First impression using the Sleeptracker: I’m up at 6:41am and I didn’t feel the need to “snooze”. Sure, I could have gone back to sleep without a lot of effort, but as far as getting up goes I really feel fine – better than I normally do when getting up in the morning.

Last night was a restless night too. The Sleeptracker recorded 16 almost awake moments over the course of the night. I kept tossing and turning all night long and I remember waking up in the middle of the night and thinking to myself, “This is one hell of a night to test this damn watch!”

But it worked!

The real proof will be in its ability to continue to work – night after night – but so far it’s off to a good start!

My Sleeptracker arrived today! It doesn’t look bad either – it’s a rather “sporty” model that’s extremely easy to read.

The watch came nicely packaged in a “retail” style box that flipped open. Inside was the watch itself and a short instruction packet. The instructions are very clear and self explanatory and I really had the watch pretty much figured out before I even cracked open the instruction manual. It did provide some tips – like recommendations for setting the optimum wakeup window and how to cycle through the nightly data points and see that they were recorded as.

Tonight will be the trial run as to how well (or badly) the technology actually works. I’m extremely excited to see if it lives up to the manufacturer’s claims and if it doesn’t I’ll be extremely excited to see how I can claim a refund through their 30-day refund policy! The 30-day money back guarantee is from the date of shipment – not the date expected to be received. That means that the clock started ticking for me on March 25th – no pun intended!

Here you can see the watch on my arm and get an idea of its size. It’s plenty large enough as far as watches go – not at all puny or small. My biggest fear is that the button on the front will be easily depressed. It’s the “set” button, and I’ve read one review online that it’s a bit delicate and easy to accidentally depress. I will say this; I was laying on the couch tonight and I did not feel like I was even coming close to depressing the button.

I’ll post updates as I use it and see how well it really works!

Friday night, as I was preparing to leave, Mike came to my desk and asked if I was staying to help in the warehouse. I had no idea what he was talking about and told him as much. He said that some people were going over to our nearby warehouse to help get some emergency orders out the door for a large client, and asked if I could help out.

I said, “okay…” thinking it might take an hour or two. When we actually arrived at the warehouse and saw the amount of orders and product we needed to get out the door I was dumbfounded! It wasn’t an hour or two we ended up putting in, but seven hours and forty-five minutes of work!

Yes, you read that right! We worked from 5pm until 12:45pm picking, staging and loading orders onto the trucks to get the orders out of the warehouse. And we were green in the warehouse – we’re a bunch of desk jockeys; we had no real idea what we were doing – but we were doing it anyway!

It was interesting to see the progress we made from the beginning of the evening to the end of the evening; the first order we staged looked just terrible. The pallets were stacked all “wonky” and they really varied in their height and consistency. By the end of the night we were doing much better though. Our pallets looked better and the consistency and quality of the pallets were much better.

I also learned I have a hidden talent – something that I can fall back on in case I.T. ever runs dry. I can drive a fork lift. Granted it’s not a terribly difficult task, but I seemed a natural at it, and I spent much of the night zipping among the racks, grabbing pallets with wild abandon and whisking them to where they were needed, waiting for new product to be added and then whisking them to the staging area for the final count. Then I would load the trucks, a delicate affair, taking care not to damage the product, the pallets or the trailer.

It was also very interesting to get a very personal view of the warehouse side of operations. I knew what happened in the warehouse from a very high level; orders are sent down and pick plans generated, the warehouse staff picks the orders and stages the items to be loaded onto trucks. Finally the orders are loaded on trucks and rushed out to enter the great American supply chain. Neat and simple.

Well it’s not really all that neat and simple. First off, you really have to know what the heck you’re doing in the warehouse. You have to be able to decipher the pick plan, you have to be able to figure out the item conversions (which proved difficult several times over during the night). You have to know where your product is in the warehouse – and in a one hundred thousand square foot warehouse there are a lot of places product can be hiding! You have to have a good plan for staging your orders and you need to have some skill at building a solid and consistent pallet (in terms of items, weight and size). You need to know how to load a truck, how to position the weight and how to do it all without breaking anything. You also have to be efficient and quick to get all the orders out of the warehouse on time, each and every day.

This doesn’t even take into consideration the arrival of goods and the unpacking and receiving that is happening (usually at the same time). And when you’re finally finished you get to go home and look forward to coming in and doing the exact same thing day after day – there’s not much variation in your day.

So while I’m not sure I would want to work in the warehouse all night every Friday (especially after working all day in the office) it turned out to be a very interesting experience and one that helps me understand a very important function of the business better.

At first I was frustration and a little put out that I had to sacrifice my Friday night to pull orders. But since I’m not the kind of person who just says “no” when help is needed I put on my best attitude and launched into the task at hand. At the end of the evening I realized I learned quite a bit about the business, had some fun doing it, and came away with a much greater appreciation for the job our warehouse staff really does.

I think everyone should trade places once in a while to help them understand all the processes that keep a business ticking.

