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About every other day I wake up to what feels like I am about to have an aneurism. No, I haven’t had one, but I fear one may develop and the pain can be severe. I believe it is related to a sleep disorder called Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate, CVHR and Obstructive Sleep Apnea, OSA. I also now suspect a hypnic headache in the mix, something I didn’t find out about for another nine months.

Episodes of OSA are accompanied by a characteristic heart rate pattern, known as cyclic variation of heart rate (CVHR), which consists of bradycardia during apnea followed by abrupt tachycardia on its cessation.

What is not described in that disorder is what comes right after its symptoms, namely blood rushing to my brain under pressure that I believe could lead to an aneurism. Its painful and I don’t yet have it under control. The tachycardia is sometimes a slightly faster heart beat than normal but more powerful than normal as well.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCEP.110.958009

Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate Symptoms

I have sleep apnea, that is where you wake up realizing you are not breathing. Sometimes you are gasping, and its a natural response, but in my case, at the moment, I simply wake up and decide to start breathing. There is a controlled calm response to it. Generally this happens to older overweight individuals where the weight of the body causes the airway to close off during sleep. I also have a slow heart rate, Bradycardia, at night when I sleep, somewhere in the high 40bpm to mid 50bpm for some length of time at night resting. Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate, CVHR, is described as occurring during Bradycardia and upon waking during REM sleep due to an apnea event. Upon the initial respiration after this event, i.e. upon taking the first breath, an arrhythmia is triggered, a fast heart beat.

The trigger for me is immediate. It took me a bit to see the relationship because I’m usually groggy when I wake, but lately I wake very calmly and I know what is going on with my body.

In other words, I’m sleeping and I wake from a vivid dream because I realize I’m not breathing. I should add, I have had vivid dreams for seven months, every single night, many months before this started. Knowing you have a vivid dream generally means you woke up during that dream and stayed awake long enough to remember it. In my case this is not dramatic. I’m not gasping for air. I simply decide to start breathing. I’m awake, I realize what I’m doing and I take a nice breath. For a split second it feels refreshing, and then my heart beats really fast. This is an arrhythmia.

Beyond Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate

For me, the heart rate is not just fast, its hard, though it can vary sometimes and simply be tachycardia, a fast heart rate. There are four or five hard heart beats that send blood rushing to my head. I feel veins in my neck at the base of my skull throb and I can hear the blood rush, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, into my brain.

This generally does not hurt at first. It sometimes can move around to my right temple where veins there do the same thing. This feels like migraine level pain shooting through with each heart beat. Since I’m very tired and groggy at the time and the heart beat subsides and the pain goes away, I simply fall asleep again. Total duration of attack is about 10 seconds. However it repeats each time I awake from a dream until I finally get up in the morning. If it goes on long enough it can continue on in to the waking period. By that I mean throbbing events with pain, not simply a general headache.

The events either involve blood pumping through the base of my skull, throbbing and then moving to the right temple or the throbbing at the base of the skull is skipped completely and I feel it in the right temple only. Usually prolonged base of the skull events lead into right temple. A night with just right temple events is much worse. These events almost always continue until I fully wake for the next day. I do not believe Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate is the only thing going on.

Additionally, if it continues too long my brain will feel foggy during the day. I am not cognitively impaired or slowed. That is not what I mean. Waves of numbness flow from one side to the other, almost like electricity but slower.

How I Have Learned to Cope

This has gone on regularly for about six weeks. I have experienced this in the past but usually on a frequency of once or twice every six months and never back to back. At present it happens about every other to every third night. I have tried sleeping with my head elevated. This is to try to reduce the number of apnea events. Remember, CVHR requires a slow heart rate and an apnea event during REM sleep, the period where you dream. So if I stop the apneas, or prevent them from happening during REM sleep, then I stop the disorder, and if I stop the disorder, I stop the follow-on effects that I am experiencing. [In the end, this failed.]

Changing Medications

I tried changing my medications, stopping some, changing when I take them, and so far have not found a reason this has started. I also take Levothyroxine for Hypothyroidism. It is possible that not taking that helps. But I have taken it and not had the event happen as well. I tried to change when I took this medication to nighttime to see if it would elevate my heart rate to help avoid the events that way. This had no impact. As of Feb 11, 2022 I have found no benefit to medication change.

Change Sleep Position

Sleeping on a wedge in bed did not help. I end up sliding down or compressing the wedge because it is too soft. This can be solved with a wedge made of harder foam and possibly something beneath my butt to stop sliding. I have read that raising the head, elevating it more than seven degrees can help prevent sleep apneas.

To change my position and address compressing the pillow, I have changed to sleeping in a recliner. I have to make sure I don’t recline too far and end up flat again but it does seem to help. However, it is not 100%. I still have “events” sleeping in the recliner. In the end, I chose to abandon this and return to bed as it did not stop the events and was horrible sleep. My pulmonologist said I will have sleep apneas, that the goal is to get them below 5 per hour and I am down to 2. He feels it is under control from that perspective of whatever is going on here, Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate or not.

Doctor Recommended Medication

In the last couple of days I have started taking 1.5mg of Melatonin after a doctor recommendation. I also feel Ibuprofen is beneficial but have yet to take either long enough to determine if they are a cure. I have taken Ibuprofen on nights when I did not have events.

Let me add, I took 5mg of Melatonin the first night it was prescribed and had horrible events. Somewhere close to ten “events” in the matter of an hour or two. It was not a solution, actually if this was the prescription I would refuse it. But I also read Melatonin dosage can be tricky. I didn’t know because the doctor didn’t tell me. So I reduced to 1mg to 2mg, also checked with my doctor and he confirmed, and the last two nights have been good, sleeping on a recliner with a CPAP. [In the end this proved not to help.]

Expect Updates

These events first began back in at least November of 2021, every other night approximately. This blog was start on January 22, 2022. I have had two decent nights in a row and will update with what solves this for me, if anything. I do have a referral to a neurologist and another for a pulmonologist. I’ll have them wrestle for who fixes me first. [spoiler, they suck at wrestling]

• Jan 23, 2022 – I had 2 mild events at 6am as I woke. Oddly, not the first breath after waking but when I took deeper breaths. This has happened before when there are multiple attacks during a night that tire me and create the conditions for it to carry in to the waking period. Definitely right after waking from a dream, so REM sleep. My position in the recliner was too flat. I’ll raise the Melatonin to 2mg and try better to stay elevated.
  
