Comments | pietro: Chemicals, mice, and money

pietro

Chemicals, mice, and money

Dec 04, 2003 22:17

a) I'm still struggling with caffeine withdrawal. My body prefers 0.5 cans a day rather than 1 can every other day, but the later is more practical. This is definitely screwing with my sleep schedule ( Read more... )

Comments 14

draconline December 4 2003, 20:00:32 UTC

a)I assume this is with pop, but have you tried tea? I have some funny idea in my head that some tea has a lower caffeine content then pop so maybe if you scaled it down to that daily first..yeah.

d)there are mice in the Toronto subway. K pointed them out to me. They did indeed look quite cute, and rail-colored..but that is probably a better place for them then here, where even fish are not allowed as pets.

pietro December 4 2003, 20:32:46 UTC

The soda I drink (coca cola) has 34 mg of caffeine, so I'd like to find something with no more than 15 mg of caffeine. Most kinds of tea look like they have more than that (more info here).

I should switch temporarily to chocolate bars and/or hot chocolate.

draconline December 4 2003, 20:43:10 UTC

yes! and buy it in bulk and give me the extra. especially if it is the super-real dark bitter chocolate. Hm, I had no idea hot chocolate had caffeine in it until I saw this article..

anadamous December 5 2003, 09:47:04 UTC

Apparently both Tylenol and Ecstacy contain about 15mg caffeine.

Also Barq's Root Beer, if you wanted to stay truer to your soda habit.

ywong December 4 2003, 20:06:52 UTC

b) Come work at PayPal. Though I imagine you might find it boring.

f) Continue trading on quadruple margin!

pietro December 4 2003, 21:28:22 UTC

b) I'm sure paypal is a pleasant place to work, but it's not among my current plans for the future.

If my music video career fails (certainly possible), I'm going to combine all the most brilliant ideas in machine learning to build a program that predicts the short-term stock market (and make a billion dollars off that). If that fails, I'd probably aim for ILM.

What I need to decide is how long I want to be a grad student before pursuing my subsequent plans. Being a grad student has certain advantages: spending all day around intelligent people and getting paid to do whatever I want.

f) I wish I had time for day-trading. It's dangerous to do it without making it a full-time job.

tonapah December 4 2003, 22:06:24 UTC

You should become a director! TV or movies, whichever. I lobby for this because I will not be satisfied until I have dragged others down into the hell that is the entertainment industry.

pietro December 5 2003, 09:34:40 UTC

I do intend to try to become a music video director (which will probably entail directing TV commercials to stay afloat), but I doubt I would try directing films or TV shows any time soon.

There are already disturbingly many indie filmmakers who want to become film directors.

In any case, I'll definitely be involved with the entertainment industry, just a different branch than you.

leko December 4 2003, 23:04:57 UTC

Well, if you want to be a rock star, I'd suggest investing your savings in hookers and blow.

when is mouser week? I might swing up there for it.

pietro December 4 2003, 23:29:58 UTC

I think I'd be a rather pathetic rock star. I once tried writing a song on the piano, but I got stuck after about 15 notes.

Mouser Week is actually a weekend: Dec 26-28, according to the UE mailing list. Note: I may not actually do more than one of the events, depending on how many other things are going on at the same time.

skamille December 5 2003, 12:00:49 UTC

Why are you trying to kick your caffeine habit?

pietro December 5 2003, 12:52:42 UTC

Partly because I'm over-sensitive to it. If I don't have it by mid-afternoon, I'll be sick by the evening; not just a headache, but a stomach ache, nausea, shivering, and an inability to do anything but lie on the floor. My chemistry must be out of balance in some way.

My main motivation is health-related: soda's effect on teeth, empty carbohydrates, etc. I could drink coffee instead of soda, but that scares me given my sensitivity to it. In fact, I've never had coffee.

anadamous December 10 2003, 08:54:10 UTC

Doesn't that sound more like low blood sugar than caffeine withdrawl? I'm not that affected by caffeine, but my friends who are usually feel irritable and have "caffeine headaches" when they go a day without it. Your symptoms seem both much more extreme and of a different character. Have you experimented with sugar-free caffeine sources and caffeine-free sugar sources?

pietro December 11 2003, 14:04:18 UTC

My sugar consumption is generally independent of my caffeine consumption. I semi-regularly drink caffeine-free soda and eat sugar-filled desserts. In any case, I do sometimes try having more sugar on days when I cut back on caffeine. Perhaps I need to be more methodical about measuring my sugar intake (like I am with my caffeine intake).