u/HilbertInnerSpace

A little about myself: I like to bike, almost daily, that's my mode of exercise.

I love to cook, but been lazy recently because of moving. I love books (mainly fiction but occasionally nonfiction seeps in) but oh my "to read list" is endless.

My day job is as a research professor (meaning I don't teach, well not recently). With my job I am trying to maintain a healthy work/life balance after spending a decade being a workaholic.

I am addicted to music and listen to it almost every moment of the day, there is always music in the background in my house.

I have lifelong interests in Mathematics and Physics.

Online chess is how I release stress sometimes. My taste in film is more towards the "arthouse" but I do enjoy the occasional mainstream show. Trying to limit TV though because I feel I watched way too much of it as a teenager.

Still trying to figure out what are we for ? what is all this about ? Maybe I will someday.

I can never sleep before midnight, and don't want to.

I wish I had time to write more.

Anyway, looking forwards to making a penpal or two. Thanks for reading this.

I know medicine is a business in the USA but this felt even more so than usual, like I was going through a marketing program with some doctors attached to it.

I was feeling run down about 10 years ago and did a lab study and just barely slept with all the wiring yet they somehow stated they collected enough data. The doctor barely spent 5 minutes with me saying I have "mild apnea" before directing me to the sales rep for a cpap. I was so skeeved by the whole experience it put me off trying again for years.

Then a few years ago my PCP directed me to try again after some ibs and palpitation symptoms. I opted this time for a take home test (the kind with the oximeter and a wrist band and a band you tie around your chest). Randomly I couldn't sleep that night, just lay in bed awake until morning and was prepared to apologize to the doctor and have them allow me to redo the test only for them to say "you probably slept without knowing, the results show you slept, we can work with them". That set off a million alarm bells in my head, and gave me so much mistrust of the whole process, I KNOW I did not sleep a lick. Anyway the results showed "No Apnea" and I just lost motivation to pursue it despite feeling like shit at that time.

Finally now, after having symptoms of worsening teeth grinding: a deep set painful feeling of pressure in all my lower teeth, into my jaw and ears, which improves actually after sleeping, and is worst in the evening. My dentist, who has a sleep clinic on the side suggested that again apnea might cause this and directed me to schedule a test. 

Their test is a take home that is just a ring you wear on your thumb, fine, perhaps telemetry improved and many things can be deduced from this device. I WANT to fully follow through this time around. The results came back indicating moderate to severe apnea. During the process I spoke with a totally different person online at each appointment (seemed to be PA's ) and then finally because I was desperate to see if treatment helps with the jaw pain I asked to start and please give me a prescription for my insurance to get a CPAP.

I get this weird boilerplate looking prescription , fine, but on the first page it states in bold : 

"This patient is an excellent candidate for oral appliance therapy. They have refused or failed a trial of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) despite adequate attempts to use it. I urge you to cover this medically necessary device so that they can function optimally and avoid the consequences as stated above."

And I felt defeated instantly, alarms bells of "Scam" and "Grift" and "Insurance fraud" (if I want to be unkind, but how can it be anything else) screaming in my head. I have not yet touched a single CPAP in my whole life, let alone "failed treatment".

After some internet sleuthing I figured out what's going on, my Dentist got a sleep medicine certification a few years ago and is trained on and affiliated with an oral appliance from a company called Vivos, the whole thing feels like a pipeline to get people on those appliances without even trying CPAP first.

I am determined to proceed with CPAP, but I have lost trust in this clinic and not sure if they even have the know how or inclination or training to help me adjsut my device.

Again, I am not naive, I know money is deeply involved with medicine in the USA, but in every other practice it always felt that money is that background annoyance and there is some separation between dealings with your doctor and billing and medication. Sleep Medicine feels different , feels like a marketing pipeline with a little bit of medicine scaffolding. 

I replied to them that I was confused and this is not what I asked for. I guess I disrupted their pipeline process enough that it is taking them a very long time to respond to me.

Anyway, rant over. Maybe I need to research clinics better.

The only Cigarettes song I genuinely like, in general I find them too stereotypical. But this one, this just hits the spot man.

Also, Léa Seydoux is just unhumanely gorgeous.

You don't have to deal with all this bullshit anymore.

"Like taking off a tight shoe..." Ram Dass described it as such.

I remember in my 20s life was full of possibilities, everything was exciting. Now in my forties I feel as lost as ever, and I feel that it turned into nothing more than securing a source of income to pay for you and your family's necessities and then your kids will repeat the same. A forever repeating pattern. Don't get me wrong the world is astonishly beautiful, and I grieve leaving it or saying goodbye to my parents eventually. It is all the necessary grinding and maintenance just to slow the decay and hold on to what you have that is wearing down on me.

Maybe I should do something stupid like go to grad school, or attempt a novel. But , honestly , nothing feels worth it anymore. Is this what a midlife crisis is ? honestly I have no desire whatsoever to buy a Porsche.

Anyway, I don't know why I shared this here, was looking at other subs and got tired of wading through all their arcane rules. I imaging the lurkers here as more on the artistic side, New French wave cinema watchers, so maybe this fits here, or not, sharing thoughts is accepting being judged, it's unavoidable.

“Deeply lost in the night.

