David Beach's Blog

Sleep Apnea?

I finally spoke with my doctor today. After 3 weeks. It appears that I do have sleep apnea. Again it's not totally a rare thing, in fact a good percentage of people have minor apnea events when they sleep, but I guess I have it bad enough to need treatment. So bad news but good news. 

I have been so so tired during the day. I can barely think some days. But now, I hope the treatment helps.

The doc said that I stopped breathing up to 33 times an hour and for as long as 30 seconds at a time. That sounds nutso. I didn't get into a REM state either. I suppose that's bad. 

Now I need to be fitted with a cpap thing. It's a machine and mask that helps you breathe. It forces a little bit of air into your face or something that keeps your air passage open. Hopefully my insurance will cover it all.

By the way, the new typepad compose editor is much better. Works on Safari well. :)  

Oh and Yahoo is laying off a bunch of folks as expected. Though I imagine you know that already... I might comment on that pretty soon. Lots to say, just not sure when to say it.

Sleep Study

It's been too long since my last post. I used to update this constantly, but not so much lately. I blame twitter. Well I also blame Yahoo and 12seconds, but for other reasons. Twitter is a monkey on my back. So I'm going to slow down my tweets and get into recovery.

A week ago I went to a sleep study. I've had lots of trouble over the past few years with alertness and getting any kind of normal, decent sleep. I may have sleep apnea, which is somewhat common, but not always diagnosed. Sleep apnea is a condition where you stop breathing for a period of time until your brain freaks out and wakes you up. It's a constant cycle of going to sleep, stop breathing, and waking up. Except that you don't really know it's happening. The problem is that you never get into a deep, restful sleep. I don't know if I have it, but that what the sleep study is for. We'll see. Part of me hopes that I don't have it, but part of me hopes that I do. Having it would mean that I can get treatment and maybe get a real night's sleep. It might help with all sorts of things. I don't know. I'll let you know.

It takes place in a doctor's office with beds. They hook wires all over your head, face, chest, and legs. The wires are connected to a box that sends signals to a computer which measures your sleep activity. You spend the night at this place and are supposed to sleep while you look like you're plugged in to the matrix. I did sleep, pretty much as normal, but the environment was odd and surreal.

I don't yet have the results, so I don't know what they found. I hope to hear within a week or so. I just want this over with. I'm tired of being tired.

What to write?

I've started and stopped a ton of blog posts during the past month. I don't know why. I either can't finish a thought, or don't have time... or it's a little of both.

This election has got me all crazy. This country has gotten me all crazy. I wish I didn't care, and I wish that those that don't care paid more attention. I have to believe that the majority of the people who go to the polls will do the right thing, because I can't believe that there are that many frightened millionaires out there who'd pull the lever for McCain.

I think that music albums should be 6 songs or less. If I were going to start a record label again, all my releases would be that short. They'd be cheaper, smaller downloads, and we could release more, more often.

I may have sleep apnea. I'm not a fan. I go to a sleep study on october 1. I wake up every now and then gasping for air.

Friday is Talk Like A Pirate Day and 12seconds is celebrating!

Childhood Dreams

What were your childhood dreams? What did you want to be when you grew up?

I think these questions or their answers stay with you all your life in some form or fashion. I've been thinking about mine recently. What were my childhood dreams?

My first memory of what I wanted to be was an Italian. I think because I liked spaghetti. Then for some reason I wanted to be a dentist. This is still a mystery. Maybe because I went to one. Those were preschool thoughts.

When I started to seriously think about it, as seriously as a child does, there was a space theme. Pretty common for someone born in the sixties ('69). I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go to the moon or walk in space or anything as long as it was out of our atmosphere. Then I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. One of those guys that sat in mission control smoking Kool Cigarettes or pipes pushing buttons and speaking into headsets. I thought that might be a back way to get to space. Then I had dreams of becoming an astronomer. If I couldn't go to space, then perhaps I could stare at it every night. I'm realizing now that I had a tendency to get more and more practical for some reason.

Star Wars, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. changed my life. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to work for Industrial Light and Magic. I needed to be a part of that. I needed to make my own magic. Those films were so wonderful. ILM was an obsession. I drew sketches of ships. I made models and masks, I studied storyboards. I loved "making of" documentaries and books. Motion control photography, go-motion animation, steadycams, blue screens, sound effects. I told myself that I wanted to act and I'd become an actor by working behind the scenes, but really I wanted to be on a crew. I wanted to pull the lens or troubleshoot an action sequence.

I finally decided that I should be a cinematographer. I'd go to film school and study Nestor Almendros or Gordon Willis or Haskell Wexler or Michael Ballhaus or even Barry Sonnefeld. But the Internet got in the way and here I am.

