Life: Drinking more water seems to help with night time sleep but not perfect

I still occasionally wake up in the middle of the night. Drinking more liquids throughout the day seem to help with my restless leg syndrome which in turn helps me sleep better. I definitely had more no-wake nights, and definitely better sleep nights even if I wake up.

Having good sleep habits is still good. Some days when I am too exhausted and I take a nap during the day, I have more difficulty staying asleep. Twice that I did this, I ended up just watching videos at night as lying there did not help at all. With nothing to do actually makes my body feel worse. Watching video distracts me from that feeling and I will eventually drift asleep.

I am not sure if I have insomnia as I usually don't have trouble going back to sleep. Majority of the time, I can just move to the couch and fall asleep. I haven't determined if it is because the couch is more firm or because it is cooler there.

In the past, I tend to sleep much better if I keep the windows open because it cooled my room. Recently, I cannot keep the windows open for reasons out of my control. I am also not sure if sleeping with a blanket helps, as I seem to also lose my blank for reasons out of my control. Although, maybe I can just use a second blanket. I do tend to kick my blanket and even my pillow so this may be a very difficult experiment.

Any case... for a period of time, sleeping was getting harder and my restless leg syndrome was getting pretty bad. Drinking more water does seem to significantly help. I have not been perfect and on/near days that I was more dehydrated (in hindsight), I did notice that I had more trouble sleeping.

How much is enough drinking? I typically can drink 3-4 cups a day on a good day. On bad days, I drink almost no cups of water. I do not drink alcohol often. On the couple days where I did drink a decent amount, I usually fall asleep pretty quickly but the quality of the sleep is not as good. I do get buzzed very easily but I don't get drunk easily. I also never had a hangover... not sure if that is related to me never having a headache. So not sure if my advice on drinking will help anyone else. I don't recall having much issue with restless leg syndrome so maybe having liquids help more with that and that in turns help me sleep uninterrupted, and somehow alcohol lowers the quality of my sleep.

Thought Experiment: Why more good than evil, good over evil, good triumphs evil

The age-old question of whether we are born good, evil, or neutral is one that we ask ourselves some time in our lives as we attempt to figure out who we are and understand others. Depending on what recently occurred, I have swung through each of the options in the past.

For a long while, I have believed that the question is not really a valid question because it was too muddled by what each term meant. Somethings are good to some, evil to others, and lastly the rest do not care at all. But because of all the superhero movies that have been coming out for the last decade, this has gotten me to thinking why does "good" triumph over "evil".

And in my limited reality, I feel that people are good. There is a lot evil events in the world, but when compared to the mass of the people, it really is the smaller percentage. But even then, I think people want to be good so there are even fewer people who are evil to be evil.

I think this is evolutionary because it is easier to survive by being good even though sometimes we believe that good people finish last, but rather good people stay alive whether it is physical, financial, or social. It is easier to be good because we do not have to put as much effort in being helpful to others than being evil.

To be evil takes a lot of energy and time. On the basic level of just pure evil, people seamlessly group together to fight a common enemy. This leaves the evil people who need to fit in with the good people.

These people then need to understand two worlds, one is the lie that they live and the other is hiding their true intent. This also scales down to smaller evil deeds like corruption, self-promotion, or even white-lies.

Even just braving a smile but dislike the person underneath takes more energy than just ignoring the person. If we could tell the difference, we would prefer to be with the person who is more forgiving.

I believe that simply by having good intent is natural because it is fundamental to our ability to survive because we do not waste as much energy as evil people. This would also explain why many of the unsuspecting evil people are highly intelligent. I get tired just remembering who doesn't like to hang out or work with other people. Many times, I believe that I only seem intelligent because I do not waste a lot of time with rumors where I tried to keep up but I became physically drained. I really do feel dumber as I figure things out because it always seem others seem to pick up on social cues and little tidbits so much easier than I do.

So although I have had some evil thoughts, I am probably too stupid to be any good at it. Unfortunately, this does not cover where my good intentions may clash with someone else's good intention. For example, the US presidential election nominee selections.