  
• Jan 31, 2022 – I’ve raised it to 2.5mg before bed with 1 Ibuprofen. If I wake at night after a couple of hours I’ll take another 1.5mg. No events in the last two days. One minor event three days ago. I still sleep in a recliner. Events generally happen every other to every third day, so I’m still not successful until I can eliminate the events, certainly beyond 3 days, preferably a minimum of a week and of course the goal is forever.
  
  
• Feb 5, 2022 – So far I haven’t gone beyond 4 days without an event. I’ve raised Melatonin to 3mg to start with an added dose of 2mg if I wake up at least four hours later. I know Melatonin isn’t the end solution because 5mg before bed still had me with major events all through my first night using it. This is where I will stay for now.
  
  Still sleeping on a recliner to elevate my head to avoid apneas. On the days I workout I have an easy time sleeping and no events that I can recall. That usually has me with a higher heart rate at the beginning of the night.
  
  
• Feb 11, 2022 – So far, still haven’t gone past a couple of days without events. But I believe 400mg of Ibuprofen alleviates the throbbing and pain. It doesn’t throb and therefore no pain even as I continue to have an arrhythmia. The fast heart rate after waking and breathing is still happening but without corresponding overload to the arteries in my head. I’ve read about temporal arteritis but don’t yet see enough symptoms, not that I want to wait. Ibuprofen being an anti-inflammatory may help. So far, only two nights in a row with success, but last night I expected issues and had none. I worked out today and do not expect issues due to an elevated heart rate as a result.
  
  A couple of days ago I had multiple events rather early in the evening, 10:58pm to start. These were right temple throbbing events, not base of the skull. These lasted a couple of hours. I could feel it coming on before I went to bed. I knew it was going to be a bad night. Sort of an electricity in my head. Then my second dose of I believe Ibuprofen and Melatonin seemed to stop it. I had no further events after about 3am on into the morning. This was unusual. As morning went on, each time I awoke I felt more confident the events had stopped for the night.
  
  
• Feb 21, 2022 – Tonight, despite taking 400mg of Ibuprofen right before going to sleep I ended up having multiple events all throughout the night starting 3 hours after going to sleep. I took another pill after 6 hours and the events continued unabated. I then took a migraine pill my doctor gave me and that had no effect as well. Sleeping in a recliner is worthless for me. Ibuprofen isn’t helping despite a fairly good week. If it were that, it would have worked last night too. What I still think helps is a solid workout that day and evening that keeps my heart elevated right up until bedtime. But that could all be crap as well. I’m working out more and those nights that I do I have yet to have an event.
  
  I’m moving back to bed and no more Ibuprofen as a deterrent. Not supposed to take it long term anyway. I still haven’t gotten an appointment for a neurologist yet. That is my only hope.
  
  
• Feb 26, 2022 – My doctor prescribed a sleeping pill, Eszopiclone 3mg. Sure, I sleep, for about 4 hours and then there is the chance the events start happening again. First two nights were fine, but on the third they happened again. After about two events I took 400mg of Ibuprofen and they stopped, but then I was light sleeping till I woke. Ibuprofen will stop the events after a bit but is not a guarantee to prevent and if they don’t you can’t take more until 6 hours pass. Ibuprofen also isn’t supposed to be used long term, though my dose is at most 600mg a day. I keep it by the bed. I won’t be able to prevent at least one attack a night, but I think I can prevent the rest. Again, its not about headache pain, its about the pressure in the arteries and Ibuprofen does appear to stop that.
  
  
• I’ve been taking Eszopiclone 3mg and 200mg of Ibuprofen before bed. It worked great for two days. This morning I had a couple of attacks, minor, and took another Ibuprofen to ward off further. That didn’t help. It seems to help sometimes, and maybe things are better as a result. Some nights are perfect. But it is not 100%. I’m switching to just the sleeping pill, making sure I’m super tired before I go to bed. Ill keep 400mg of Ibuprofen to ward off attacks after the first happens or maybe take those if I wake in the night. I see the pulmonologist tomorrow, hopefully he knows about Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate and then whatever this is that is following it in my case.
  
  
• Mar 3, 2022 – I went to Pulmonologist today. He said my CPAP reading looks good. He can’t help me. Said I need a neurologist or rheumatologist. He had not heard of this kind of presentation of symptoms before. Mentioned Giant Cell Arteritis. My symptoms only partially fit, though it is the major symptom that fits.
  
  
• Mar 4, 2022 – I went to my rheumatologist today. Told him about the symptoms. He said it sounds like a migraine. I asked is it nerve pain or blood flowing through the arteries and he said its blood flowing through the arteries that I’m feeling. That doesn’t sound like a headache to me, but I’m not a doctor. He said its the artery close to the skin, because I can feel it, and that its unlikely for me to die in the middle of it. That aneurisms that kill are deeper in the brain and you don’t feel the pressure like I’m describing. He doesn’t think I can get arteritis on the drugs I’m on, but I did forget to tell him I’ve had these symptoms for 6 years, just not every other day like right now. However, I’m getting lab tests done to look for markers of arteritis. Also said to push for neurologist outside of my current system since its so jammed.
  
  
• Mar 7, 2022 – I’ve had four good nights after taking Tamsulosin. I have a kidney stone that may be on the move a bit and I want to make sure to do what I can to keep things going and decided to start using it again. Whether its helped or these are just four random good nights I do not know. I am also still taking the sleeping pill. I woke at 4am and was up a bit. No reason last night was good other than possibly this medication change, and of course still no reason for it to be happening anyway.
  
  
• Mar 15, 2022 – Ten good nights, but last night I had throbbing in the base of the skull again. After two attacks I took 400mg of Ibuprofen. I took my blood pressure and it was 107/72, so high blood pressure is not the cause. I’ll continue surveying events at night when I can to be sure. My blood pressure during the day was 135/80. I had one more attack and then they stopped and I slept well for a couple more hours even with some waking afterwards. It takes a bit for Ibuprofen to kick in and bring me out of whatever zone it is that causes these things, IMO, assuming it isn’t just luck. I am not a doctor, these are my observations. Neurology appointment scheduled in two days.
  
