No, nothing like that really. Sure, my body was running on serotonin after a while so I was probably unduly relaxed and positive, but nothing like hallucinations or anything. When I found that that the no-sleep record was only 3 days longer than I had gone, I was a bit surprised, since it hadn’t really seemed that hard so far, but I am sure that I would have experienced something more serious before long.
No. I had nothing much going on for a while and just randomly decided to see what it would be like. Yes, it was ‘unusual’, but ‘unusual’ has been quite common for me over the years one way or another.
It was some time after this that I discovered what the record for not sleeping was at the time (around 10 days as I recall). It is probably just as well that I did not know that at the time, or I would have tried to beat it - not that I was being supervised or anything, so it wouldn’t have counted, but…
When I was around 16 or so I decided not to sleep or eat for a week, which I did - so it would be that.
I was fine, overall, but did get some leg cramps when I cycled 12 miles on the last day. I had no great desire to eat at the end - that had faded over the week, really, but it came back pretty soon once I did actually get something down.
Of course, it is a very different thing if you decide not to eat, and have no particular stresses or anything going on to being deprived of food.
In real life meeting most of the value is in the informal side chats that you have just before or just after, in my experience. Unfortunately that basically doesn’t happen in virtual meetings, so I join dead on time, or a minute or two in for larger ones.
We don’t do Christmas, but had friends over for solstice pizzas. My wife announced a ‘no politics’ rule at the outset - not because of likely arguments, but just because it can get very repetitive and depressing.
It was a cosy and enjoyable evening after that - as they usually are.
Back a long way when I was living with my family we didn’t talk about politics anyway: partly since it was widely understood that one didn’t, but mostly since none of them were consciously political anyway. Christmas meals were generally free of arguments in general. The only point of contention was the mysterious presents that appeared for the children that actually came from dad’s side of the family - with whom he had long-since fallen out and dropped all contact - and that consequently had to be disguised or kept under the radar one way or another. That didn’t always work.
I have no great desire to be remembered. It is neither here nor there from my point of view. As to how people are likely to remember me, ‘quiet’ and ‘intelligent’ are two words that crop up a lot from people who I interact with casually or occasionally. Those who know be better would probably focus on my environmental and conservation work etc.
Related to that, due to the role that I played in stopping an area being sold for development and instead becoming designated as a nature reserve on one occasion, there is a meadow that is casually called after me by some people that I worked with. I suppose that I would be happy to be remembered as a meadow.
I assume that the issue is doe to hard water from the borehole - and so limescale buildup, which can quickly kill heating elements.
I look after a few systems with this issue, and have installed water softeners to deal with it. There is some info here.
It gave me a starting point for a terms of reference document for a Green Champions group that I set up at work. That is the only beneficial thing that I can recall.
I have tried to find other uses, but so far nothing else has actually proven up to scratch. I expect that I could have spent more time composing and tweaking prompts and proofreading the output, but it takes as long as writing the damned documents myself.
From Nov 24th, we progressively decorate the house, one item per day, throughout Brumalia - the old Roman/Byzantine winter festival - in preparation for Saturnalia.
Otherwise, we’ll have a pair of candles going for the eight sabbats themselves, regardless of anything else that we do for them, but I don’t think that candles alone really count as decorations.
Improve education for girls worldwide. A very strong link has been established by numerous studies.
Leaving aside points about driving licence numbers being unique or whatever, it would be the silver pentagram that I made back in the '90s and have worn (or occasionally carry in my wallet etc, when the cord breaks) ever since.
Facilities manager for a wildlife and heritage charity. I lead a small team looking after health & safety, compliance and building maintenance and repairs.
Ninety percent of my time is spent at the keyboard, but since I am peripatetic and move around the properties that I cover, I have a different, and usually beautiful, view out of the window each day of the week. When I am not sat behind a desk, I will be crawling through an attic or have my head down a sewer or something.
My time is spent arranging contractors for routine servicing or repair projects, reviewing fire risk assessments and dealing with outstanding actions, writing client briefs for renewable energy projects, chasing people to do workplace inspections, advising on risk assessments, updating our compliance tracker, arranging asbestos surveys, ensuring that everyone who needs training has it up to date, proving to utility companies that their meters are wildly inaccurate and need to be replaced, working out why the biomass boiler/sewage treatment plant/water heater/automatic gate/car park machine/phone system/greywater pump/security alarm/whatever isn’t working and getting it fixed and so on.
It’s my turn to cook tonight. I’m doing a shakshuka.
I think that the closest that I had at school was the library. Even decades later I am still happy when surrounded by books.
Otherwise, somewhere green: walking in woodland or sitting by a stream always improves things.
I’ve had the same number for 24 years now. I have only ever had a handful of spam calls in total over that time.
I probably get one a month or so on my work number.
Basically all of them.
A quick skim shows me that the only people who have called me this so far this year are:
I expect that this would be much the same for last year too.
I have no reason not to speak to any of these.
My first computer was a ZX81 - in 1982 - which, with my brother, I built from a kit and was astonished when it actually worked. We eventually added the 16k ram pack too: how could anyone possibly use all that?!
First phone. I think it was a Nokia 5110 or similar in 2000.
Fairly standard (for the UK, in the '70s): black trousers, blue or white shirt, dark blue blazer, school tie etc.
BUT, the blazer had the school emblem on, which was derived from the poultry trade that had been a major feature of the town’s prosperity at one time: we all had a large un-ironic turkey embroidered on our chests.
Biggest one for me was swapping from setting the alarm as late as possible and then rushing to get out of the house, to setting it an hour earlier and using that to read, do a little qi gong and have a leisurely breakfast.
I had the usual lessons at primary school, but at the end of those myself and one other in the class still couldn’t swim. In the half century since then I have never found the need or the desire to try again.