Well, it kind of does but not as cleanly defined as the prior examples. Although I believe people are well-intentioned, this area points out how lazy we can be. If we believe someone else will do something or if we do not understand which option is correct, we do nothing. On the extreme end, we have the capacity to become silent witnesses where we do not call the police even though a major crime occurred in a somewhat public area believing that someone else would have called it in. On a lesser end, we do not report misbehavior especially in a work-place because we are afraid of our social status of being a tattle-tale.

So the majority of people agree on good-intentions when life and death is the ultimate result, but when it comes to evil activities that are not life and death then our good-intentions become fuzzy even when we know what is right and wrong. If we add in evil activities where people believe they won't be caught or punished, this becomes even more dicey (like speeding when driving).

Then what is good people? Those who have more good-intentions than evil ones? Those who only have good intentions? Ultimately, I think the general population are misguided well-intentioned people. Our conflict is primarily on short-term gains versus long-term gains. Basically, when is good-enough, enough?

Life: Do I need more water to sleep well at night? Second night experiment

I have been terrible with my water consumption since my last attempt about a month ago, and I haven't been sleeping through the night. Fortunately, I do not stay up (for the most part) and can fall asleep after I move to the couch. I'm not sure why changing my sleeping place helps with my sleep.

Yesterday while cleaning my place, I drank more water and again I was able to sleep without any interruption. Odd part is that I actually feel more tired than usually when waking up. The energy catches up soon though and now I feel I have more energy than usual.

So unsure if water is my problem, but seems suspiciously correlated. It may also have to do with the cleaning and possibly racing the neighbor's kids. I am so out of shape that the little "jog" may have been a workout for my body.

Reference

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/07/life-do-i-need-more-water-to-sleep-well.html

Life: Do I need more water to sleep well at night? First night experiment

Lately, I have been waking up in the middle of the night. I also think I have restless leg syndrome at night. I usually go lie on the couch, and somehow that helps me go back to sleep. 

I know I do not drink enough water through out the day, and yesterday was the first time that I reached 5 cups (normal drinking cup not the unit of measure). I cannot remember the last time I even had more than one cup of water. I do drink some milk which I guess could count as some water.

Yesterday randomly, I started drinking more water. I brought the water pitcher to my work desk which reminded me to drink more water. I was wondering why I felt like I had more energy today, and realized that I slept the entire night... it was actually kind of odd to wake up on the bed.

Maybe coincidence, so will continue to test this out. Although I already missed drinking water this morning. I was going to post after a few more tries but given my track record... I may forget to do this after day three and I wanted a record to show when I last tried it.

...

kind of like all my attempts to start exercising...

...

sigh

...

Sequel (Edited 2021-08-17)

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/08/life-do-i-need-more-water-to-sleep-well.html

Waterfall Tester in an Agile World (thought experiment)

I've been in a couple corporate worlds that are agile... well in my option, "claims" to be agile. In my opinion, most companies that I have worked for and heard from friends are really just waterfall-light or lean or wagile. My big question for today because a group just recently acquired two QA testers to join their agile group.

This got me thinking, how does QA fit into an agile group? Our testers are expected to test after devs are done developing, so how is this different from waterfall? In full agile, QA would work with developers which I have not seen any self-claimed agile group actually do (not to say they do not exist, just saying... not sure what I am saying but seems important).

TO THE MAIN POINT... (focus, focus)... I think in the agile world, testers should be a special type of end-user. An end-user that is focused on breaking the system. When they find a bug, they report it like any end-user. Simple, clean, and feels like a nice sweet spot.

There is a little nagging feeling on this in that "isn't this testing in prod?" If we trust the agile methodology, this should not be a major concern. Small changes should have small impacts. By small change, I mean a change that has little impact. (Is that a catch-22?) What I want to say is that, there can be physical small changes that have big impacts. For example, a piece of code that is heavily coupled with almost everything, like security or audit or logging.

How does agile test those conditions? I don't think there is really any agile-method besides really falling onto a more waterfall-method. Which is also one of the reasons that I always shudder when I hear leadership say we need to go 100% agile. I may not know agile enough, but doesn't the first 30 minutes of agile training basically make that impossible unless the company really has absolutely no idea what it is doing? I mean, we have full spec'd out requirement that has been done multiple times... and you want to make that agile too?

