FitBit

The unexamined life is not worth living sayeth Socrates.

I received a FitBit Flex fitness tracker for my birthday, I love it. This is not an endorsement, merely my one day experience.

 Amongst its thousand features, Fitbit is a modern wristband pedometer, measuring the number of steps taken daily, which then, from your inputs, computes distance traveled, calories burned, and overall activity level.  The data is then available for display and sharing on your phone or computer.  The top photo is my display, taken yesterday, which was a fairly typical day for me.  Sadists can add friends to their fitbit circle, so they can each compare and contrast their daily grind, goading slackers into better performance, fitness and overall virtuousness. I'm not that competitive.

One of the available measurements, the sleep tracker, will keep me up nights however.  When it's bed time, you tap Fitbit, FB signals nighty night, and off to slumberland you go.  Typically, we go to bed LATE (after 2) and one of the dogs wakes me at 8.  I put my head down, and am out until morning, or so I thought.

Sunday, we were tired from travel and went to bed early (11:25). It took me 2 minutes to fall asleep (typical), but was awakened 26 times.  I had no idea.  Somehow I lost almost 2.5 hours of sleep. A 70% sleep efficiency (sleep/time horizontal) sounds shamefully poor.

Some things in life you simply do not care to know, but I want to know where my sleep went 'cause I want it back.

Toad

what's on your powerbook?

Remember the cool early '90's "What's on your Powerbook" ads?  Most of us were flipping disks in and out of our PC's while the creative, the cool guys were schlepping their laptops wherever they went.

The question, What's on your Powerbook was answered usually by someone you'd heard of doing things that weren't on your computer.  Movie scripts, list of all the books or CD's in their collection, important phone numbers.  Remember this pre-AOL, pre-Internet.

Too many of we working stiffs used our PC solely for 1-2-3, or Wordstar.  It was unimaginable that we would waste disk space on letters!

Two  results of the "What's on your Powerbook" advertising campaign were that Apple proved that computers, and computer companies could be cool to real folk not just geeks, and

that computers weren't just business machines. Brilliant.

Today is Apple Computer's birthday. Founded April 1, 1976 by 2 young guys working out of their garage. Dreams can come true.

Toad