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Megan and I got our 20 week sonogram. It’s going to be a girl!

Yes, the title of this post is “Why I Switched from Coffee to Caffeine Pills”. If you are like most people, you are sizing up what flavor of crazy I am. Hear me out.

When I need a burst of concentration or energy for a few hours or weeks, I use caffeine pills instead of drinking coffee.  I’ve found the pills are far more convenient and reliable, and much less expensive. They’ve worked very well for me for the last 2+ years. I can carry them anywhere and use them anytime without relying on the whims of some freshly tattooed barista for my fix.  I can control the dosage far more accurately, allowing me to have more energy when I need it and the ability to taper off the dose to get off the sauce without much fuss.

My story:

In the spring of 2012 I was taking Chemistry and Anatomy, two heavy-duty classes. Chemistry started at 9am bright and early! To get my pep and focus going I brewed and drank a cup of coffee every morning.  One fine morning on the way to a big test I realized that I forgot to drink my morning brew. As I walked to class, it was easy to  feel the difference in my body: I needed some coffee to function for the test!

I knew that without the pick-me-up, I  wouldn’t be my best so I walked into a convenience store on the way and grabbed a cup a’ Joe.  I drank my coffee, rocked the test and went about my day. But before the test was even finished, I realized that something had gone terribly terribly wrong. The convenience store coffee had way more caffeine than my home brew! At home, I had a French Press with a mild Trader Joe’s brew that put a little zip into my day.  But this convenience store cup was rocket fuel in disguise!

I  survived of course. But I felt like crap all day. First I was too high and jittery, I was buzzing so hard that I couldn’t think straight. By the afternoon I burned out and felt low. It dawned on me that  it was a bad plan to rely so heavily on having the right amount of coffee every day in order to have a good day. The next time I travel, how the heck am I supposed to get the right coffee fix from some unknown barista? Maybe they brew it strong, maybe it’s rocket fuel. This is a plan for disaster!

What I needed was control over the dosage! I went down to Walgreens and picked up a bottle of Walgreens Maximum Strength AWAKE  (yes, in big, red, all caps italics!).

I divided the pills into halves and then halves again.  Now when I needed a boost in the morning, I’d chew on 1/4 of a pill, 50 mg. exactly! And in 20 minutes I would feel it warming my blood. But better still, the pills are rather bitter.  You’d think that there isn’t any positive side to that but let me explain: every time I chew on my wonderful bitter pill I know I’m going to get a rush in a few minutes. After a few weeks of that, I would start to feel better almost immediately after tasting my beloved drug. I know it’s a placebo but it works anyway!

How well does it work for me? In brief: very well!

How much does it cost?  The value is staggering. For the cost of 1 Venti Caramel Macchiato I get about two months of pills! No fat, no waiting in line, and it’s always as close as my backpack!

Downsides:
Popping caffeine pills is not without a downside. It’s easy to become addicted. But heck, most of our society is already addicted to caffeine, I’m just grabbing this horse by the reins. We all know the symptoms of caffeine withdrawl: headache, lethargy, crabbyness, maybe even (ironically) insomnia. Getting off caffeine pills is easier than coffee. It’s easy to carefully titrate the dose over a few days or weeks. Life is much better when you have easy access and control over your dosage; I will never find myself binge drinking an espresso at a random Starbucks to quell a raging withdrawal headache!

One strange aspect of this practice is that I have become keenly aware and responsible for my energy level over the course of the day. I find myself flipping my little pill box in my pocket wondering, “Do I need to be high energy in an hour or should I wait to take my power-up?”

What about brain cancer and Franken-drugs and taking “unnatural” things on a daily basis? I’d say that the vast majority of caffeinated foodstuffs have caffeine added to them from big chemical vats just like my beloved pills.

It’s true that pills aren’t as fun as a nice steaming cup of fair trade Sumatra blend. I enjoy sipping coffee too, the pills are for enhancing productivity, not rest and relaxation.

Update September 4 2014: Caffeine pills helped me greatly to study for my prereq classes and take the GRE. I was taking 1/4 to 1 pill per day. I spent 3 months over the summer getting off the sauce. Now, two weeks into grad school I’ve only been eating tiny slivers of caffeine pills on some mornings to jumpstart my day. It’s been going very well. :-)

I started grad school on Monday. Everyone in the department and the school is tremendously welcoming, it’s been a great experience!

I’ve been teaching this class with 7 other teachers. If you want to go from zero to Arduino hero in a weekend, this is the place to do it! Here’s the latest email with a discount at the bottom:

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Registration for Workshop Weekend: Arduino is now open! Join us on October 11 and 12, 2014 as we introduce you to the Arduino and electronics world in a hands-on two day workshop!

If you haven’t heard: Arduino is an open electronics platform designed for artists, designers, and hobbyists. Here’s just a taste of what kind of stuff you can make using one:

Laser Harp: A futuristic musical harp that forgoes strings in favor of lasers!
The Inebriator: An automated cocktail mixer — it won’t ask you for a tip!
Secret Knock Door Lock: A door lock that opens only when the right knocking pattern is applied!
RC Lawn Mower: Why break your back in the heat? This lawn mower is completely autonomous!
Tweet-A-Watt: A power consumption meter that tweets your daily electricity consumption.
Check out a full range of Arduino starter projects you can build at Workshop Weekend: Arduino on our Arduino Projects page – these projects are great starting points for future exploration.