I’ve decided that I need to take better care of myself and this includes watching more carefully the food I eat. This is probably the least fun part of eating out every meal for lunch (hey, we have to get out of the office for a little each day or we’ll go crazy).

Well today Arby’s was suggested. Now, I like Arby’s and I figured that with their “Market Fresh” sandwitches I could find something that wasn’t terrible for me to put into my body.

So off to Arby’s we went!

I ordered up a Southwest Chicken Wrap and was a bit surprized at how small it looked. Compared to the roast beef sandwitches it was positivly tiny! But I decided I was being good for me so if I was still hungry later in the day I would hunt down some fruit.

Back at the office I ventured onto Arby’s web site to see exactly how good I had been! I was shocked to find out that my meager little wrap contained 550 Calories and 30 grams of fat (with 9 grams coming from saturated fat)!

As I scanned the nutrition page I found I could have had a Giant Roast Beef for only 450 Calories and 19 grams of fat (9 grams saturated fat). I will say, in its defense, the Southwest Chicken Wrap is the “healthiest” of the wraps.

Now I know that fast food isn’t “good” for you, but Arby’s has done a good job promoting these sandwitches as “fresh” and “just like you make at home” which in my mind would translate into a sandwitch that isn’t nutritionally terrible for you.

Those marketing scalawags have won again, equating “fresh” with “healthy” when it really is neither.

I should know better - you almost never can have your cake and eat it too…

Mmmmmm…cake……

I hate getting up in the morning. I mean I really hate hearing the alarm clock go off, dragging me out of my peaceful slumber. I’m half-asleep and pawing for the “snooze bar” and the five minutes of blissful sleep it provides.

My problem is that I keep pawing at the snooze bar, over and over and over. There are some mornings where I just keep “snoozing” until I glance at my watch and realize how horribly late I am running. And you know what? That’s just a lousy way to start your day. You get that feeling in the pit of your stomach, you know you’ve screwed up by over sleeping and there is just no way you’ll be able to step-and-fetch fast enough to get where you need to be on time.

I *hate* that feeling.

Every now and then I’ll catch myself waking up and feeling great. Full of energy and ready to start the days. This happens pretty infrequently, but when it does it’s just great! I’ve tried timing my sleep to try to figure out at what point I feel completely refreshed like this and so far I’ve not found a solid pattern. Every time I think I have it nailed and I start keeping a new sleeping pattern I find out I don’t have it “nailed” after all.

Thus began my search to find something to address my hatred of the alarm clock and of waking up feeling like my head is full of mud.

In my search I found several references to an odd little gadget called The Sleeptracker. It’s a watch that you wear at night (or all the time I suppose, it’s a watch). This watch senses your sleep patterns and determines when you are most awake in your target wake-up window. Once it’s made this determination, it rouses you from your (very light at this point) slumber to face the day recharged and full of energy.

Hogwash! New age quackery! How can a watch sense your sleep patterns and wake you at the best possible time? Foolishness!

Yes, this is what went through my head while reading their web site. I was intrigued by the possibility however, so I spent some time Googling for this particularly pricey gadget to see what other people had to say.

And I was surprised to find out that other people generally had positive things to say about the Sleeptracker - one site in particular rated it a 10 out of 10.

So I thought about it some, and read their web site some more and my eye kept creeping back to the “30 day guarantee” on their web site. So I decided to give it a try. I desperately needed a better way to get up in the morning and this promised to deliver that and be a nifty gadget at the same time. I figured if it didn’t work, I could always send it back for a refund.

I am now tracking my package, eagerly awaiting its arrival and hopefully the end of my dreadful alarm clock. I will post a review of the product here as soon as it’s in my hot little hands.

Isn’t this a wonderful time we live in? We can use science - coupled with gadgets - to outsmart ourselves!

This weekend Congress held an emergency session to argue Terry Schiavo’s case. The House passed the bill on a 203-58 vote in an emergency Sunday session.

The Senate approved the bill Sunday by voice vote and President Bush is ready to sign the measure which permits a federal review of Terry’s case.

Terry’s situation is one that’s emotionally charged no doubt, and no matter which side of the issue you fall on you’re likely to have strong feelings. But what happened to states’ rights?

In our PC world we seem to place a higher emphasis on what makes everyone “feel good” more than what’s right or wrong. There is no more black or white - everything is a mind numbing shade of grey and we have to make grand gestures to ensure we don’t offend anyone. So much so that we’ve escalated an issue that is unarguably a states’ right issue to the floor of our federal government where it has no business being discussed!

Regardless of whether I or anyone else believes Terry should live or die, the decision should be escalated to the Florida supreme court and no higher. This is an issue where no matter the outcome a large number of people will be unhappy. So let’s put political correctness aside and put the power back where it belongs, with the state.

Yes, it’s a sad story; yes, I feel terrible for Terry and her family, but this is not an issue for the domain of our federal government. It’s a slippery slope, folks. Today they’re taking states’ rights for Terry regardless of the merit. What rights will they take tomorrow in your name?