I've been in two waterfall to agile transformations, and I've seen processes that took a couple days that are now two weeks because they need to go through more steps. Yes, agile should address this but don't like it when it becomes more waterfall so... yea. I tried... again... and again... but at some point there are more important things to fry and technically it adds more job security for my role. People look at me weird suggest something that does not really benefit me personally.

Anyways, if I ever have my only agile team and was assigned QA testers... I would have them help with writing test cases then test things in production. Bugs/issues will just go on the backlog and treated in an existing process.

Can "I" be someone else? (thought experiment)

A thought experiment... is it possible that the perception of "I" in a person can be warped to be someone else in such a way that I believe that I am the other person. And, if I were to suddenly be aware of my actual senses, it was seem unbelievable or even as if it was someone else. I imagine it would almost seem like an out-of-body experience.

Part of this thought experiment is to determine if our belief in what is true primarily due to the weight of certain information. We have our perception of "I" because of all the senses that we have with us all the time. It clearly overrides any other information as true by this hypothesis.

Thus this is how we deem what is true and false, even though we do not really know what is true or what is false. Our brain is like a natural scientific experiment. We believe in the patterns that we can perceive and understand.

This is why it is harder to gain trust than to lose it. It takes information and (in our current mode of information input) time to confirm that the pattern of information from a certain source is trust worthy. The trust of that information is compounded by the source. Thus as the source becomes more trusted, the more trusted the information is (whether that information is true or not). Thus it is possible that a false information can be trusted merely by the trust coefficient of the source. On the other hand, once the trust of the source is broken, all information will lose all the trust bonus. This does not mean the information is false but rather it requires other values like repetition of information from multiple sources or repetition of experiments (science).

Meta-hack

So my experiment is to wonder if I am able to block all sensory information from a person. The person would be "bound" or perhaps in weight-less environment like space. Then have a monitor or even a VR headset that displays another life like a TV show from a single point of view. Would all that new sensory change the person's idea of self?

Interestingly after this thought, I was watching the TV show Person Of Interest (POI) where Samaritan was attempting to brainwash her. Although fictional, it is kind of in-line to the experiment except from the very beginning.

Possible Repercussions

I wonder if this could potentially explain brainwashing. By overriding the sensory input with overwhelming information, a threshold could be met to essentially override existing beliefs. Another trust coefficient is probably introduced for survival purposes. Basically, the weight of trust level is increased by the urgency for surviving. This could also explain Stockholm syndrome.

On a lesser level, this could also explain religion. On the same level, a similar argument could also made about science.

Then on the white-lie level, repeating a lie could even convince ourselves of something not only of little basis but something even knowingly false.

Perhaps this is why I always have some sort of self-doubt.

Background

Just to reiterate, this is just a though-experiment as it is impossible (at least morally/ethically) to actually do. Second, I have little knowledge about brainwashing, illnesses, etc., except what is known through pop-culture. 

Cabbage, Nappa, Carrots - Dish not good

I had some leftover cabbage, nappa, and carrots. This did not make a good dish. There was some odd flavor that I couldn't place... maybe the carrots. It was also a little sweet. At least it was edible enough for me to finish off.

Food: Shrimp sandwich with brown mustard taste experiment

I was at the supermarket and passed freshly made potato and egg salad, but did not really feel like eating just plain potato/egg salad. Later, I found that shrimp was on sale and thought to it give a try with the potato/egg salad.

This turned out really good. But for some reason, I did not put two and two together when I bought about a pound of potato/egg salad and two pounds of frozen raw shrimp. So, I ended up with a lot of extra shrimp.

Since I didn't have anything else besides bread, I just decided to just eat shrimp sandwich. Ketchup and BBQ sauce did not sound very appetizing. Brown mustard also did not sound good, but I figured I'd give it a try. Surprisingly, this turned out a lot better than I had thought it would.