  
• Mar 28, 2022 – Since my last post I have had two nights of minor attacks and one with fairly annoying right temple attacks. I’ve also seen a neurologist and had an MRI and EEG. Best I can tell so far is I think its a cardiologist I should see, but there could be cross-over. Results in a week. The other thing is, in that time, I’ve been working out and walking daily other than before the nights of attacks. I believe the exercise being anti-inflammatory is related and that is my current plan to stop these things. I walk an hour or I walk down to the gym and work out and walk back, totaling an hour workout. Nothing else helps and to the best of my memory I have not had attacks after workouts.
  
  
• Apr 7, 2022 – I’ve had an MRI and EEG at this point and the results showed no damage. I’ve had two more attacks, one where they just kept coming, as if I was riding a wave at the edge of coming awake. I woke up, took 400mg of Ibuprofen and stayed awake until I knew it had time. No repeat, however I did have another Ocular Migraine the next day. This is where I look at a lamppost or any object and I can see a duplicate a couple of inches higher, ghosted.
  
  The neurologist is going to try migraine medication to see if it can shift my brain into a different mode to avoid these events, at least the throbbing pain part, which is inline with migraine descriptions as far as they are concerned. The heart part, which I describe as Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate, he will leave to a cardiologist, and so that is my next referral request.
  
  
• Apr 25, 2022 – Neurology dosage hasn’t really helped. I had three attacks while on it. Told them, they didn’t seem to care. Just noted it in my chart and said see you in 6 weeks. WTF. My doctor raised the dosage of the migraine meds by half a pill. It seems to be helping. Whether it stops them or I just sleep through them with less pain I don’t know. Dates are blending together. I think I still had one on this dose when I woke up one morning, along with a headache. Other than that, clear for 6 days.
  
  
• May 13, 2022 – I’ve been to a cardiologist. He recognizes the Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate symptoms but did not know anything about the pain I experience during it. Before bed I take 35mg of Amitriptyline and Eszopiclone (a sleeping pill). This does not stop the attacks. It does seem to reduce them or reduce their pain. I wake up fewer times and thus have fewer opportunities for an attack to occur when I’m in whatever state that causes this. High heart rate at bed time does not 100% stop the attacks, but does severely reduce them.
  
  The cardiologist mentioned a pace maker for the diaphragm, but I don’t think that will end up being appropriate as that is for people otherwise on ventilators. I suspect a heart pace maker to keep me above Bradycardia is more likely. But that again is a question as recently I believe I’ve had attacks at higher heart rates.
  
  Neurologist and cardiologist appointments coming again soon.
  
  
• June 1, 2022 – No progress on the medical front. What I have found is if I work out such that my heart rate is 91bpm at 10pm when I go to sleep I can avoid the issue. The assumption is it takes long enough over the night to cool down that I avoid Bradycardia during a critical period of sleep. This has succeeded for about 3 weeks.
  
  
• July 26, 2022 – Cardiologist reports the echo of my heart was perfect. If I had central sleep apnea, simply not breathing for no apparent reason while sleeping, they would give me a pacemaker for my diaphragm, but my sleep study does not show it. I don’t really want one, but if this isn’t just pain I also don’t want damage to add up over time. As of now they say they cannot help. I’ve fallen in some crack between specialists and I was on my own again.
  
  I am now attempting to work with University of Florida sleep specialists. They also have not heard of the follow on throbbing pain that I describe. We will do a new sleep study to confirm lack of central sleep apnea and likely other specific points of interest. After that, possibly some test of the electrical system of my heart.
  
  I am taking 75mg of Amitriptyline along with weight lifting as hard as I can such that my heart rate stays above Bradycardia to avoid Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate. I work out about an hour and forty-five minutes a day, with some portion in the evening in the hope that my heart rate is still in the 90bpm area at 10pm. Weekends are the danger zone, gym closes at 3pm. It is this work out that primarily keeps the attacks at bay, though I am hopeful the new dose of medication will help on off days. I also still take Eszopiclone 3mg to help with sleep.
  
  I will add that I again had one night where I had three attacks back to back, like I was riding on the edge of sleep and as each attack ended my next breath would trigger a new one.
  
  
• July 28, 2022 – 75mg of Amitriptyline is not enough, going to new dose of 85mg. I worked out on my easier workouts of the series and my heart rate wasn’t high enough. I had multiple events that night.
  
  
• August 8, 2022 – 100mg of Amitriptyline is not enough. I’ve asked to come off of it and be given a new medication, but the neurologist just said I have an appointment in 9 days so I can talk in person about it then. My feeling is they don’t like doing things without an appointment because that is how they get paid. Not happy. I’ll come down off of Amitriptyline on my own.
  
  Heavy walking on a hot day does help as it appears to keep the heart rate high at night. Normal walking does not help as I have already tried. I had two full says in Disney parks and did not have issues while there, likely due to activity.
  
  I just ran across an article that I hope will help. I had read about hypnic headaches before, but the article described too many things that sounded different than what I was experiencing. I now hypothesize that I have a silent hypnic headache that when I wake due to an arrhythmia as a result of Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate, CVHR, causes my heart beat to race pushing blood through constricted veins causing elevated pain with each pulse. REM sleep is also a factor, as I believe waking during dreams is typical.
  
  One article states that I could have obstructive sleep apnea AND hypnic headache.
  
  “Other secondary causes include temporal arteritis, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), hypoglycemia, psychiatric disorders, and chronic pain disorders.34-40 A diagnosis of OSA does not eliminate the possibility of a concurrent HH diagnosis.41”
  
  I believe that while I happen to wake early in the process, as opposed to as the pain hits, or at least I often wake first, that I do have a type of hypnic headache. It may be that in other research they didn’t encounter the same precursors. So, to go along with my hypothesis, I will begin taking 100mg caffeine pills before bed, along with a sleeping pill and some Melatonin. Yes, uppers and downers mixed. Note, just prior to onset of these headaches last October, I stopped drinking caffeinated sodas. I don’t know of anything right now that would give me caffeine. Which could explain the timing and possible intermittence of symptoms all this time, between working out and how hard each day might be and whether or not I happened to have a soda containing caffeine, which has been rare this past year.
  
  Some other relevant research links:
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/paroxysmal-hemicrania
  https://americanmigrainefoundation.org/resource-library/parosyxmal-hemicrania/
  https://www.sleepfoundation.org/physical-health/hypnic-headaches
  
  
• August 12, 2022 – For two nights now I have not worked out. The goal is to be in a position that the attacks should happen. I drank two Cokes before bed. Around 70mg of caffeine. The second night I also felt as if I had something coming on, a migraine, sort of electrical buzz but no pain. No issues. I woke many times through the night and my dreams were absolutely insane, but no attacks.
  
