Month: August 2016

How I Beat Insomnia

On By Michel McDonaldIn HealthLeave a comment

insomnia

Insomnia sucks. You lie in bed in a dark silent room with your eyes closed hoping to drift off to sleep, but all you can think about is new ways to beat the bad guys in your favorite video game, or how you would design your tiny house layout. Maybe you are thinking of something that someone said and it is bugging the heck out of you. Perhaps you are having flashbacks of a time when you were treated poorly by someone or a group of people. Or fill in the blanks.

That’s been my problem for several years. I remember a time when I could barely keep my eyes open after midnight when Ghost Hunters was doing a live ghost hunt on Halloween, but for the last few years, staying up past midnight was a non issue. In fact, I was lucky if I was going to bed by 5am. Insomnia has been awful for me for a very long time. I was taking Ambien for more than 10 years, then the insurance stopped paying for it, or any other sleeping pills for that matter. I’ve been buying over the counter sleeping pills. Your body becomes immune after taking so many sleeping pills. One of my doctors told me to take Benadryl, and I did, but that too stopped making me sleep. I thought about buying NyQuil, but that can get expensive.

So how did I beat insomnia? I bought a FitBit earlier this year, and it has an alarm on it that vibrates to wake you up. I decided to start using it, so I would set the alarm for 8am. The first couple of days I would wake up and 8am, but press the button and go back to sleep. Then I decided to get up at 8am, but by 10am I was sleepy again, so I would take a nap. I tried staying awake as long as I could, and try as I might I would still fall asleep after noon around 1pm or 2pm. I tried my best to stay awake, so when I would find myself drifting off to sleep, I would sit up and drink something cold and get up and walk around. Sometimes I would get in the shower because washing your body usually wakes you up.

It might have taken me 2 weeks to finally get to the point where even though the alarm is set for 8am, I wake up at 6am. Of course I try to go back to sleep and wake up at 8, but there are days where I’m so awake that I just can’t possibly go back to sleep, so I just get up. Now when I’m watching my shows at night, I’ll start drifting off to sleep at like 9 or 10pm and I’m asleep all night until 6 or 8am. No more sleeping pills.

We have a new doctor who is Hindu and he told me I could try meditation and I have tried meditation in the past, but I’ve gotten to the point where it just puts me to sleep. I mean like during the day. I think trying to meditate at night when you are trying to fall asleep is a great idea, but I don’t need to meditate to fall asleep anymore since my body has gotten used to calling it a day by 9pm. So I don’t need medication, nor do I need meditation to sleep.

It’s a wonderful feeling when you are able to fall asleep at a decent hour, despite the fact that I don’t have a job to go to in the morning.

Going back to Planet Fitness

On By Michel McDonaldIn Exercise, gym, UncategorizedLeave a comment

planet fitness

We had to stop going to the gym last month because both of us got really sick. When I say we or us, I am referring to myself and my partner. I was diagnosed with HIV in 1991 and then upgraded to AIDS in 1994, so when I get sick, I’m not just sick with a 24 to 48 hour bug, when I get sick, I’m down for a month or longer. I literally have no immune system. My viral load has been undetectable for years and my t-cells have been pretty high in the 900’s for awhile now, but I still suffer when I get sick.

The virus from my cold is long gone, but I’m still coughing. I was coughing up and blowing mucus out of my nose even though I had no nasal or chest congestion at all. That first couple of days when we first got sick last month we just so happened to have a doctor’s appointment and the doctor checked my lungs by listening to my back while making me breathe in and out, in and out, in and out… He didn’t hear anything, so he told me I would be fine. I asked him for antibiotics or at least cough syrup, and he refused to give me anything. He didn’t want to give me medicine for something I don’t have. Well, that’s fine and dandy if I was only going to be sick for a couple days, but I was literally sick for a month.

So we could have gone back to the gym a couple of weeks ago, but we wanted to wait until it was fully out of my system. I would hate to give anyone else my germs and then get them sick.

Going back to the gym after being absent for a month is basically like starting over from scratch. Whatever exercises we did today will probably hurt in the morning and for the next couple of days. I mean, I don’t feel anything now, but then again we just came home from the gym about an hour ago, so who knows what may happen later tonight or when I wake up tomorrow. We’ll see.

The surgeon who operated on my broken leg in December told me to do leg exercises at the gym, and of course take my time and not try to force myself to bend my leg on the leg machines and then hurt myself. My leg is in agony, so I will have to be very careful when I do the leg exercises. I haven’t spoken to a trainer, but I already know which machines I want to start using… all of them! LOL No, but seriously, I will have to make an appointment so she can write down our day 3 exercises for leg day. She gave us 2 days for our upper body, and my partner only wants to go 3 days a week, so legs will all have to be done on the last day of the week.

I’m not expecting to lose any weight, I just want to exercise to feel healthy. You see, I have a feeling it’s when you stop trying is when you will actually lose weight. I say that because just about every time I try to lose weight, I end up gaining weight. So I’m using reverse psychology… on myself lol. Hey, whatever works right?

Xbox One Controller for Minecraft PC

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Minecraft PC.png

I was feeling good about this Xbox One controller to play games on my Windows 10 PC. I was able to play Terraria with no problem, I played Lego World’s, both from Steam, and I was even able to play Minecraft Windows 10 Edition Beta with no problem. Well, I was having one problem, the problem was getting Minecraft Windows 10 Edition Beta to load. The darn game just wouldn’t load properly.

