Happy Light

Not only am I bipolar, but I also suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD); a rather appropriate acronym. This is where one gets depressed in the winter, probably due to the lack of sunshine (shorter days, more clouds, wear more clothes). This has also been called "the winter blues." All I knew what that in the winter I would suffer from depression a lot. This on top of bipolar depression. Not fun. And like all things with mental illness, it got worse as I got older.

Nine years ago, on the advice of my mother, I bought a full-spectrum light from a company called Verilux and put it by my desk when I spend most of my work days. It's not technically a "happy light" (which is a specific type of full-spectrum light that is designed for maximum light output) but a lamp that shines on my hands and arms as I type. But it seems to be enough because either because of it, or a psychosomatic effect, I feel better. I haven't suffered from SAD since I got it.

When I needed a light for reading, I also got a full-spectrum light. I figured it couldn't hurt to have more full-spectrum light.

So if you have the "winter blues," I strongly suggest that you get a full-spectrum light and put it where are are the most.

Do you have a full-spectrum light? What are your experiences with it? Let me know in the comments below.

Virtual Reading

I and a group of authors will be doing a virtual reading on ALTSpaceVR and anyone can attend. It will be Friday the 25th at 6pm PST. The link to get there is here. It would be fun to see you there!

RadCon 8B

Starting tomorrow and through Sunday, I will be at RadCon 8B in Tri-Cities, Washington. It will be held, as usual, at the Red Lion Inn in Pasco.

Here's my schedule of panels:

Friday 7:00PM: Pantsing or Outlining. In the Executive Room

Saturday at 11:00 AM: Defeating the Blank Page. In the Sage Room

Saturday at 2:00 PM: Point of View. Also in the Sage Room

Sunday at 11:00 AM: Creating a Low Barrier of Entry for your Readers. In the Harvest Room.

I hope to see you there. I'll have some swag and would love to meet you.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

DVD.com deigned to send me Ghostbusters: Afterlife as soon as they released it. I guess I'm not being throttled right now. (Although this week they sent me the #11 and #12 movies in my queue.)

I was a little cautious approaching this movie. I don't like horror and the ads and trailers I saw indicated it was more horror than comedy, unlike the original Ghostbusters. 

And there is more serious content than the original movie, but it does have funny moments, too. It's much less serious than the ads and trailers I saw indicated. I enjoyed it but I didn't love it.

The story involves a family with an older kid played by Finn Wolfhard (of Stranger Things fame)(and where the hell is Stanger Things season four?) and a precocious twelve-year-old girl, Phoebe. They get kicked out of their house for not paying rent but, luckily, inherit the mother's father's farm in Oklahoma. That's where things get interesting. Phoebe, being the curious type, starts discovering things, clue that lead to her and her mother learning about their heritage and a threat to all of humanity. I'm trying to avoid spoilers  here.

It was well do. Using kids instead of adults made it more fun. Paul Rudd plays a bored science teacher who, at summer school, shows the kids horror movies (I would have been traumatized). I recommend Ghostbusters: Afterlife, especially if you liked the original movie (and who didn't?). 

Did you watch Ghostbusters: Afterlife? Did you like it? Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

I Remember Email

Back in 1994, someone introduced me to email on the computers at the University of Washington campus. I remember asking if it went "campus wide." I was told it went world-wide and I was impressed. So I set up an email account. I think it was stownsend@washington.edu.

Now, 28 years later, email is falling out of favor for texting. Although I don't know if I foresee businesses using texting rather than email. Maybe between employees casually, but not for official communications. Although I saw and ad for "Business Texting" for communicating with clients/customers. And I get texts all the time from people I do business with such as doctors, dentists, and car detailers. 

Email was such a revelation. I've been using it long enough to remember when people apologized for "wasting bandwidth" with long emails. I also remember when the size limit on attachments was so small you couldn't send two Word documents in the same email. Now I send 5 MB email attachments all the time.

I've never had a big problem with spam and I don't know why. I'm still hoping some genius will fix that problem. That and having to have a complicated password for everything, and none of them the same. I'm thinking biometric logins. 

But I'm off course. I still use email and I text and I Facebook message. What ever is most convenient at the time. But email might just become a business/government tool in the future. Especially if it comes that you can send files through text.

What do you think the fate of email will be? Do you use it less than you used to? Let me know in the comments below.

Time Zones

When I was in the military, we were very concerned with time zones because our intelligence came from all over the world. The Department of Defense assigned a letter to each time zone (at least the major ones) and UTC was "Z" or "zulu." (Most people call "UTC" "Greenwich Mean Time" but that's not its official name. It's actually "Coordinated Universal Time." So why "UTC"? That's explained here.)

There are only 26 letters in the alphabet and there are, if I counted correctly, 34 times zones. Most are off by an hour from their neighbors but some are off by half an hour and at least one is off by fifteen/forty-five minutes. 

I live in the Pacific Time Zone of the US which is eight hours behind of UTC (UTC -8) except during daylight saving time with it's seven hours behind (UTC -7).

The earliest time zone is UTC +14. That's Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean. You'd think it'd be UTC +12 but it's 14 for some reason. I believe it's on the east side of the International Date Line.

The latest time zone is UTC -11. Again, why not -12? I don't know. That's for the island, Nuie, also in the Pacific Ocean. Probably also near the International Date Line

There are some weird time zones. For example, there is an Australian time zone that is UTC +8.75. There are a lot of time zones that are a half hour off everyone else. For example two in Australia (Australia has six time zones if I counted correctly), parts of India, at least parts of Afghanistan, and Iran, and Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. 

There is a border you can walk across and get jet lag because the time zones are 4.5 hours apart (that's China and Afghanistan)(Assuming you could walk across that border). China has one time zone for the entire country, which must be convenient in some way yet weird in the western parts of the country.

Do you have to deal with time zones? Or are they just boring to you? Or do they confuse you? Let me know in the comments below.

Gas Prices

During the recent holiday season, I watched Die Hard, as I usually do.  There's on scene in the movie I found very disturbing. It's pictured at left. It's the gas prices shown that is disturbing. 

Now you can't get "Regular" anymore, because all gasolines have gone to unleaded. Today's "regular" is just lower octane unleaded. So I was curious, how much is 77 cents in today's inflation adjusted dollars. I used this inflation calculator and found out that it's $1.81. (Die Hard was made in 1988).

However, gas prices now are a lot more than $1.81. So I decided to see how gas prices have changed since 1988. I went to the Department of Energy website and it lists average gasoline prices historically, but only starting in April of 1993. So I started then. And then I adjusted them for inflation using data from this website. And I made a pretty graph of the data:

If you adjust the price of gasoline since April 1993 for inflation, that's the lower line. And the last number on that line (November of 2021) is exactly $1.81, which surprised me. But California has always had expensive gas. I'm not sure why except these days it has the highest gas taxes.

But gas goes up and down with the worldwide price of oil. And the price of oil went down during the first part of the pandemic because demand dropped so much. Then after the lock downs slowed, it shot up partly due to increased demand, partly due to the world oil market.

Also, I think gas is more expensive than in April of 1993 because of ethanol mandates and gas taxes.

So this was an interesting experiment. 

What do you think of this data? What do you think makes the price of gas change so much? let me know in the comments below.