  I believe now that I have two things coalescing at once. Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate, where I wake from an apnea and my first respiration triggers an arrhythmia, fast and sometimes hard pounding heart rate. The second part is I believe my veins are constricted due to adenosine or otherwise related to a “Hypnic Headache”. That blood flow pushes through constricted veins causing a sever pain with each pulse and subsides as the arrhythmia ends. If I got up I would feel fine. I go back to sleep and the next time I awake it repeats for the same reasons.
  
  Two nights is not enough but given the care I took to set up the scenario I am hopeful. That and everything fits. Caffeine pills should arrive today to replace the Cokes, which I no longer have a taste for.
  
  
• August 18, 2022 – Caffeine continues to work. I have bradycardia many times at night, wake from REM often, but no throbbing and obviously no follow on pain. Its the pressure and the throbbing I care about. Neurologist is unwilling to research. Was trying a random drug for 3 months and would change after that but has no experience with this situation. He is also worried about the crossover responsibility of the heart in all of this. I doubt that personally. He doesn’t get paid for hard work. He gets paid to run a migraine meds mill and anything outside of his experience so far is apparently of no interest. This is my layman opinion. Nine months and a Coke would have cured me, well, of the symptoms, but those were the part that made it urgent. I will follow up to get a doctor’s diagnosis. For now, I appear to be good to chill a bit.
  
  
• August 19, 2022 – Last night I didn’t wake up midway and thus did not think to drink a partial Coke to add on to the caffeine. Made it through the night fine. 100mg pill at 730. Had been worrying about how long it would be good. Will for now stick to the pill.
  
  
• August 21, 2022 – Just a quick example of how I was manipulating my sleeping heart rate through exercise.
  
  Preventing Bradycardia, heart beat below 60bpm
  
  By exercising very hard during the day and usually in the evenings I would try to have my heart rate around 95bpm at 10pm at night when I fell asleep. This would keep my heart rate above 60bpm through all stages of sleep during the night. It was difficult to maintain but reduce opportunities for attacks. For me, no bradycardia meant no Cyclic Variation of Heart Rate and thus no fast heart beat leading to throbbing in the head with follow on pain. The lowest heart rate in this image is 61bpm at 5:40am.
  
  
  
  
  Intentionally enabling Bradycardia, heart beat below 60bpm
  
  Once I wanted to test if caffeine worked, I decided to stop exercising for a week to make sure my body experienced bradycardia while sleeping. I needed to ensure the attacks could happen to test if caffeine stopped them. Anything below 60bpm is bradycardia, generally occurring between 4am and 6am. Years ago I usually had attacks around 6am. I say usually, they were not common but if they happened it was around 6am. Its only after going off caffeine entirely that I started to have them as early as 10pm but usually starting around 3am. This chart shows a low of 53bpm at 4:15am (55bpm at 6:20am) but you can see many periods below 60.
  
• 
  
• Sept 6, 2022 – Woke from a vivid dream to find myself having a mild attack. Happened twice back to back. Wake, breathe, fast heart rate, attack, ends, rollover and breathe, fast heart rate, attack and end. 10s about each time. Milder than usual, not wincing escalating pain and a right temple vs neck. I didn’t drink caffeine during the day yesterday and the pill I took I took about an hour earlier than usual. So hoping it just mostly wore off over night. First arrhythmia I’ve detected since starting caffeine at bed time. Also first attack. Not horrible. Not wincing pain, maybe a 4 on the scale where the worst is an 8 to 9.
  
  So from August 10 – Sept 5 no attacks while using Caffeine.
  
  Went to rheumatologist today and he mentioned possibly going off of Hydroxychloroquine as it may cause arrhythmia. Will wait to go through sleep study and talk to doctor there.
  
• Sept 7, 2022 – Woke up and paid attention to find an arrhythmia that lasted no more than 10s. So those still happen. No pain, no throbbing, no other indication but feeling the heartbeat faster. This was the first time I’ve noticed since I started caffeine. Probably because I don’t stay awake as long or wake enough anymore to notice.
  
• Sept 22, 2022 – Woke up during a particularly disturbing and vivid dream and found my heart racing and my head throbbing at base of neck more on right side and not feeling like the interior of my head so much. Not horrible, maybe a 2, but disconcerting. A constant pain instead of an increasingly severe pain. I had Coke several times during the day and took the caffeine pill around 9PM, late enough that it should have lasted. It was about 3:30AM. I got up a little later to let the dog out and there was the faintest throbbing still at the back right of the neck. Along the lines of a strained neck but clearly still the type of throbbing pain typical of these attacks. This was as I walked around. I debated drinking a Coke or not, do I want to see if it persists as I wake later or do I want to see if Coke will stop it? I’m drinking a Coke. Its 4:34AM.
  
  I had one additional mild event and then things cleared up. My feeling is that I ate a late dinner of spaghetti and maybe that impacted absorption of caffeine from the pill. Pill should have lasted till 3:30AM but it may depend on exactly how much I need in my system, with a half-life of 6 hours.
  
  Apparently caffeine is absorbed through mucus membranes and so when you have a full stomach that takes a bit to process the caffeine may be trapped in the food, taking time to touch the walls of the stomach, possibly some of it would not, and so food impacts absorption.
  
  https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-absorption
  https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-metabolism
  https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-half-life-of-caffeine
  
  I was in bradycardia at 3:30AM. I also was at 6:30AM when I woke up during another dream and things were fine. Vivid dreams all night, which has not been typical lately. #NotAScientist
  
• Oct 4, 2022 – I had a sleep study last night. To prepare, I skipped drinking caffeine during the day yesterday and also did not take the caffeine pill before bed last night. Study was done sans CPAP, so I was bound to have issues. At 6:08am and 7:17am I woke up, likely due to an apnea, felt a fast heart rate, and felt throbbing at the back of my head near the base of the skull, evenly on both sides with steady pain I would classify a 1 on a scale of 1-10. As in very mild pain and not 0, no pain. It was steady, did not escalate, and was never a 0. Most of my events start out with no pain and escalate to a 7 or an 8 (0,0,3,5,8,7,5) such that I feel the next one is going to be off the charts, but then it subsides with the arrhythmia and also as it spreads out like being soaked up by a sponge which sort of hurts more even as the intensity is lowering. According to FitBit, these two times and once at 4:16am were the only times I was in Bradycardia.
  