Tonight the house across the street from us caught fire (thankfully no one was hurt). But we were out front right from when the first fire truck rolled up and we were able to watch the firefighters gear up and enter the house.

And you know what? It was pretty unnerving. I’ve always been a touch of a pyro. I used to make hair-spray torches when I was in grade school, and I graduated to home made film canister “fireworks” in high school - I’ve always liked fire. I always thought that it would be no big deal to enter a buring building and put out a fire.

That is, until I actually saw a house fire close up. When the trucks pulled up, there was a little black “soot” around the top of the garage door. In the five minutes it took the fire fighters to put on their gear and start their entry, the smoke was just rolling out of the garage and from the eaves of the house! By the time they actually started ripping the garage door down the smoke was just boiling out of the garage. All of the fire fighters were running full oxygen systems just so they could breath in the house. As they came through the garage, you could just barely see their flash lights through the smoke.

It was not something I think I could just go “do” (like I previously thought I could). My hat is off to the people who do this every day. It’s probably something that you would eventually get used to, but seeing it, literally in my front yard, made me realize just how dangerous fires really are.

You might have read about Nikon’s newish iTTL technology introduced in their D70 D-SLR. Until reciently only the $350 Nikon SB-800 and its lesser-powered sibling the SB-600 offered full iTTL compatibility - including the awesome iTTL wireless mode.

Some months ago Sigma introduced their $200, iTTL compatible EF-500 DG Super iTTL flash. It was the only non-Nikon flash out there that was fully compatible with the D70 in TTL mode…and it supported iTTL wireless flash. At only $200 I knew I had to have one.

I ordered my first EF-500 back in mid November and right away I was impressed. It was definitely the most advanced flash I had ever used (coming from a Vivitar Auto 2000 it didn’t take much!). I received my flash and proceeded to use it attached to my camera all through the holidays. I used it with excellent results during Thanksgiving and Christmas and for various product shots here and there. I played with it a few times in wireless mode using the D70 in commander mode, but I was less than impressed with the results - it would work in a pinch, but for any “real” work I would just drag out the studio strobes.

I was receiently tasked with shooting a wedding and one of the things I needed was some extra light and I wanted to go with no cords and no power plugs strung across the chapel. So I decided to give a second EF-500 a try, slaving them together in wireless iTTL mode. At $200 for the second flash unit, I figured I couldn’t go wrong and if it just outright didn’t work I could always return it and drag out my studio strobes and tape all the cords down; not an elegant solution, but an effective one.

The second EF-500 arrived today and I was eager to see how well it would work. I placed on EF-500 on the camera in master mode and I set the other EF-500 up on a light stand, bouncing into an umbrella, in slave mode. I popped a few shots only to realize that the second flash (the slave) wasn’t firing. I fiddled a bit and popped off a few more shots - no second flash.

It turns out that the manual for the Sigma EF-500 is terrible and just guides you enough to almost get things working. I had to sit down and read the section on wireless flash two or three times before I figured out what I was missing. After another 10 minutes of going over the manual and fiddling with the settings, I had the flashes setup properly. It’s not super difficult, but the first time you get all the flashes into wireless mode is a bit tricky (I’m sure it will get easier each time).

Feeling more confident, I popped off a shot and then chimped the camera’s LCD to see what I had - success! I had a nicely light shot of a pile of crap in my office! Feeling energized, I whirled around and popped off a few more shots around the room and each one was nicely light and balanced. So far things were working great, but the lighting was a little flat. Could I get some variation in the flashes to get more depth to my shots? After spending another 30 seconds looking at the manual and fiddling with the flashes I found out that, yes, you can make each flash vary in its output. The best part is that you can make each flash vary in its output right from the master flash on the camera. So there is no running around setting each flash individually, you just hit a button and choose to increase or decrease the flash ratio between all your flash units.

I grabbed a model - okay, I grabbed my somewhat unwilling wife - and popped away for a few minutes. I was stunned by the quality of the lighting and the ease in setting up shots where I could effortlessly change ratios between my key and fill lights, all while circling around her and changing positions. I would post some sample pictures here, but I was sworn to delete the pictures as soon as I had finished shooting them!

Bottom line: The combo of two (or more) Sigma EF-500 DG Super iTTL flashes is a winning combination. I hold no illusions that my Bees are more geared towards a true “studio” shoot, but being completely remote, wireless (bonus; “normal” flashes won’t trip the slave unit) and battery powered is awesome. Once you try it, you’ll never go back. The price can’t be beat, and while it’s no Nikon SB-800, the Sigma is also only 60% of the price of the Nikon flash.

I am already thinking about picking up one or two more Sigma EF-500s to fill out a complete wireless flash kit. For the price and the features offered, it can’t be beat. If you’ve been holding back, you have to check out fully wireless TTL flash - either with the Sigma or the Nikon gear (remember, they will also interact with each other). Once you go wireless TTL, you’ll fall in love!