Mornings

What Happened When I Forced Myself To Wake Up At 5 A.M. Every Day For A Month

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What Happened When I Forced Myself To Wake Up At 5 A.M. Every Day For A Month

Early risers get a lot of good press: They are supposedly more productive and possibly better problem solvers. But after a month of forcing myself out of bed at 5 a.m., I learned that getting up early isn’t always the best thing for you.

I’m a morning person, and most days I’m out of bed by 5:45 a.m. I usually have 15 minutes before the rest of my household starts to wake, and I use this time to enjoy a cup of tea as well as the stillness of the morning. I look forward to this time so much that I wondered, What would happen if I expanded the 15 minutes to an hour?

While it was a nice thought, getting up at 5 a.m. was harder than I expected. My alarm went off a mere 45 minutes earlier than normal, but I had to drag myself out of bed. With no plan other than tea and stillness, I quickly learned that an hour is too long. The second day I decided to meditate, a practice I’ve wanted to do but never seemed to have the time for. Unfortunately, I fell asleep in my chair. Eventually, I took out a piece of paper and did a brain dump of all the things I wanted to get done in January–at least I had a plan.

Sun comes up so early

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The worse thing about this time of year is how early the sun comes up. It’s bright out at by around 5 AM most mornings, so I find myself waking early even when I don’t get to sleep that early.

Before sunrise

Allan Sherman – Makin Coffee

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Gotta love one's coffee. ☕ I've never used a coffee vending machine, but I've seen them along the Northway Rest Areas. Federal Interstate Act prohibits full service rest stops along interstates, except for those toll roads built before the Interstate Highway Act, but vending machines are still allow, including those that make coffee.

The Wake-up Machine VLOG

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"I built an alarm clock that wakes me up in the morning by slapping me in the face with a rubber arm. I picked apart a clock, wired it to an Arduino UNO and controlled a 165 rpm brushless DC motor through a relay."

Beautiful Morning Out Today

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Bright and sunny but cold. But it’s January, so one should expect the weather to be frigid. That said, riding the bus to work, you run from your house to the bus stop, and if you time it properly, your exposure to cold is minimal. The bright sun makes it not seem so cold.

Green Falls

Quite a bright and sunny morning out, much warmer feeling then the thermometer would suggest.

Happy Monday. Plans for Veterans Day Weekend. Election Day Next Week. Got Sick Last Week. Bright and Sunny Morning.

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Good Morning! Happy Monday. So we go around in the grand circle of things. Next weekend, I will be downstate for work, but the following I am planning to take a trip to somewhere. Moose Plains, or maybe Central NY with a one day jaunt down to Pennsylvania for a visit some of the parks in Endless Mountain Country. A lot depends on weather, and whether or not they already have snow at Moose Plains.

Election Day Next Week. I will probably drive or take a bus up to the Board of Elections and vote by absentee ballot, and get it done. Your supposed to be out of the county during election day if you vote by absentee ballot, but if I happen to be in the county, I can either go and vote on lever machine or risk my ballot getting tossed out if I get hauled into court to testify about my whereabouts. The absentee rules in NY State are kind of dumb – they should allow everybody to participate in early voting if they so choose, by absentee ballot.

Got Really Sick Last Week. It just was a really bad cold. But tell that to somebody who is feels as sick  as dog. I slept most of Thursday and Friday, with a sore throat, aches, and dizziness. But so be it. Finally on Saturday, had enough energy to spend some of the day awake, working on some code, and then going down to the library to upload photos, and then finally, for my evening walk. At least it was just a cold, so once the virus let up, I didn’t have to go to doctor or spend money besides getting some soup and buying more nyquil, which will probably last most of the winter.

Through the Gulf

But A Nice Bright and Sunny Morning Today. It’s a Monday, and good to stay positive. To make sure I wouldn’t get hungry until mid-afternoon, I made a good breakfast up of hash browns from Empire Plaza farmers market potatoes, sweet peppers, and mushrooms, some crappy pre-cooked sausage, scrambled up a couple of eggs, and some cheese. Not to bad. Made the regular bus I normally catch with relative ease, and today the bus is a brand new Gillig Hybrid, a 4112H. Life is good.

Google Maps Added to the Blog. I have for some time been sharing Google Maps on the blog, but I never had a Google Maps of the Day feature. I built in hooks for the Google Maps of Day and full KML integration into the blog. There is still some minor bugs in the code, but I hope to post some many new and interesting maps over the cmoing months.