• Oct 10, 2022 – Found a conversation topic on Mayo. https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/chronic-severe-nocturnal-hypnic-headaches/?pg=16#comment-759411
  
• Dec 3, 2022 – No issues, in fact I’ve grown tolerant of the caffeine, often sleeping 7 to 8 hours. Yes, some nights I stay up late but often I go to sleep quickly and then wake up after a couple of hours and I can go back to sleep fairly well. Not always, but so much better. I’ve recently tried lowering my dose with a tablet, taking it down to 75mg. While I have not had attacks, I did wake up with a headache yesterday. I’m having an issue with my gut. I don’t know if its related, isn’t timed particularly with starting to take the pills, but I wanted to see if I could lower my dose. I suspect I’ll stick with 100mg. At least until someone else tells me caffeine is causing me issues. I will add, I went to a sleep disorder doctor and he said I did exactly the right thing. That this is hard to diagnose, its rare and there is very little in the way of research, and having taken caffeine and it resolving things is sort of a confirmation that this is in fact Hypnic Headaches.

Vivid dreams and their increase in frequency is apparently experienced by a lot of people during the Covid-19 pandemic. Causes of this increase in reports of vivid dreams are believed to be stress and anxiety. People are also sleeping more and thus dream more in general.

I don’t believe that is exactly true in my case as these started during a time of little stress or anxiety for me and well after the pandemic began. I have often had vivid dreams. Dreams with complex narratives that involve color, plot, touch and sometimes taste and sense of hot and cold. Some have plot points that involves surprises only revealed at the end, which makes no sense given I would think I would know what is coming, especially if the setup occurs at the beginning.

What follows is a series of dreams I had one night:

The Aquarium

The location is an aquarium. Inside, a woman throws a sphere over the side and into a tank. The object is about the size of a bowling ball. The aquarium tanks are windows with the tanks lit lightly. Like a giant pearl the thing she drops goes to the bottom of the tank and sits a few inches from the glass. In the water floats tiny sea stars. The sea stars are light orange globs floating all around when they are young and when they get old enough they fall to the bottom as sea stars and the spheres eat them. The aquarium room is empty except for the woman and the viewer sitting on a bench. 

Pole Travel

Men sit atop poles to travel from one place to the other. The poles bend back and forth until the person atop the pole can jump to the top of another. If someone is atop that pole they have to switch places. Not enough room for two. Some men sit stop the poles to help others cross. On the top of each pole are slings, or hand holds, in case a traveler barely misses a jump. They sway back and forth and travel long distances from pole to pole.

The Web

My mother-in-law is standing in a yard putting clothes on a line. My father-in-law, Fossil, sits at a picnic table reading. They talk. I hear them. I say that I won’t comment but she says something smart ass. In mid-air, hanging like a spider web, is the word YES written in twigs. My view moves around this hanging word. It’s 3d and the twigs hold the word vertically in a single plane as if in a web. The web hangs there suspended by nothing. I apparently comment and they comment back about how fast I changed my mind about not saying anything. Which itself was a comment about how quickly she had said something worth commenting on.

The Shadow

Underwater, people free diving. A woman plays with sea life swirling around her. Midway between surface and bottom. She has long hair that floats around and obscures her face as she twists her body. She floats vertically. She’s running out of air and needs to surface. She’ll be back. Others watch as she swims off into the murky water to the surface, but she doesn’t surface.

The next view is her swimming horizontally extremely fast. I hear and feel an explosion of force go by from back right to front. The shadow of a giant sea turtle goes over the viewer and hits her. It bites at her, she squirms away and retreats to a bed of sea grass below to hide. Swimming with the speed of a fighter jet. She pushes through sea grass to get away. The view does not move with her. The group watches as she swims into the distance, only the shifting of the sea grass gives away her position and that of the sea turtle pursuing her. 

Moments later a man surfaces,  Looks like Emilio Estevez, and the man and viewer get into a boat. They are in pursuit. Like a national geographic special, the narrator talks of the boat going a long distance in pursuit. An aerial view of the boat traveling. You see it move through the water, the duck weed and surface debris giving away its path of travel. ‘they have moved into a new media world’ says the narrator. Meaning they have traveled a long distance between environments, like going from one world to another, Jules Verne style. They are trying to catch up to her but it’s a big lake and they travel a long way.

They reach the other side of the lake and see things floating at the surface, an object, something they saw earlier in the day diving, floats at the surface. Somehow it traveled here, as if at the end of a whirlpool. They comment on it and then further up they see a woman floating lifeless. They flip her over using a wooden pole. It’s not her, not the woman they are pursuing, but is someone they know.

Next thing, the same group, there are about five of them, one being the viewer, they are in a garage or shop not far from the water. The large garage door is open and the lake is viewed outside revealing a bright day. Scattered on a white table top are three or four books of paper, neat, clean paper stacked and loosely bound about an inch thick. These are scripts, movie scripts, but the words on the page are printed as if the printer was running out of ink. The manuscripts have been submitted but returned. Someone is sending scripts out and is upset to find them rejected. Some pages, as the viewer flips through, are scribbles as if blocking for a scene. But even these hand written scribbles are barely showing. Mostly just the impression of the words on the page with little ink.

One of the books has a title. I can make out the words, read them, clearly at the time though I don’t remember them now. They denote a location, a corporation or university name but not capitalized correctly. The character with the viewers perspective alters the words to fix the title and wonders should the word ‘from’ be capitalized with the rest?

The men go up poorly lit stairs in an old apartment building. They go in a room, turning the light on as they do, like an apartment, its very small, only a couple of rooms. Like police investigators they are searching through it. They are looking for a man. Still something to do with the lost woman. The rooms are messy, but the impression is they are modern but for a small kitchen that has a white refrigerator and cabinets that have an old style to them. They are in a hurry.

The main character, “Emilio”, and the viewers perspective leave the room. They entered and the viewer says “was the light on when we entered the room we just left”, as if to say they should leave the place as they found it. The guy says yes but the viewer remembers that it wasn’t, worried they are giving themselves away.  This is an important but small detail typical in my dreams, that is able to stay consistent through the narrative.

