Dan on January 16th, 2007
It took a while but I’m finally back in the market. After selling my house I decided to put aside $5,000 to open a new brokerage account. While OptionsXpress has a LOT of great features their fees are a bit high. I’m keeping $1,000 with them as a backup account and for the tools they provide (free L1 streaming quotes, calculators, market scanners, etc). I put the $5,000 in a ChoiceTrade account. I haven’t decided if I’m going to stay with them yet but I’ve begun trading. Their website is bare bones and they don’t allow anything beyond basic options trades (no spreads, etc). Their fees are very low though, only $5 for stock trades (unlimited shares including penny stocks) and $0.75 per options contract ($6 minimum).
Anyway, back to the trading. I opened a long position of AMZN at $37.50 on Thursday and sold one $40 February call (ZQNBH). Online retailers had an excellent Christmas season with Amazon announcing that this season was their best ever. Despite the announcement there hasn’t been a lot of interest in AMZN. I believe that interest will increase as we approach their earnings release at the beginning of February. The implied volatility (IV) is quite a bit higher than historical volatility (HV), meaning that options are currently selling at a premium. If AMZN reaches $40 I earn about 10%. On the downside the stock has to decline about 3.4% before I start losing money thanks to the option. I plan on closing my positions by option expiration (2/14/07). As of now AMZN is up over $1 so everything is looking good.
Dan on January 9th, 2007
Sorry about the downtime everyone! Due to issues with Amex the bill didn’t get paid like it was supposed to and the site went down while I was 350 miles away visiting my parents without access to the proper card to pay it. That’s also one of the reasons why I haven’t had any updates in a while. Now that it’s back I’ll be posting more regular updates. I have a bunch of images to add to the gallery as well.
Dan on January 7th, 2007
I’ve been keeping a journal of my dreams since December 16th. The goal is to have better recolection of my dreams and increase the frequency of lucid dreaming. Prior to logging my dreams I would remember a few a week. I almost never had a lucid dream, and the few that I do remember were only partially lucid. I realized I was dreaming but didn’t choose to take control. Typically the characters in my dream would do whatever I wanted but I wouldn’t try something outside the realm of the current dream. Whenever I wake up and remember a dream I write it down, along with the time I went to bed and the time I woke up.
Within a few days I started remembering more of my dreams and the memories were more vivid. Now, almost a month later, I always remember at least one dream when I wake up or something about it. Sometimes I remember two or three dreams from that night. Sometimes I’ll remember the dream I was having when I woke up and then later in the day something will trigger my memory and I’ll remember another dream I had that night. For the most part the dreams themselves haven’t seemed to change. The only problem I’ve had is that my handwriting seems to get 10x worse right after I wake up and the journal can be tough to read at times.
I had one partially lucid dream on Christmas eve. I was the main character in a video game with GTA type style. I was following the plot for a while but then realized it was a game (dream) and could do whatever I wanted with no consequences. I started going wherever and doing whatever I wanted. I was still constricted to the realm of the game and the laws of physics. I hope to have a fully lucid dream at some point.
If you want to remember your dreams more vividly and more frequently I strongly recommend a dream journal. Going back and reading what you dreamt about earlier in the week can be fun as well. I find that I often remember what I wrote about when I reread it.
Dan on December 17th, 2006
About 35 hours into polyphasic sleep I realized I wasn’t prepared well enough. I didn’t have enough to keep me busy and the motivation to pull through. I woke up from my 2AM nap today very tired. I had trouble falling asleep for most of my naps and hit REM in very few of them. I could have kept going as I managed to make it to 5AM before giving up. At that point I made the decision that I need to prepare better before continuing.
I want to work on my new website idea but I still haven’t come up with a domain. I have a few in mind but I’m being very indecisive. I have a few other things I want to do but they require reading and learning, both of which are very hard when you’re awake at 3AM and feeling very sleep deprived. I have the first season of the X-Files and the game Farcry to keep me distracted from sleep but they only go so far. I want to use at least some of this extra time constructively but I just didn’t have things ready to go.
I’ll be starting again sometime this week. I want to spend the next few days getting things together and planned out before the next round. I also want to start taking frequent naps to get used to them again. Last year when I did polyphasic sleep for the first time I had no trouble falling asleep. I’m not sure what has changed this year. Overall it was going pretty well until I took that 2AM nap. I wasn’t feeling very tired beforehand but I knew it was going to be tough to get up. By having a short core sleep at night (4.5-6 hours) and taking a few naps during the day I hope to eliminate my napping troubles. I don’t mind sleep deprivation during adjustment due to having less than 3 hours of sleep but I don’t want poor napping to extenuate it.
Structure and routine make the adjustment period easier and I didn’t have that in place. Today I’ll be coming up with a plan for all of my free time during the first week of adjustment. It will be designed to be as constructive as possible while allowing me to pull through the tough 2AM-6AM time period without much thinking.
On a side note the dream journal is going well. I haven’t had much to write in it but I make sure to record if I don’t remember dreaming anyway. I’m logging when I go to bed and when I get up, any dreams I have, and how I feel after waking. At first I wasn’t very clear in my recording. For example, last night for my 10PM nap I wrote “Started dreaming about being on a ship.” I think my recollection of that dream was poor but I could have been less vague. The problem is that when I wake up I may recall the dream well but translating those thoughts onto paper isn’t easy for me to do when I’m half asleep. I write a few things and feel like it will be enough to remember the dream again but it’s gone a few minutes later. I’m learning what works as I go. I hope to get to the point that I’ll automatically wake up and write down the time and a detailed description of my dreams.
Dan on December 15th, 2006
It’s that time of the year again. The birds have flown south, nice cars are packed away in garages, and winter vacation is upon us (or more specifically me). I have 5 weeks off of school with some projects I want to start and TV / movies I want to watch. It’s time to polyphasic sleep again! I learned a lot the first time around so I’m trying to avoid making the same mistakes twice. I will not be taking any extra naps or extending them. Instead of slowly phasing it in with core sleeps and naps I’m jumping in head first. Last night I slept 6 hours and I took my first nap at 6pm. I got some light sleep but not much. I’ll be following the same nap schedule I started with last time on the 2, 6, 10 hours. Meals will be an hour or so prior to naps. This is so I can exercise and drink my post workout shake right afterwards.
This time I may play with some stimulants to see if they help me get through the tough 2AM stretch. Caffeine may help since it tends to last 3-4 hours. Ideally I could take a 200mg tablet before my 2AM nap. Since it takes 30-35 minutes for it to take effect the caffeine would help me wake up and carry on to the next nap. This isn’t something I’ll be doing at first, possibly towards the end of the first week if I think it is absolutely necessary. I don’t want to have as many oversleeps as I did last year.
In my final sleep post back in June I mentioned that my monophasic sleep had been reduced to 6-7 hours a night. That lasted for months, up to the beginning of November or so. It slowly increased until it hit 8 hours a night again. I’m hoping this month of polyphasic sleep will get that hour back when I reenter monophasic sleep.
Another plus to polyphasic sleep is that I will again have plenty of free time to write in my blog. I’m also starting a dream journal today. This will be a written log of any dreams I experience and remember. I’ll be doing it the moment I wake up. I hope that it could help prevent oversleeping and extended naps and possibly improve the likelihood of lucid dreaming.
I will be posting frequent updates on how it goes, at least one update a week. The rest of the week I will be posting about fitness, investing, and whatever else is on my mind.
