I was able to figure out how to put my work Dell laptop into sleep recently. The problem was that if I just unplug it from the docking station without put it into sleep, it will be on and usually runs out of battery in the morning, in other words it will needs reboot in the morning when I come to work. I figured out this one without googling: thought it may help if I push the power button on dock station before unplug, and it worked.
This and a minor thing about the good old UP jawbone band (have to push the sleep button to start record sleep), reminds me of the sleep issue for me from time to time. How I wish I could have a button when being pushed, and I could fall right into sleep 🙂
I recall the first time I wanted fall asleep but could not was at the time I would take high school exam the second day. I was at a good middle school and needed to score good enough to get into the same high school. Although I knew if I just do as I do usually, I should be good. But I was still nervous, deep in my heart, I knew getting into this high school means I am halfway into college (which is a big deal for me, because that means I will move from rural area to big city, and eventually work in office instead of work on farm). Similar thing happened to me before Gao Kao, the famous college exam (it was 3 days then), and I did not get much sleep in those 3 nights. I recall I did the same before GRE exam. So as the night before I board the airplane to the US, obviously I was not so certain how it will play out when I came here for study: a country seen only from movie before.
Fast forward, from time to time (not very often) I will get this sleep issue again, due to silly things at work. I recall in 2006, when I was in Shanghai work remote, I need to come up with a software bug fix. I worked really hard, thought about the problem hard, and could not fall asleep one night. Good thing I solved the problem the second day, and everybody was very happy. And I was too excited the second night to fall asleep 🙂
Another time (working for another company), the situation was not as nice. One afternoon, my boss called me (he rarely does, we all work from home), saying the project I delivered to customer was not good, they were not happy and they complained to my boss’ boss. Had to come up fix quickly, with unfamiliar code and so so economy. I lost sleep that night 🙂 I recall I also lost some sleep in the financial crisis, when the market turmoil made my 401k into 201k. I also had a small trading account, and I lost about $1200 on WAMU (Washington Mutual). That’s also the time I got most my grey hair (2008 to 2011). I still lost sleep due to work related issue in 2014/2015, sometimes I would check email from iPhone in the middle of the night as I was expecting something; sometimes check it just because it’s within the reach, then start thinking about work related things. One way to avoid this is to put iPhone somewhere not easy to reach (e.g., living room, this is a tip I learned from my former coworker).
Interestingly the stock market in Jan 2016 brings back the memories of dark days of 2008 (financial crisis), I saw the declining of 401k as well. But long term I am not that worried as I believe we will recover from this in a few years, similar to last time. So no need to lose sleep. Even for people who already retired, I think they should stay calm too. I believe some retired people lost faith last time around, and bailed out at the bottom, and did not get back in quickly, in doing this they lost a substantial amount of their retirement savings in 401k/IRA. It’s understandable because the depth of the financial crisis is almost unprecedented, but we should learn from the history and be rational about the market.
Pager Support (On-call)
I started Page Support work since Oct 2015. This is a bit new experience for me, although I had some sort of Production Support responsibility in my prior jobs, that was not real time. Pager bring in a new sense of urgency. I still remember on the first night of carrying pager (iPhone), it did not rang until 2, 3 am in the morning, when I got up, use bathroom, looked at iPhone, it started ringing. Opened the work laptop right away, good thing I did not drain the battery yet. Anyway login and start checking, the application software display not as well as the monitors at work, but still tried my best. I recall in another incident shortly after I was so nervous I had difficulty recall my employee 🙁
Back to that night I lost sleep again, I was thinking what if I missed the sound of text message? So I ordered this Martian Notifier (see my Notifications post) after did some research, as this is a cheaper way to get notifications from iPhone to wearable.
I still put the iPhone with reach and turned on the sound just in case. Although I believe the bluetooth connection between Notifier and iPhone is fairly reliable (one reason I got Martian, despite I saw cheaper choice such as Xiaomi wearables). Since I got this Page duty from work for a week, toward the end of the work, I will be usually tired. Lack of sleep in general. Now I can sense some of the feelings of Doctors (many doctors carry pagers), so as some nurses. The issue here is we are always on alert, and be ready for something. I heard war stories from my wife’s OB/GYN that she sometimes has to meet her husband and swap cars (and the kid in the car), before heading to hospital for baby delivery.