The two leave the other three in the first room behind and go to the next room. The other three men in the group are never seen but their presence is known. The man has a revolver, small, and he holds it in his hand at the ready. The viewer comments about how next time he would like to have one. He is apprehensive. All he has is a utility belt with odd tools. The next room they turn the light on. After a short time of looking through, the man looks through the blinds of the window down into a parking lot at night. It was daytime before, with the light showing through the open garage.

He sees a car pull up in the darkness below. The parking lot is otherwise empty. They are on the sixth floor of an apartment building. The viewer is still standing at the doorway. The men wait hoping to see the figure step out, to know what they are dealing with. The car’s lights turn off and as it does the lights in the room flicker and brown out. They feel something ominous. Why are the lights dimming? The man looks away from the car. They wanted to see what this thing was but his attention turns to the door and the hallway. The viewer, my perspective but not me, says ‘no don’t look away’ and the man looks back.

The room light returns. The man at the window peels the blinds open to look down at the empty car just as the viewer says “no, its too late,  That was enough time’. Time for this creature of a man to leave the car and be headed up to the room.

The viewer thinks about whether he was watching the lights on in the rooms. He thinks ‘Did we turn them on or not?’ Did he somehow make them brown out, and if so, how? The viewer knows they did turn them on and knows the man somehow did control the lights and therefore knows they are here. He peers down the dark hallway. He’s coming, he’s somehow already at the end of the hall in the darkness, unseen but seeing. 

My feeling is the sea turtle and the ominous man are the same entity. 

I wake up.

For the past four months I think I’ve had vivid dreams every single night. I have had vivid dreams like this before but usually only about once a month. Now they come non stop, every night, never the same. 

To those parents that go camping with their kids and have not solved the problem of sleeping without a CPAP, I found a solution for me. It is a CPAP battery, but more versatile and surprisingly long lasting.

Without a CPAP camping is a nightmare. I am wiped the next day. Not to mention it is dangerous for those with sleep apnea. Two days of it is torture and that is typical of a Cub Scouts camping trip. I am in no way my pleasant cheerful outgoing self.

My goal was to power a ResMed AirSense 10 CPAP for two nights. I bought a Renogy 72000mAh 266Wh 12v Power Bank for $160. Its basically a battery that you can use with a laptop or to recharge phones but it has a 12V car adapter port. About the size of an old style tape recorder it would fit easily in a backpack or in a drawer for emergencies. I’m 51 and understand that tape recorder might require translation. I then got a $37 KFD Car Charger DC Adapter for ResMed S10 Series to hook my CPAP to the battery.

I tested it and with my CPAP with the humidifier disabled (I never run it with that on anyway) at a pressure of 9 and it lasted 5 nights at an average of 10 hours a night. My initial calculations suggest consuming full rated power of the CPAP would use up the battery in 17 hours. I couldn’t guess how much power would be reduced running it without the humidifier. Comments on Amazon show similar performance. Note, don’t leave it plugged in because it will drain the battery and that is not good for the battery if you keep doing it. Yes, I accidentally left it plugged in. It recharges in 4 to 6 hours.

The big benefit here, it isn’t a battery dedicated to a CPAP. You can charge any device that takes USB-A, USB-C, DC 5.5mm, or a car adapter. One of the USB-C is a 60W PD that can charge non-gaming laptops while running. Check the voltage requirements of your CPAP before buying, but it likely will be fine.

I also got a ROCKPALS RP082 foldable solar panel and this can be recharged directly off of that. I wont need it now that I know it can go 5 nights. The pair also serve as a backup in case of loss of power at home, where I would be equally messed. There are other ways to solve this issue.

Now I can sleep and camp. That part about cheerful and pleasant and outgoing was deceptive. I simply won’t be as tired while not being any of those things.

Narcissists find their way in and trick you into accepting them, letting your guard down and weakening your defenses. You don’t realize it until its too late and they have done significant damage. It would be nice if there was a way to know who these people are before they come into your life. A wanted poster that gives you the heads up to keep your guard up and teaches you how to defend against their charm and ego. You could learn the lesson “naturally”, the hard way, or a wanted poster tells you beforehand to strengthen you for the fight and deny them power over your life.

The virus is like a narcissist, it has a sort of charm. Most viruses do this, but this one is particularly good at getting in and telling the immune system to shut down and ignore it. Like that narcissist, your body is tricked into letting it in and doesn’t build a defense until its too late. It turns off parts of your immune response which is why trying to fight it naturally fails for so many people. Like the wanted poster, the vaccine tells the immune system what the virus looks like and prepares the body to defend before the virus can tell the immune system to shut down. This is the key part of the vaccine. Your body can learn to defend against it without the vaccine, many are able to, but there is the serious chance it learns too late. That is the purpose of the vaccine, to show the body a sort of picture of the virus. Before it even gets in your body, the immune system has and knows how to build antibodies to destroy it.

The vaccine is not 100% and no one ever said it was. In fact they said it helps prevent hospitalization and death and at that its around 96%. You are unlikely to get sick, but if you do, you are likely to fight it off. Right now most people dying are unvaccinated, likely 99%+. Yes some small percentage are vaccinated. It is not 100% effective.
The vaccine does not alter your DNA. All it is, is something that looks like the virus but isn’t actually the virus. That’s all. It is a wanted poster telling your body what to look out for. Whatever facebook memes you have been looking at to scare you away from the vaccine are BS. Find a doctor, you have one on your friends list, talk to them.

The vaccine does have side effects. When the body finds a virus it turns the heat up. This is a fever. It isn’t the virus that creates the fever, its your immune system. Its intentional and its good. Its actually not good to prevent all fevers, just the ones that get too high. So when you get your second dose, the immune system already knows about the virus from having been given the first dose, the wanted poster. It turns up the heat thinking its being attacked by the virus. It isn’t, its just the vaccine, but that’s actually good. It means the body sees what it thinks is the virus which means its likely to see the real virus. You feel bad because your immune system is responding. Its a whole lot better to feel bad for a day than to end up with “long covid” or dead. I want you to feel that second dose.

Kids get it, kids die. My sons 9 year old friend just got over a case of covid that he picked up on his first vacation trip out of the house in over a year. Healthy people get it and healthy people are dying. Its not many but Delta is having more of an impact on young people now and if we allow this virus to keep mutating it will eventually find a strain that kills them as easily too.