Workshop Weekend: Arduino is designed to bring you significant experience with Arduino and electronics, comprehensively leading you through all the key steps, and giving you a platform from which to explore further. You don’t need to have any experience working with Arduino, electronics, or programming to attend!

Check out the full schedule and register here: http://workshopweekend.net/arduino/catalog

Saturday we’ll guide you through the Arduino hardware and software. Sunday, you’ll work on your own project with our team of expert mentors at hand. Don’t worry if you don’t have a project yet – we’ll get you started with any from our project page. In the process, you’ll learn about topics like advanced programming, working with audio, motors and movement, and LCD character displays.

Check out the full schedule and register here: http://workshopweekend.net/arduino/catalog

Use the coupon code ARDUINOEARLY3434 for $50 off admission! This code is valid through Monday, September 1st.

And please reach out to us if you have any questions at all!

I hope we’ll see you there.

Warmly,
J.D., Rolf, Anca, Malcolm, Lee, Tenaya, Andrew, Gil, and the Arduino Weekend team

My aunt Bean asked if we are alright after the 6.1 earthquake this morning near Napa. My response:

Totally fine. Megan says we both woke up when the earthquake hit but I don’t remember it. Thanks for writing. We just saw a report on Fox News that mentioned “total devastation”… of course it only referred to all the broken mayonnaise jars in a convenience store at ground zero. But hey, that’s Fox…

The summer fireworks show at Butchart Gardens is the most amazing light show I have ever seen in my life. This is a fact.

Megan and I saw the fireworks on our honeymoon on Vancouver Island this summer. In the same way that it is difficult to express how precisely a piece of music can lift your heart, I find it difficult to say how the Butchart Gardens fireworks show so easily surpassed all others. First, I’ll tell you that it’s not big fat American fireworks. Americans like big, abstract shows of force, big crescendos and no finesse or plot. This show, on the other hand was choreographed beautifully with elements of interpretive and representative art. The presentation had both technical and artistic brilliance. There was a sublime nature to it. It had dancing elephants (literally! well sparkling outlines of elephants so technically it would be “figuratively!”), Busby Berkeley mandala formations, great music, the glow of the early universe, firelit forests and so much more! I recall one moment where I saw two fireworks and their trails corkscrewing up, intertwined before they started to fall back to earth and explode; I’ve only seen intertwined trails in cartoons, I never thought there’d be any way such precision and beauty could happen in the real world!

The “big universe” scene was the most breathtaking. That’s the only name I could imagine for it. The sky above us kept slowly filling with clouds and sparks and rockets. It felt like we were all inside a star nebula! The colors and shapes forming were just like some I had seen by the Hubble Telescope, but real, live, now! Stars glowed, illuminating clouds. Shooting stars flew through our weightless universe and we were there.

Oh my, only poetry can convey how my heart felt at that moment!

The first time I ever heard about wikis was in 1984. Newcleus, “Jam on it”. Music seriously before it’s time. Listen now.

A fellow student asked about buying textbooks then selling them on Amazon. Here’s what I had to say in response

I buy all the required reading at the very beginning of the semester from Amazon. I figure that I can sell it back on Amazon if I want to keep it and only lose a little bit. That strategy has worked out well… low stress and generally inexpensive. Only a few times have I been stuck with a book that has a new edition, thus devaluing my book greatly. I figure that if I am trying to save $100 by not getting a book, and that is getting in the way of a $70,000/year job, my priorities are in the wrong place!

To sell on Amazon: I generally match the lowest price and it usually sells within 2 weeks. I ship USPS “Media Mail” which is usually about $3-4 instead of $8-15 for Priority Mail. Pay for shipping online, wrap the package, then walk into the post office, CUT IN LINE (you’re allowed!), set the package on the counter, make eye contact with the counter rep and say “my package is all set. Thanks.”

After I’ve bought the book, I find a PDF version as a personal backup. I leave this on my computer, this has been very useful for me as I study during my long commute. There is some question as to the legality of having the paper book and a PDF backup but this isn’t a settled matter.

I’ve had very good luck selling books at the end of the semester. I don’t always sell them for a good price but usually I do. I think I’ve bought and sold 15 textbooks in the last 3 years. I might buy a used, “almost new” condition book for $80 when the new price is $110 and then sell the book for $60-90. If there is a new version of the textbook, I might sell my edition for $50. Note that I occasionally sell them for more than I bought them :-)

I’ve also bought older textbooks that were great. For example, I bought a computer programming textbook and a college math textbook for $5 and they were perfectly up-to-date, helpful and accurate. They wouldn’t have helped me for a class because it would be hard to follow along when the teacher says “turn to page 20” and my page 20 is different from other books. (yes, the book publishers do that on purpose)

How to sell your book on Amazon:
* type in the ISBN number of the book as if you want to buy it
* click the “Sell on Amazon” button on the page
* Follow the prompts and list your book. I almost always list my book 1 penny lower than the competition in the same class… for example: if “very good condition” books are selling for $20, I sell for $19.99.
* after it sells:
* wrap the book in several layers from a roll of kraft paper (the least expensive) or put it in a padded envelope
* print out a label and tape it to the package
* (the most annoying step is here) Bring it to a US Post office and tell them you want to mail it Media Mail; it’s the least expensive shipping option, though you are required to hand the package over the counter
* Done!

Just a few moments ago, McSAW was born!

We put together a fantastic playlist for the wedding! Thanks Zeke for making it happen!

It’s in 3 sections, Cocktails, Dinner, and Dance.