Apathy Sketchpad

Today, we installed Windows XP Service Pack 2, which was labelled by Microsoft as being a download of 73 to 279 megabytes, which is a wonderfully specific figure. When it finished installing, it asked to reboot. Now, I was using the computer at the time and didn’t feel like rebooting, so I asked it not to. Fine; it didn’t reboot. But a few minutes later, a dialogue box appeared saying, effectively, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to reboot?”. I said no, and continued working. Not so very long after that the box appeared again. Two buttons: restart, and don’t restart. If there was a button for “don’t call me; I’ll call you” I didn’t see it. I finished up and rebooted.

I checked my GMail. When I tried to use a link, three things happened. None of them was the pop-up window I wanted to look at. First, a bar appeared across the top of IE explaining that the pop-up had been blocked and offering more options. Secondly, a dialogue box from GMail appeared saying “Grr!” (literally) and explaining that the pop-up had been blocked and suggesting I turn off my pop-up blocker. I couldn’t read that, though, because the third thing that happened was a dialogue box from IE saying (and again this is word-for-word what it said) “Did you notice the information bar?”.

Listen up, Microsoft! I am the boss of my own computer. I resent being told what to do by a machine.

Last night, as I wandered downstairs at 4AM, I was reflecting on the human brain. It seems to me that it is an amazing object, capable of bestowing on its owner a huge variety of emotions and feelings, however, I have noticed that not one of them is ‘just sleepy enough’. This is definitely on my wishlist for Brain 2.0. Think about it. Which of these phrases do you hear most often: “I had trouble sleeping” or “I should turn in; I have an early astart and anyway I’m nodding off a bit”? “I could barely stay awake” or “Luckily I was feeling pretty alert that day”? “I need some caffeine now” or “Oh, it’s such a beautiful morning I think I’ll go for a run”?

The feeling of “appropriately tired” will never be experienced by a human. If it was, the whole economy of Seattle would collapse beneath a million bankrupt coffee shops. The universe is set up to make sure this doesn’t happen. Observe: if you sleep too much it makes you tired. If you stay up all night you feel (if you’re anything like me) fine the next day. What sense does that make?

It almost happened to me last week. I was heading to my house (having just been sat in a hot train for three hours and walking home from Leeds station) and I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep. I thought, since my housemates were all at home over summer, I could just wander upstairs and collapse on my bed. When I got there, the universe being designed to prevent appropriate fatigue, I found a party. Apparently my new housemate had decided at the last minute to come up to Leeds and have her 21st here. It took me a few minutes and a can of Carlsberg to warm to this idea, but warm to it I did and before long I’d been introduced and I enjoyed myself a lot. For some reason one of her friends now thinks (by some incredible feat of mis-hearing) I’m called Gareth and I do Animal Studies. Before that, a girl who was introduced only as ‘The Bride’ got hit in the face by someone trying (and by all accounts succeeding) to get her attention, and as Mr. Tarantino has taught those of us who bothered to watch his latest films, that’s not a good idea.

I eventually went to bed at about half past two. I’d been tired at midnight, and I’d drunk depressants since then. I took a further hour to get to sleep.