We have a chance to stop it. Wear a mask, because that helps. Yes the virus itself is smaller than the holes in cloth masks. But the virus isn’t floating around on its own. Its in water droplets that are larger than those holes. So the mask can stop the virus from getting in and its especially good at it when everyone is wearing one. Again, it isn’t 100%. Even if one particle gets in, the body has other defenses before the immune system to prevent infection. What you want to do is try to prevent tons of virus from getting in. Yes yes “freedom”. Freedom to do the right thing and work together to defeat this virus or screw it, we’ll have our ERs overflowing forever and pay the price.
We have healthcare workers that have been in covid soup for over a year. When they get infected its usually a larger dose and a larger dose has a better time taking hold than a small one. So they are getting hit hard.

Right now on your friends list there is someone that has had the virus and now suffers some long term consequence. It could be something like Tinnitus, ringing in the ears. It could be when they eat the food smells like crap, literally. It could be they now have a heart problem that could shorten their lives. The vaccine works, largely, and it along with mask wearing can stop this virus. But what wont stop the virus is the day the cases drop low we all give up and say its over. Its not over until the virus is gone. If we keep giving up too soon the virus is more than happy to come right back with a vengeance. It will burn through us until millions die. 1.5% die. Thats millions of Americans dead. Of course it helps when we slow it down and give healthcare workers the time and resources to fight it. That reduces death rates. We’ve defeated past viruses and this one should not be allowed to become endemic, permanent.

We are currently in the middle of another surge. Florida is actually worse than any other state. It is no longer giving daily numbers because Desantis decided it was all over right around Memorial Day. Guess when the surge started. Last week it was 8000 cases a day. Its now over 12000 per day. Florida is at least 4 times any other state. Drill down in to FL numbers and look at the daily new cases chart.

Vaccines will not stop this surge. At least not those taken today. Masks and social distancing will because they’ve done it every time you see the peak fall. I’m all for staying open but to do that means as many people as possible wearing masks. Vaccines, if enough get it in time, may stop the surge that starts when school starts.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Right now a lot of people are complaining about rich people funding development of commercial space tourism. The issue being they would spend the money to give someone a meal or shelter. While I am not Christian, I do believe in the idea that giving a man a fish he can eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime. Space tourism is a way to fund teaching mankind to go to Mars.

How do we fund advancements in our society?

We are overpopulating this planet. Actually, that sounds like we haven’t reached that point already. I believe we have and its just going to take a while for us to chew through available resources. Until we can control our population, and reduce it, we need to reach for the stars. How do we fund that? Do we tax everyone to fund a public space program? I do believe we should have a government space program but I also believe people would tire of spending money on an idea that may take years if not generations to come to fruition. People do need to eat today.

To that end I think rich people funding pet projects of taking people to space just to look around is a good idea. We fund amusement parks now. To say that we cannot fund space tourism because people need to eat, is to suggest we also should not have Disney World or movie theaters so long as one person goes hungry.

Commercial development will help with teaching mankind to go to Mars

Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Elon Musk (SpaceX), and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origins) are all pursuing some form of space program that doesn’t directly lead to feeding the masses. However, they are all employing high end workers, scientists and engineers, to develop space programs teaching mankind to go to Mars. Some are developing commercial space travel for recreational trips to space, while others are developing Internet services and planning future missions to Mars.

All of them are paying workers and those workers pay other people throughout their day to day commerce. That puts food on the table up and down the line. They can take their money and build a space tourism business that pulls money from the wealthy and puts it in to the hands of pilots, cashiers, restaurants, flight attendants, and others far into the future. They are magnifying the impact of their billions by creating commerce. Anything that gets stagnant money out of the pockets of the wealthy and feeding the economic engine is good for putting bread on the table of ordinary people.

A rich persons money unspent is wasted money

Money sitting in some investment or safe of a wealthy person is doing absolutely nothing for regular people. The problem is of course, that money has been accumulating up in to wealthy pockets for decades. I’ve seen wealthy people buy gold plated scooters and guns and someone will say that is a waste of money. Not if it gets it out of their pockets and back into the economy. That is looking at a wider view than just that person riding a scooter made of gold.

Now of course a gold plated scooter is silly, I’ll grant you, but space travel is not. We need some way to fund the missions to Mars that will elevate our society to space faring. Sure, sure, we could live within our means and only produce that which the Earth can provide, but be realistic, that will not happen. It is not going to happen across all nations on Earth because people are greedy, racist, and will just take what they will from others.

Short sightedness is killing us

People are inherently selfish. Both as individuals and corporations, we only look so far as our own self interests. If I fire this person today will it get me more profit this quarter? Do they consider the value of that person in the long term? I’ve seen it, middle managers making a name for themselves off of short term gains all while cutting a business to the bone.

If I replace all my low end workers with artificial intelligence, AI, will I profit? No one ever thinks about those workers and whether they will have jobs in the future. At some point with AI taking over, many people will be left jobless and there will not be some better skilled job waiting for them because AI can do that too. Will the money they no longer have to spend cause the economy to suffer such that replacing their jobs with automation ends up costing that business enough that they go in to bankruptcy? Seeing that coming, will that business just double down and replace more workers? No one thinks about the larger picture and because they do not or cannot, we will never stop the waste that leads us as a people to overconsume this planet’s resources.

Going Up Mankind is the new Go West ,Young Man

We must expand or die. Two hundred years ago we started our expansion across this nation to help our population grow. We needed room for our population to proper, “Go West, Young Man, Go West“. We destroyed an indigenous population to do it but we prospered, and now there is no more West to go to. Our cities overflow, our forests burn, our farmlands dry out. To prosper we either change fundamentally how we live or we find a new place to go and that new place is up.

If the rich want to have cocktails in low Earth orbit, so be it. If that pays for the research and development that helps in teaching mankind to go to Mars and gets us the technology to get resources from space or to take us to new planets, then that is money well spent. Yes, they could buy every person on Earth a burger give someone a meal for a day. That would be a charitable and good thing, but it does nothing beyond that. It would be short sighted and foolish and end up leading to poverty and decline, the exact opposite thing those complaining seem to wish.

There is no one solution to all problems

I do believe a universal basic income is what is needed to solve the issue of artificial intelligence replacing workers. There is no great overseer to ensure everyone has a job. The government tracks various statistics but no one says we are going to have one thousand fewer jobs than workers in a month, we need to make a thousand new jobs. The market does not care. Universal basic income will help redistribute enough money to keep everyone fed.

