Alito Is a Springsteen Fan
Yeah yeah, it says Springsteen fan. However the truest mark of a man is the ability to appreciate truly creative music.
Any guy who attends a ska festival is OK in my book. You meet a lot of interesting people at a ska show. Much more interesting than your standard crap...or your formerly good band that "sold out" or "made it big".
Regardless, someone send the man some late 90s pop ska as a good luck for his confirmation hearing.
Yeah yeah, it says Springsteen fan. However the truest mark of a man is the ability to appreciate truly creative music.
Any guy who attends a ska festival is OK in my book. You meet a lot of interesting people at a ska show. Much more interesting than your standard crap...or your formerly good band that "sold out" or "made it big".
Regardless, someone send the man some late 90s pop ska as a good luck for his confirmation hearing.
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