Getting a whole six hours sleep last night (pharmaceutically-induced, alas) was everything I dreamed it would be.

Anyway, just a few things I keep forgetting to review...

   
• Chilly Pad! A while back I was shopping for a soldier at AnySoldier.com (which I talk about here and here) when I was told about a product by Frogg Toggs called "Chilly Pad." It was billed as some kind of "cooling towel" that sucks the heat away via evaporation. That sounded like a load of crap to me, but who am I to deny a soldier something to make his life easier... especially if it only costs $12? Just for kicks, I ordered one for myself too.

Imagine my shock when, holy crap, it actually works!

Just pour some water on it and be amazed as the super-evaporation cells go to work, causing the darn thing to become cool to the touch! Amazing! For the ultimate test, I wore one around my neck on my trip to Waverly Hills where there was a heat index of 105° and was pretty darn comfortable the entire time. I now keep one in the trunk of my car and will always have them on hand to send with my AnySoldier care packages. Worth checking out! I got mine at Sports Authority, but I'm sure they're available other places too.

   
• Spotify! Europeans have been enjoying the music mega-service Spotify for years, but Americans have been left out. Until now. For those unfamiliar, Spotify has a massively huge database of music available for streaming. In order to get at it, you have to sign up for an account. Free accounts are ad-supported and have a song limit. Unlimited accounts ($4.99/mo.) are ad-free, allow unlimited songs to be streamed, and have added sharing and organizational features. Premium accounts ($9.99/mo.) have even more features (like the ability to listen offline and stream to your mobile phone) and better sound quality. Free accounts weren't available yet, so I went for the $4.99/mo. Unlimited package.

The biggest selling point of Spotify is that they have a plain crazy-huge collection of songs. They pretty much boast that they have any track you want...

Except they really don't. There are many songs both obscure and popular I wanted to listen to which aren't available. That alone is a bummer, but what makes it unbearable is that a big chunk of their library is karaoke versions of songs, and every frickin' search you make is literally overwhelmed with karaoke crap I have absolutely no interest in.

Here's an example. Today I wanted to listen to Miley Cyrus's The Time of Our Lives (don't judge until you listen to it... it's a nice song!). Spotify doesn't have it available. What they do have is four karaoke versions...

WTF? And it gets worse when you do more generic searches like "Hall & Oates" where you get all kinds of karaoke shit mixed in. After a while, I figured out that you can do restrictive searches to cut out karaoke. Well, most karaoke... not all karaoke songs are described properly...

This should be an option in preferences to get rid of karaoke tracks if you don't want to see them, but I couldn't find one so I have to instead add "-karaoke" to every search, which is a pain in the ass. Other irritations? The Spotify app is clutzy and unintuitive compared to the iTunes interface I'm used to. I've also experienced "outages" of a sort, where certain artists simply will not play. Today I tried for quite a while to listen to Weird Al's new Alpocalypse album without success.

As you might guess, my final verdict is more negative than positive. I will be happy to keep my free account for occasional ad-supported listening, but I'm going to cancel my $4.99 "Unlimited" membership. Perhaps eventually they'll address my issues and I'll find it worthwhile, but for now I'm giving it a pass.

   
• Suits! Burn Notice. White Collar. Covert Affairs. Fairly Legal. Psych. When it comes to successes, USA Network has a pretty good track record for airing some really good television shows. Because of this, I'm willing to give any new show they come up with a shot. Their latest, Suits, sounded good on paper... but I wasn't sure how it was going to play out on the screen...

The story premise is that of a very smart guy with a photographic memory, Mike Ross (played by Patrick J. Adams) who tries to escape his dicey past by going to work at a prestigious law firm. He passed the bar on a dare, but doesn't have a law degree. His new boss (played by Gabriel Macht) is impressed enough to hire him anyway. The result is an uneasy partnership that is beneficial to both of them, even if they have to hide Mike's true nature from everybody at the firm.

And it works.

It works very well.

The cast is fantastic (Gina Torres!), the writing is sharp, the stories are smart, and the show as a whole is entertaining. My only concern is how long they can keep the premise interesting. Will people eventually find out about Mike? Will his scary past catch up with him? In all honesty, it doesn't really matter, and I hope they don't keep hanging the show on them when there's no need to do so.

Right now? Highly recommended. Only time will tell if they can keep it that way.

   
• Fotopedia! If you're a fan of travel photography and have an iOS device, run... don't walk... to the iTunes Store and grab everything you can from Fotonauts. Their Fotopedia apps have always been great, but the new stuff they've been cranking out has been amazing. North Korea (free) and Dreams of Burma (free) are well worth your time... but their latest collaboration with National Geographic, Above France ($2.99) is stunning...

They work on iPhone but, obviously, have a better presentation on iPad. Highest possible recommendation.

   
And now... bed. And hopefully another night of half-way decent sleep.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning because I had work that needed to get done. It was an unavoidable consequence of all the technical difficulties that plagued me yesterday. Needless to say, it made for a very long day today.

Now that it's over and it's pushing midnight, all I want to do is sleep.

Or maybe write a blog entry.

Nah, I wanna sleep...

So if you will excuse me, I am going to crawl into a box of Advil PM and pass out now.

When captured by the enemy, soldiers are advised to sleep and eat whenever they can because they never know when either (or both) might be denied them.