And yes, I believe that the rich should pay more in taxes. I have no issue with a 90 percent tax rate at the highest 1% bracket. We have done it before and when we did our country prospered and paid down its debt. No one, not even Elon Musk, does enough personally to deserve to make the yearly income of one person every few seconds.

We have many issues that have many different solutions. Certainly we likely do not have the time to take advantage of space to save our society from overpopulation. We need to address how we procreate and how we consume resources. Living within our means should also be a goal. That said, what people do with their money, if it involves teaching mankind to go to Mars, is good for everyone.

This is just a list of what I feel are plot issues with The Tomorrow War. Its an excellent movie from an entertainment stand point and no where close to the mind numbing stupidity of a Fast and Furious where a car does a Tarzan swing. However, plot issues exist that could have been easily handled.

• People falling that distance into a pool would die, especially those that fell on top of others. Easy enough to handle, show everyone else appearing at the height of the building and he and his pool size crew appearing just above it. Sci-fi needs to be sci.
• Dan would not leave his family. At least not based on anything shown in the film up to the point of him being told that is his future, or anything to come after it. The director needed to give more of a reason why he needed personal success, if that was the reason. Why there might have been some marital issues, something. He showed too much love in the moments he had with her as a 9 year old to ever leave. I’m a father, the love of a child is chemical, its tied to you right to the core of you as a human. That’s not to say fathers don’t leave, they do, but they don’t leave when they show that twinkle in the eye that he showed to her.
• Why is Dan so special? Why wouldn’t anyone else choose to take the poison back and have it manufactured to prevent the war from happening in the first place? Hell Ill do it. For that matter, let the scientists in the past run all those test iterations.
• Before they left, why didn’t they just kill the queen, or cut off all its limbs beforehand? Something, and I don’t mean poison, because they said why, but maybe just shoot it.
• They do not show people reloading their weapons enough considering how many rounds they are firing. And given how many rounds they are firing they would need to be much more heavily loaded up prior to going in. The average solider carries about 7 magazines, 30, 40 rounds each. They shoot that in one failed burst.
• Why not more powerful weapons, even if they shoot less, that can penetrate anywhere? Seriously, at least someone should go in with a 50 cal or heavier machine gun.
• I get not having civilians learn to march, hand to hand combat, exercise, but why not teach them how to use their weapon in a basic way. Getting back to reloading, thats a really hard thing to do quickly in combat without dropping a magazine or have some other mechanical difficulty. They should learn basic weapon mechanics and basic combat tactics. Flanking, reloading, clearing a jam, aiming, that they need to scavenge from the dead, basic squad movement and communication. Nothing deep, just show them being run through it more. And yes, I did see CPR lessons but the one not knowing which end was up on his weapon? That shit comes first.
• They have poison that kills the males. The males are the ones that attack. Have a way to deploy that at critical research facilities like Halon gas.
• That these aliens were just a weapon and not the actual intelligence behind the invasion should have occurred to them much earlier. You don’t become a space faring species and viscous chaotic base instinct creates devouring a planet bare. In the couple of years the future world spent dealing with them they should have asked that question as well. Granted, its not all that important. I will at least commend them for wrapping up this plot issue at the end, but its convenient that Dan and his wife are the ones that figure stuff out at the end vs some ancillary character. Too much was riding on one person.
• There is no way 500,000 people support the level of technology and logistics that still exist when Dan jumps in. A simple explanation that they created fallback bases, and planted supplies and weapons at various facilities. I also may have missed it, but some explanation of why they don’t nuke them. Like inevitably some survive in their caves and nukes just didn’t work. They still had advanced fighters (note, the aliens had no air superiority, just “gliders”), helicopters, and ships along with the fuel requirements and ammunition production.
• At the end they spend time injecting each creature in their suspension chamber but have to blow up the ship and kill them because there are so many. Why not blow it up to begin with?
• Why would the Secretary of Defense give a live speech to each set of draftees?
• They did not show the SoD being sniveling enough to not want to send in a real military team to find and destroy the ship at the end. I mean its believable. Hell, just show Trump in office would be enough I guess. As it is I also find it hard to believe society would rally. We can’t get people to wear masks to stop a pandemic when it directly impacts them.

With all of that said, I found the movie thrilling and heart wrenching in ways I did not expect. What sucks is, and I give the movie high marks for being entertaining, most of these issues could have been resolved easily with some character development conversations or exposition early on. Dan is being sent in because he’s intelligent and meant to help with research. As others are learning CPR and weapons mechanics he could attend a quick seminar that answers some of these questions.

We need a reliable pandemic plan, one that can be accessed in an emergency so we don’t have to relearn all of this again. Study what happened, what went right and what went wrong. Study its lasting impact and unintended consequences and be ready to use the plan again.

Continue reading “We Need a Reliable Pandemic Plan”

Prevention not Detention is really what “Defund the Police” is all about. Now don’t get me wrong, there are those that say to just up and get rid of the police. That isn’t where “Defund the Police” really started. It was a bumper sticker and an idea that didn’t quite fit together. Okay yeah, in the heat of the moment that is what some think it means.

They are angry and frustrated and tired, but it doesn’t really mean get rid of all police funding. It means change the way we do things, pay for those things instead and when many of the duties of the police are replaced by those better qualified for the situation then you don’t need as much police or police funding.

Continue reading “Prevention Not Detention Instead of Defund the Police”

I have a Raspberry Pi CanaKit fan issue after only a couple of weeks, the fan was making a terrible noise. It was really annoying being in the same room with me and a closet wasn’t much better. I read that slowing it down using the 3.3V power may help but it was still having issues. I had to make a modification. The choice was a new fan or a new fanless case.

Continue reading “CanaKit Fan Issue Causing Annoying Whine”

I’ll go over the steps and resources I used in setting up WordPress on a Raspberry Pi 4. This is not a step-by-step guide in itself, but many of the links are and I think I covered everything that I did in the general order that I did them.

I switched from hosting my site with WordPress on a personal tier to instead use a Raspberry Pi server at my home. Why?

Since my site will never be all that busy and my home Internet is fast enough both up and down to host a simple website, why not host it myself and play around with a Raspberry Pi at the same time? I will also be able to use some add-ons that would otherwise require me to upgrade to a business account with WordPress.

Continue reading “Setting Up WordPress on a Raspberry Pi 4”