Here is a list of some of my childhood dreams:
1. Go into space
2. be a baseball player/hit a homerun/do something with baseball
3. Work for ILM or George Lucas/Make a special effects movie
4. Be in a band
5. Live in Europe
6. Invent something
7. Be an artist
8. Be an actor
9. Join a motorcycle gang
10. Be an astronomer

I had others. Some were more fleeting. But many are still with me. Sometimes I wonder why I can't or am not doing any of them. Are we told to forget our childhood dreams? Are we told to grow up? Is that what's expected?

I live across the street from a country firehouse. It's a training station as well. Right now I'm looking over and seeing the new recruits gathered and learning about whatever it is they learn. I wonder how many of them wanted to be a "fireman". I wonder how many of them are fulfilling their childhood dreams. I hope all of them. That would be cool.

Google Me - Movie

Reblogging from Laughing Squid

"laughingsquid   “Google Me” is a documentary by Jim Killeen who Googled himself & then traveled the world meeting other Jim Killeens http://twurl.nl/y6ef2b            ...     8 minutes ago from web"

I had this same idea a while ago... Since working for the people search engine Wink, I've found a surprising number of other David Beach's. Of course I google myself like most people, in fact one of the main reasons I have this blog is so that when someone "googles" me, I come up first. Anyway, there are a bunch of interesting people named David Beach. Way more interesting than me. There's David Beach the hypnotist/actor. David Beach the Stanford professor. David Beach the SETI researcher in New Zealand. David Beach the English professor. David Beach the environmentalist. David Beach the New Zealand poet (what's up with New Zealand?). David Beach the sociologist. David Beach the horticulturalist. And David Beach the other actor who starred in UrineTown.

I wanted to make a movie called "David Beach - The Movie" starring David Beach, David Beach, David Beach, David Beach, David Beach, etc. Directed by David Beach. But then I thought it would be way too narcissistic. Since this guy Jim Killeen has done it, I guess the idea is shot. Oh well. It's probably for the best.

Radio Silence

I think I'm going to go into radio silence for a bit. Nothing against you. You are awesome. It's me. I'm getting tired of the scene. Twitter is totally getting me down. It's losing its luster. I'm nearly at 1,000 tweets and that might be enough for a while. I don't know who I'm doing it for... i'm not getting much out of it that's for sure. It all seems so self indulgent. LOOK AT ME! (Please don't think that I think that people shouldn't use twitter, twitter is awesome, it's just the way i feel at the moment.)

I like my friends on Twitter... I try to keep it to people I know and care about. I like to see what they are doing. But those people don't use it that much.

Blogging is the same. I have lots to say about stuff. I've been working in the Internet industry since 1993, so I know what I'm doing, but I don't always feel like taking the time to write about it. I'd rather watch my boy play baseball or hike with my daughter. I can blog about that, but then I'd have to be clever. That gets tiring.

I hope you forgive my silence. I may pop up every now and then. I may still tweet every so often. But I'm cooling off on all of this noise so I can focus on some important stuff.

Thanks for understanding.

Love,
beach

Stuff on my mind..

lots of stuff going on, right? As usual I suppose.

• My new gig is one meeting after another. I have pre-meeting meetings and post-meeting meetings. It's all good. I just want to get my hands dirty.
• Having opening day in Japan sux. It is wrong. I love Japan and I love the fact that the Japanese people love baseball, but disrupting the sport like that is a bad idea. 3AM games on the west-coast?
• With that said, the A's split and could have taken both games from the "mighty Red Sox".
• Hey Travis Buck... take some pitches. Don't start the season swinging at the first pitch. Work the count man. Slow down.
• Congratulations to Sol and Brooke for having their new baby boy X (no name yet).

I thought I had more to say... i guess not.
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Now playing: The Raconteurs - Consoler Of The Lonely
via FoxyTunes   

Recent Activity

Last night was the 2nd Santa Cruz Geek Dinner. It was another success. The mayor (Ryan Coonerty) showed up, which was a good sign. Thanks to Sean Tario, Margaret Rosas, Sol Lipman, and all the other folks that helped organize it and attended. Now all we need to do is find something else to do with each other than eat. That co-working space would be a start. We're going. We'll see.

Speaking of which. I visited my friend Vishy Kuruganti, co-founder of Graspr. They have a few cubes at PlugandPlayTechCenter. That place is wild. It's packed with over 100 early stage start ups and there's room for more. Inside, the building is colorful and fragrant. Scented candles abound. I also saw Andrew Eisner of Retrevo there. It's quite the scene. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing, but I can see the appeal.

This weekend is about catching up. I have some work stuff and home stuff to tackle. Wash Car is number one on my list. The Prius is trashed. I haven't washed it since September. I hope the weather remains nice.

Gearing Up

Lots going on here in the land of purple and yellow. I've had many people ask me what I think or how I feel about it all. So here is my response: I have no control over what happens. And since I have no control, none, zilch, zero, I have no opinion one way or the other about the news. If Jerry Yang (CEO of Yahoo! not the poker player) asked me what I thought, then I might have to reconsider this position, but until then, there's nothing I can do. I can only take care of myself. So that's what I'm doing.

Vote For Obama: Yes We Can!

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