While I would never compare my job to being a prisoner of war, the above advice has come in handy from time to time with my work (See? Graphic designers have it rough, people!). Well, not the food part, but definitely the sleep deprivation. I don't sleep that much to begin with, but when you're on-call for 31 hours straight and are guaranteed to be called to the job site several times... well, even a little sleep is hard to come by. So I grab an hour here and 20 minutes there, and try to be sane and somewhat comprehensible when reporting for duty.

But the real trick is getting rested enough that you feel comfortable driving. It's one thing to be sleep-walking on the job... it's quite another to be sleep-driving in a car.

Especially when you're in rural Georgia where wild deer love prancing around the roadways.

Last night on the way to Waffle House for a midnight dinner, a deer was standing in the middle of a dark country road with a 55 MPH speed limit. Even though I was driving just under 50 MPH because it was so dark, this still necessitated my slamming on the brakes to avoid getting a venison hood ornament. The deer, however, wasn't impressed and wandered off at a leisurely pace (Darwinism takes a vacation!).

On the way back, I had slowed to 45 MPH "just in case" and nearly hit TWO deer crossing that same road. Quick braking and a hard swerve avoided tragedy, but left me with an adrenaline rush which made getting any kind of sleep impossible for the next several hours.

But don't worry. When my job finally ended this afternoon, I managed to get three whole hours sleep before hacking together this blog entry, so I guess I'm back to normal again. Or as normal as a person can be who is an insomniac that craves human blood.

I should totally be a vampire.

Or, more appropriately, a zombie vampire!

A zombie vampire that eats deer who stand in the road!

Guess I should pack my suitcase now, seeing as how I'm leaving early tomorrow morning and all...

Tonight while watching television I fell asleep on the couch. Thinking that my body was finally willing to catch up on some much-needed sleep, I went and laid down in my bedroom around 8:30.

And promptly woke up at 10:17.

So now, on top of still being woefully behind in sleep, my internal clock is going to be messed up because I'm wide awake, and probably won't be getting any more sleep tonight. This is resoundingly bad news, because I start a series of back-to-back-to-back-to-back trips next week, and sleep even worse when I'm traveling. But no worries... I'm sure everything will be back to normal again by the end of August.

Just before I head to Europe and get all screwed up again.

Oh well. Insomnia is a great excuse to read through the incredible Wednesday Comics hardcover collection... again...

I sure hope that DC Comics does another series of Wednesday Comics... it's the most entertainment I've had with their characters in years. Many of the creators got really creative and experimental with their strips, and the payoff is a massive bucket of pure WIN! But even better than the uniqueness of it all is the FUN. So many of the stories are just plain fun which is exceedingly rare. I'd purchase every broadsheet edition plus the hardcover collection all over again just for Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner's Supergirl strip, where every panel is beautifully rendered... and funny...

If you love comics... or even if you used to love comics but haven't read them in years... here's your book. It originally ran for 12 consecutive Wednesdays with one page of each strip per issue (Batman, Deadman, Demon/Catwoman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Kamandi, Metal Men, Metamorpho, Sgt. Rock, Strange Adventures, Supergirl, Superman, Teen Titans, and Wonder Woman) all written and drawn by top industry talents. Amazon has it for $32, which is an absolute steal when you consider it's an over-sized 11x17" volume that runs 200 pages! Recommended!

After three restless hours of non-sleep, I got up verrrrry early this morning so I could trek over to Seattle to begin an incredibly chaotic week. While here in the city, I'm literally working on four projects at the same time, all while trying to stay focused on the main task at hand. I've all but given up trying to get caught up on sleep, and have just resolved to become a zombie...

It sucks, but I've had worse.

The winter storm that was promised yesterday finally arrived this morning. It didn't end up being as bad as forecast, but I still had to scrape 5-inches of snow off my car when it was time to go home tonight. Tomorrow is supposed to taper off to "Wintry Mix," which is not as fun as it sounds. The rain/snow combo piles on the streets and makes driving a nasty business. It's all too easy to get trapped by the slush accumulation and find yourself being pulled off the road. When that happens your brakes are practically useless, so your only option is to hold onto your balls, enjoy the slide, and hope you don't end up in a wreck. I'll take snow over "Wintry Mix" any day...

And right now I'll gladly take sleep over insomnia, but I have about as much a chance of that as I do controlling the weather.

If only I had an off-switch, my life would be so much easier.

Okay then! I got up at 4:00am yesterday so I could get to work on time... it's now almost 10:00pm a day-and-a-half later... that's 42 hours awake. I might have dozed off a couple times, but it didn't amount to any real sleep. That's tough, because even total insomniacs like myself require rest from time to time.

I never could have made it without the distraction of Twitter to keep me from giving up. Whether it was comparing notes of sleeplessness with @TheMuskrat or joking around about Twitter spam with @AnissaMayhew, it was pretty sweet that I was able to find Twitter peeps out there willing to help me stay awake.

Other than an incident where Jesus appeared to me in a bowl of Apple Jacks cereal, I managed to make it through the 42 sleep-deprived hours with my brain pretty much intact.

I now have 8 hours until I have to pack up my stuff and head back to the airport. I'm hoping a good chunk of that will be spent catching up on sleep, but I'm doubtful.

For reasons I can't even guess, I'm not at all tired.