Just as one sometimes lowers one's head to reflect, thus to be utterly lost in the night. All around people are asleep. It's just play acting, an innocent self-deception, that they sleep in houses, in safe beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, under blankets; in reality they have flocked together as they had once upon a time and again later in a deserted region, a camp in the open, a countless number of men, an army, a people, under a cold sky on cold earth, collapsed where once they had stood, forehead pressed on the arm, face to the ground, breathing quietly. And you are watching, are one of the watchmen, you find the next one by brandishing a burning stick from the brushwood pile beside you.

Why are you watching?

Someone must watch, it is said. Someone must be there.”

but , oh , "stabbing my eye with a rusty fork" is also a cliche, ugh , there is no escape.

Well, I am no absolutist and I don't need fully original retorts every single time but the one thing that really annoys me, that really grinds my gears, is when I strain to even touch an inkling of what everything is about? , what is this life for ? in all sincerity , and all I get in return is "42" and what I imagine is a smirk on the other side.

Oh, you are so clever, shutting the fuck up would have been better than that inane non-answer, that stopped being funny after hearing it for the hundredth time.

Is that the best to hope for in these times.

Still want to shop around but was hoping for 4%.

when people ask about your partner and you say you don't have one (in your 30's or 40's) and they give you that questioning look , half pity , half implying "what is wrong with you".

well, much is wrong with me, and much is good, but still I hate that look.

Excited. I am 600 miles away so making a road trip out of it.

That's that. There is no rationalizing it , it exists.

It is like fear of flying (which I don't have thankfully) , but if I had no amount of logic would help.

I tried, even in groups I can never get any sleep because every twitch of a twig is amplified.

The thing is I do love the outdoors and the solitude. But whenever I gather the courage I catastrophize and imagine that I will be the rare statistic of the bear bursting into my tent and eating me in the middle of the night.

I wish I was living somewhere in the UK instead were that is not a problem. I am even considering getting a gun in addition to bear spray to cross all the tee's and dot all the i's, although I am not a gun person and never was.

Anyone had this phobia and learned to overcome it ? Or should I just give up on camping and backpacking, it's just not for me ?

I am trying to get the higher quality stuff, mostly stuff from Trader Joes (Indian, Mexican, frozen fish) all stuff that I just pop in the microwave and eat.

This has been going on for 3 weeks now. Mainly because I am just too depressed to cook. I occasionally pop a potato in the toaster over or have gluten free slices with hummus.

I do eat fruits (bananas , apple, oranges mostly). I am just not cooking at all.

Wondering if eventually I will pay with my health and just have to soldier back into cooking proper meals. It is just too much work.

I try to tell myself at least I am controlling my portions and eating out is probably even less healthy. Anyone else been through such a rough patch ?

I thought that discovering that avoiding gluten completely helps immensely meant that I licked this. But in the last few days I have been having the worst flare ever since a long time.

I am currently suffering with:

1- This unrelenting, incessant, very uncomfortable bloating , pushing on my ribcage and just does not want to go away. Even if it lessens a bit its only for an hour or two and then back to square one.

2- Weird sensation close to under my armpits on both sides of my ribcage. Almost like tightness and sometimes as if I have golf balls between my arms and ribs. Very hard to describe. Seems to be received by burping (if and when I am able to )

3- feeling of slight weakness and numbness in my arms and hands.

I don't know, I sometimes feel that something other than IBS is going on, not sure if (1) causes (2) and (3) or vice versa or if there is something else happening.

Either way I am exhausted, can't focus on anything, and dreading another cycle of going back to doctors with complaints only to be dismissed or belittled.

Just needed to vent, lest I explode.

First one: I can clearly sense the limitations of this thing. Nothing more than a sophisticated pattern matcher and token predictor.

Second one (especially after it brings to the surface a surprising connection): If anything, I think I am actually underestimating these tools, it is indeed a brave new world.

I know logically it is just pattern matching and token prediction, but sometime it just feels astonishing how much (even as "appearance") can be achieved by merely that.

Good or bad, these tools are here to stay.

What happened there ? Everything before was elegant enough. But complexity in how scoping is presented feels leaky and inelegant. I don't know, still wrapping my mind around it. Compared to how closure is effortless in Scheme in comparison this feels like too much cognitive load, and worse is I don't see the point for it yet. Is it for performance reasons ?

We have a large TV system in the office that we use for presentations and dog and pony shows. When setting it up, there are moments before input source is switched to HDMI when some snippets of a random daytime channel assaults the ears and eyes.

Don't know about others, but those always fill me with a sense of unease, a second hand sleazy feeling and deep melancholy and dread. We have this wondrous technology , information encoded in electromagnetic energy waves permeating all around us filling every nook and cranny, the likes of which would seem indistinguishable from magic to our ancestors. Do we make it a testament of the grandeur of humanity?, fill it with high art?, theatre?, music and profound thought ? No , instead it is the epitome of the base and the banal.

And now the internet feels like that. The thing is, it didn't use too, it seemed at its inception so full of potential. Except for a few corners (like Wikipedia) , everywhere else I go, such as the so called "social media" in particular, feels as debased and full of slop as daytime TV. The rot is pervasive and unescapable unless you completely unplug.

I try to remind myself: "You have a choice in what you give attention to" and these days I am trying more than ever to apply that thought.