Sunday, March 2, 2008

Unrestful Night

I didn't sleep that well last night - kept waking up a lot. At first I thought - did I drink too much regular Coca-Cola during the day (my wife and I had lunch out since my son was away with scouts, then we had dinner out after church).

About 6:30am I realized wha the problem was...my new cell phone!

See, I had an old Sony Ericsson for a few years now. It was fine - it allowed me to get calls, etc. But texting could be hard (having to hit keys many times to get the right letters, etc.). And the battery was lucky to hold a charge for two days max. So after lunch, my wife took me to the AT&T store to replace the phone.

What I got was a Blackjack II (ironic, I just realized, because I had a Champions role-playing game hero character named Blackjack many years back - go figure). Now, this phone has an easier QWERTY keyboard for texting (nice) while still being relatively compact. It also has Internet capabilities and such, so I got a media package to go with the phone too. Another thing it can do is be set up to retrieve email from accounts - another nice feature.

Here's where I screwed up and led to my loss of sleep.

I didn't spend enough time on the settings, so everytime I got an email at my AOL account the phone would ding. I got at least six emails between 10pm and 6:30am.

And I'm a light sleeper. That single ding is enough to wake me from a sound sleep.

So, now the phone is set to be silent when email arrives. And I'll be able to get a good night's sleep. That'll teach me for being a guy and not reading the manual.

2 comments:

Michael O'Connell said...

Heh. That's hilarious. I use this wake-up call service. It's a cheap monthly subscription, and when you want a little extra insurance on getting up, you get on their web site and click a time on the day of the week for it to call you (has snoozes and everything). A couple of Saturdays and days off I've forgotten what I've left checked, and just when I think I'm going to get to sleep in, there goes the phone ringing at 6am.

Man, I used to be able to handle lack of sleep better. I was out playing poker Saturday night until 3:30am. Got to sleep around 5am. I used to be able to handle that just fine on weekendx. Not anymore! I was a mess yesterday. I'm old! I need my sleep!

Martin Maenza said...

Mike, I hear you. I need my seven hours of sleep easily every night or I'm a mess the next day. Getting old sucks. But it is a nice excuse for those afternoon naps. ;)