Interestingly, I also realized why food places like to mix the shrimp with other things to make them stick together like mayonnaise. If I did not hold the sandwich perfectly horizontal, the shrimp pieces kept falling out. I didn't have this problem with I had mixed it with the potato/egg salad.

Makes me wonder if I could use the remainder of my shrimp into some sort of shrimp cake. At least, brown mustard with shrimp sandwich turned out pretty well.

Cooking: Bluefish, Basa fish, Eggs and Tomatoes

This is my first post on cooking. I will admit that I am pretty bad at cooking particularly for other people. There are maybe two other people who didn't mind eating my food... and they practically eat anything. I also easy practically anything so I have not minded my own cooking so far.

But in the light of wanting to try to cook for other people, I have started to "experiment" with my cooking. It is very hard for me to follow recipes because I do not like not knowing why I am doing certain steps. So it is not that I cannot follow recipes but I spend a lot of time thinking "why 2 tablespoon," "why 1:2 ratio," "what's a scallion, can I use green onion," etc. That is very frustrating to me.

Up to this point, I have basically "water fried" my food. In other words, I basically stir fry but in water. I've been told my food is very bland and tasteless. For me, it tastes like the food that I am eating. I have not used any salt or pepper, so I basically would have the same container since a decade ago if my family didn't visit and use the ingredients. I am still amazed how quickly my mom can go through my ingredients in just a couple visits. So that is about how much seasoning I put into my food.

Even though I eat out quite often, I still find most of the food too salty for my taste. It always surprises me when people add more salt to the food.

I do have some experience with some dishes with pre-made spices like spaghetti, curry, and stew. I've tried to make chili once, but it tasted more like beef and beans than what I knew as chili. Anyhow, I started playing around with some of the foods to figure out the different tastes in dishes. My primary dish is the eggs and tomatoes which I have tried different ratios of sugar, vinegar, and salt.

Eggs and Tomatoes
I use about the ratio of 2 tsp of sugar, 1 tbs of vinegar, 2 eggs, 2 tomatoes (or 4 roma tomatoes), 1 tbs of salt. This probably is a little more sour than what most people would enjoy, but I prefer it this way. Or if I had better tomatoes, then I would not need as much vinegar. Salt seems to enhance the flavor without having to add more sugar or vinegar.

Fish
I have only cooked fish maybe 5 times in my life. I do not even know what fish they were. My guess would be cod or tilapia.

I was at the supermarket and felt adventurous. I bought two kinds, Bluefish (local wild) and Basa fish (farmed) . I had absolutely no idea what kind of fish they are. I got 1 fillet of each which turned out to be 2 lbs of bluefish and 1 lb of basa fish.

I basically just water fried the basa fish. 5 minutes on one side at medium heat (lvl 7 for my stove), then flipped 5 minutes on the other side. I ate this with rice and turned out very nice for me. Very light texture compared to the blue fish.

For the bluefish, I cooked half the fillet. I used the same process as the basa fish. Fortunately, I am used to eating fish because there is a bone in the center part of the filet (later I found it is only in certain segments). The bluefish was much meatier. I tried to look up fishy taste, but I think it tastes a bit fishier too but not in a foul smelling way. It is a taste that I would associate more with a fish market. It tastes a little drier than the basa so I'm not sure if I overcooked it. I still enjoyed the fish though. The texture is a little like cooked salmon but different taste.

I cooked the second part and experimented with ginger, salt, and pepper. I cut the fillet into several segments and used different ratios on each piece. I still have not quite figured out what ginger does to the food. I either do not taste it or it is too strong. In this case, I could not taste it with the fish. I added it to the top of the fish, maybe next time I should leave it in the water or oil.  I am not sure that I like pepper on the fish. It tasted separate. Salt made it taste less fishy. I could probably add more than a sprinkle of salt to the fish next time. The last piece, I added after I cooked it to spaghetti sauce that I already had made before grocery shopping. I used a fork and broke it down into smaller bite-sized pieces. This turned out really well for both the fish and the pasta (which does not have meat in it).

Conclusion
I have a long ways to go with cooking. Feel free to give me any advice on how to start cooking.