So I thought ok, what now? I mean, I do have Minecraft PS4 and Minecraft PS Vita, and I even have Minecraft Pocket Edition on my Nook HD+. Now I have Minecraft Windows 10 edition, which is basically a mobile version of Minecraft, but I couldn’t play it, so I thought screw it, I wanted to buy the PC edition anyway, so I bought it and wouldn’t you know the Xbox One game controller wouldn’t work. How frustrating is that?

joy to keyI went to Google and asked how I can play Minecraft PC with a Xbox One controller and the first couple things that came up were videos. One said to install the Xbox One drivers, which I don’t need to do since my computer recognizes the controller immediately. I have yet to feel a rumble, so perhaps I will need to install that anyway. Next they said to downloaded JoyToKey and the guy had all the commands in the description for his video. It didn’t have every key correct though, so I was able to find the keyboard/mouse command so I could fix that problem. Now the Xbox controller works perfectly, except for the inventory. I can go into the inventory, I just have to use the mouse to craft with, but that’s fine. My only concern was that I was able to use the game controller to play the game.

Now, the only other problem is how slow this game is on my computer. Minecraft Windows 10 Edition Beta is much faster to load and gameplay is a fast as on my PS4 and PS Vita. I’ve already adjusted some of the settings so some of the graphics aren’t too high of a quality, but it’s still slow as hell. Perhaps one of these days I will reformat my computer (ugh) so I can reinstall games again so my computer will be faster. One of these days…

UPDATE: Ok so installing the Xbox One driver was an extremely bad idea. I think the driver is specifically for people who want to use bluetooth. The Xbox One logo on the controller is normally lit, but after I installed the driver, that light turned off. It’s a button, so I pressed the button and the light would blink on and off for probably a minute, then it would shut off. I loaded Terraria and the controller was non-responsive. I went into the Device Manager and uninstalled the driver, then rebooted my computer, and waited with anticipation for that light to come on. I actually started to panic when it didn’t come on because I thought great, now I have to reformat this thing, but then the light came on and I played Terraria and it was fine. WHEW!

Xbox One Game Controller for Windows

On By Michel McDonaldIn EverQuest, GamesLeave a comment

Xbox One Controller for Windows

I’ve been playing computer games on my Windows PC since the late 90’s using keyboard and mouse with pretty much success. I bought a game controller some time in the late 90’s that never really worked right. I’m sure it worked, I just couldn’t figure out how to make it work for the games I was trying to play.

In 2002 I was reunited with my aunt in Simi Valley after more than a decade of no contact, and my cousin introduced me to a new style of gaming that I wasn’t even aware existed. MMORPG which stands for massively multiplayer online role playing game. This was literally the first time I’d ever played a game where there were other people also playing. Mind blowing! That game was called EverQuest. I tried using the game controller for EverQuest, but I could never get it to work.

So recently I bought a game called Terraria from Steam which I already own on my PS4 and PS Vita, but I bought it on my PC because I wanted to see how it is to play on another format. Playing EverQuest with the keyboard and mouse were easy, but playing Terraria with the keyboard and mouse was difficult. I would place blocks in places I didn’t want to place them, and then when I tried to break them with the pick axe, I would end up breaking the pieces I actually wanted to keep.

I received this awesome Xbox One game controller for Windows that I bought on Amazon and got in the mail 2 days later with Amazon Prime shipping. I can actually place blocks in the place I want them to be, and I can remove blocks I want to remove without breaking blocks I want to keep. It’s so weird that I’m super excited to play a game with a game controller lol.

One of my other options was the Steam controller, but I read the reviews of those, which were terrible. I mean just terrible lol. Yes, it bears repeating. Many people said to just use a Xbox One controller. I wondered what about Xbox 360 controller, and many people said Xbox 360 controller works, but Xbox One controller is better. I don’t have the 360 controller to compare it to the Xbox One controller, so I’ll just have to take their word for it. I tried using my PS4 controller, but it didn’t work at all.

The Xbox One game controller for Windows that I bought came with a wire. There is an option to buy a USB , I’m just gonna say dongle. I don’t know if it’s the right word, but it sounds silly so I’m just gonna say dongle. There was an option to buy a USB dongle (LOL) to play wirelessly, but the Xbox One game controller doesn’t have a rechargeable battery, so you literally have to use 2 AA batteries that aren’t even included. LAME! I don’t care about playing wirelessly, and I’m not going to waste hundreds of dollars on batteries, so I can play with the wire.

The Xbox One game controller works with Minecraft as well as other Windows games. I considered if I bought a Steam controller, would it even work with the Xbox for Windows games? So I’m glad I bought the Xbox One controller. I haven’t tried EverQuest yet, but I would be interested to know if it works. I also used to play a game called Lord of the Rings Online, and I don’t know if it works there, but I’m sure it does. I have The Sims 3, and I tried loading that game, but it crashed after I waited literally for 10 minutes for it to load. I don’t have that much time to sit there wasting on a game to load. I have better things to do, like I don’t know, putting tape on my nose and attaching it to my forehead so I have a piggy nose.

I’m not going to switch over to Windows games because it annoys me how PC games crash all the time and how slow they are to play on my slow ass computer, I just wanted to have the option to play games on my computer with a game controller, and now I have the option.