deadline dreams

last monday was a daunting day: I had 3 appointments, a 9:30am one for my foot (my first physiotherapy appointment after my bunion started acting up 2 years ago), another 2:15pm one for my foot again (review with the consultant looking at my foot orthotics) and a 4pm eye checkup. given the 3 appointments were all near office, I was also going to be working from office between them. I was nervous about the day for multiple reasons: this would be the earliest I've had to wake up in a couple of months, I was planning to park the car at the location of my first appointment and cycle between there and office and the other appointments, and it also weighed on me that my therapist (back when I was still on therapy last year) said I shouldn't plan for more than one appointment a day to avoid overwhelming myself - and here I was, doing 3!

anyway, all of this weighed on me, and I tried to minimize the chances of my brain fog getting in the way of me being on time. I packed my bag - laptop, snack box, fruit (no lunch as nothing was cooked!), showered, kept my clothes all in one place including my wallet and keys, put the folding cycle in the car, checked the tyres and brakes, and finally got into bed at around midnight, an hour after I planned to.

I was so tired just from the preparation that when I got into bed I forgot the most important thing: setting my alarms! thankfully I remembered before I slept off, and set two: 8:47 to wake up, and 9am to leave (I was supposed to reach 15 minutes early for my first appointment, and 9am would get me there at 9:10, so 5 minutes to park and to accomodate rush hour traffic).

in hindsight, 8:47 was too late, but thankfully, it wasn't a problem because I woke up before my alarm.

it reminds me of what I used to do some 20+ years ago, when I was experimenting with self-hypnotism: if I would ensure the last conscious thought before going to sleep was what time I wanted to wake up, I'd wake up without an alarm! This was before I had a phone or a personal alarm (I depended on dad waking me up!), and my body clock was accurate to around 5 minutes! also, I could see the wall clock from my bed so it was easy to notice when I opened my eyes.

anyway, back to Monday. the first dream woke me up at 4:30am or so. 

the dream was about me going for an exam. it was MCA, presumably, as the professors were from there, although the assignments didn't seem computer related - they seem to be about English or something. weird. also, there was no written exam, I had to hand in my assignments and answer questions about its content - which I don't remember happening during my course!

I don't remember what caused me to wake up from that dream: it was definitely something weird that must have happened but I cannot remember it any more.

anway, back to sleep, I had the weirder dream: I was in a race. it was a motorbike race. the people I was racing against were people I know from Belfast, but I was at my hold apartment in Mumbai. My motorbike (Lisa, the ST1300!) was on the terrace of the apartment. it wasn't a race as much as a time trial: the other participants would time each other and me, and we'd finally decide the winner based on timings.

but this race was weird: the race started when I got out of bedm brushed my teeth, got dressed, wore my riding gear, etc. I was almost ready to get on my motorbike when one of my competitors asked me to get him a glass of water. I told him that's not fair, it'd add to my time. he told me he was thirsty and he had no idea where the glasses were as it was my home. and besides I wasn't ready to race yet.

I was annoyed but got him a glass of water. That's when I realized I wasn't wearing my gloves, and I couldn't start the race without my gloves! I started looking everywhere for my gloves and they were nowhere to be seen - especially where they should have been. finally, I looked outside and saw I had dropped them right beside the bike! and weirdly enough there were 3 gloves - one of them was an odd one from my old pair (identical to the new pair, only more worn out!). I put on my gloves and got ready to start the motorbike. I looked at the distance I had to ride - barely 40 feet! I thought to myself, this is such a ridiculous race - it would take 5 seconds or less to cover the distance, and took 35 or 30 minutes to get ready for it!

and then I woke up, 2 minutes before the alarm: 8:45am.

I thought to myself: what a strangely appropriate dream. I spent more than an hour preparing for my first appointment and the day, and have given myself just 13 minutes for the actual race (getting out of bed and getting ready to leave for my appointment and the rest of my busy day!). I spent all of those 2 bonus minutes thinking about my dream and how it prepared me for the day, which literally seemed like a race rolled into an exam!

strangely enough, after my first appointment, I got into the car and sat for 5 minutes, just to prepare myself to take out the folding cycle and ride oout and face the rest of the day. for some reason, during those 5 minutes, I thought to myself: I'm really not up for this.

