mykle systems labs

I’m tired.  Sluggish, drowsy.  I’ve been sleeping a lot but still in the daytime I feel fatigued.  I’m going to bed really early and waking up way too early, but I don’t feel any healthier, wealthier or wiser yet.  I’m definintely less irritable and anxious, although the recent mysterious failure of my home internet gateway has me dreaming of smashing it to bits. But I think that’s normal.

It makes sense, I guess, that my body will need time to adjust back to a normal level of wakefulness after having leaned on caffeine for thirty years.  Whatever the body’s natural coffee is, I need to learn how to make some.  And certainly I owe my body some sleep at this point. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow … I feel so much better than I did yesterday.  The headaches have mostly passed.  I hope I’m over the worst part.  Now the problem is the interestingly-shaped hole in my life that coffee used to fill.

I slept oddly last night: woke up at six with a bit of headache, had breakfast, went back to bed, then slept until ten.  I’ve been browsing the various abstracts related to coffee research at Science Daily (awesome site, btw) and one thing that several studies have shown is that caffeine diminishes the quality of sleep, as measured by depth & length of the R.E.M. cycle.  So I’m looking forward to some really awesome, delicious, organically-grown sleep. Read the rest of this entry »

My head aches, on schedule.  It comes and goes, accompanied by thirst — it’s a very hot day — and a heavy-lidded disorientation.  It would be a good day to spend in bed, but it’s way too hot.  And I promised my friends Seth & Missy that I would help demolish their bathroom.

Seth & Missy took me to lunch and we talked about coffee.  It makes Seth irritable and Missy anxious.  It makes them fight.  Seth nearly exploded this morning at the café when the baristas put on Metallica.  I have to agree: what were they thinking? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got to stop drinking coffee.

Coffee makes me anxious.  Coffee plus the Internet makes me downright livid.  It gives me apocalyptic moods.  Surely, the world is not going to end just because Fox news is lying this morning.  But don’t try to tell me that after a cup of coffee.  This morning was awful … visions of wing nuts screaming bloody revolution because the president is trying to improve my health care.  I could scream.

Coffee messes with my head.  I think it drives me toward short-term thinking, crisis-mode planning, seeing trees instead of forests.  I am distractable, irritable, easily offended.  I lose track of what I’m doing, and bounce around the house like a pinball.

Coffee interferes with my digestion in interesting ways.  It can make me nauseous, give me headaches, put me to sleep instead of waking me up, makes me binge on over-large lunches.  And when evening comes, coffee makes me drink.  Alcohol is a reliable exit-ramp from the coffee speedway. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you noticed it’s fall already?  True, the leaves aren’t turning yet, and nobody’s harvesting pumpkins.  But still, it must be autumn because the autumn issue of MAKE Magazine is now hitting the stands — including my article on our famous Speed Vest!  I am so proud!  I feel like I crashed a smart-people party!

The funny thing is, I’m listed as the author but the incredibly diligent editorial staff at MAKE re-wrote about half of my article, illustrated it to the nines, tested it to death, and generally turned my back-of-napkin scribblings into easy-to-follow instructions that make us proud.  So all my hats are off to Paul Spinrad, Kris Magri, Keith Hammond, Goli Mohammadi and everybody else at Make who helped make me, Brady and our invention look so good.  (And special kudos to Secret Agent Katie!) Read the rest of this entry »