I drove back home, parked the car, took an hour's nap, and then took my motorbike to work. and yes, I noticed the gloves were in their place before I was getting ready to leave, and heaved a sigh of relief!

the sea facing apartment

I was in a sea facing apartment in Belfast. based on the position it would be obel, but based on the interior decor it was arc apartments. it was on the 10th floor, or so. it was a strange day: mid afternoon, bright blue skies and completely (or maybe mostly) cloudless... but the sea outside was raging. raging so badly that the waves were 5 floors high! sea spray reached all the way to the 10th floor apartment, splattering the spectacular, and scary view, with the blue sky making the scene even more vivid.

apart from the white foam of the massive waves, the sea was a pale greenish colour... the colour I'd associate more with a calm swimming pool than such rough seas. in the midst of it all, I thought I saw something large moving in the water. it was a whale - in fact, on second glance, it was more than one whale, maybe a school of whales! I peered out through the window of the room I was in, in awe of their magnificence and grace, when I noticed other things in the water: a pod of dolphins, initially below the surface, but then leaping above the waves, as if to show off! besides the dolphins and whales, there were also sharks in the sea. I'm not sure how I could tell them apart, but they definitely gave me shark vibes.

I turned my attention from the sea and everything outside to the task at hand: I was trying to clean the apartment, and also collect whatever little was in it. the apartment was mostly empty, with no furniture and just a few things packed into cardboard boxes. most of the boxes were already in the room I was in and I could see the few left to be moved. before I moved them though, I wanted to mop the floor. and then, all of a sudden, the sound of everything changed. it sounded like I was underwater. from where I was in the room, the outside looked a uniform green - the green of the sea. I went to the window and the apartment was clearly under water. I could see the blue-grey silhouette of sharks swimming above the level of where I was, against the bright green water illuminated by sunlight filtering through.

and then, the room, the apartment, and from the feels of it, the entire building rocked violently like a boat caught in the storm. I was thrown off my feet and onto all fours. water seeped in through the floorboards. I hurriedly crawled out of the bedroom, to the living room, as I wanted to be someplace with fewer boxes and stuff bouncing about.

and that's when I woke up. 

lost baggage

Shruti and I were in Mumbai, and had to fly back to Belfast. However there was some sort of major airline disruption and the airline was refusing to let us take the flight. We told them we were willing to pay for an upgrade as we really had to fly back urgently, but they said an upgrade won't help as the flight itself was not operating, and neither were other airlines.

I started checking options on reddit, facebook etc, and found someone with a chartered flight (a private jet) looking for 2 passengers to come on their flight. I contacted them and they were happy to take us along. They (of their own accord) said there was plenty of room on the plane for luggage as well so they wouldn't mind an extra bag or two. So at the last minute, I purchased a cheap suitcase (it looked identical to the extra suitcase I purchased in 2017 for Ajith to take my records to the UK for me, BTW!) and filled it up with random stuff that we were not planning to initially take along. Some books and snacks, mostly. The great thing about a chartered flight is that you don't have to worry about baggage handlers tossing your bags and crushing your stuff!

We showed up at Mumbai's airport, met the guys and got to the private jet area - a new experience for us! The rest of the passengers were British, and the person flying was not a commerical pilot - he was flying his own jet, as a private pilot. He looked at our five bags and said (not sure if in jest or seriously) that we took the thing about plenty of luggage space quite seriously! I told him we had 4 suitcases packed for our original flight to begin with and packed another one after he told us. We loaded our stuff into the cargo hold of the private jet - I noticed we were the only people with suitcases. The other passengers were really travelling light, mostly just duffel bags and stuff!

I enjoyed observing preparing the jet, taxiing, and finally taking off! I was seated just behind and to the opposite of the pilot flying (for some reason he was seated on the right, shouldn't he have been on the left? guess there was another pilot seated on the left as well, since it was a long flight!). Once we were up in the clouds, I must have dozed off (no inflight entertainment, but plenty of leg room!).

The next thing I knew, I was startled as we were descending sharply! The pilot (still the guy on the right) told me there was a weird noise coming from the cargo compartment and we were losing pressure, so could I please access it (there was a hatch at the back) and have a check.

I hurried to the back and unlocked the hatch. What I saw seemed like out of a sci-fi movie: there was a weird robot (not humanoid, more like a thing with 4 mechanized "arms") in the cargo hold, armed with some sort of metal cutting tool (like an angle grinder) that was cutting a hole into the bottom of the hold! It had started at the tapered end and not got to where the suitcases and other bags were but it was probably going to get there soon.

I rushed forward and told the pilot this. He was visibly nervous and said we need to make an emergency landing. He said we'll fly low anad slow so that there's a chance we could locate our bags later if they dropped out before we landed. He found a nearby airfield and was preparing to land. I asked him where we were. He said we were in north Africa - which seemend a little out of our route but I didn't ask why at the time. He said we were lucky as our bags had dropped about 5 miles away from the airfield, so there was a good chance we could get them. We were flying low above a forested area close to the sea, and there was no sign of civilization at all.

The next thing I remembered, Shruti and I were walking inland from a beach. It was a little past sunset - not quite dark yet. There were a few more people, all looking like tourists, dressed in swimwear, walking in the same direction - probably heading inland from an evening swim. A man struck up a conversation. He asked us if we had just arrived. I said we'd just landed and were going to call it a night. I told myself I will need plenty of rest as tomorrow is going to be a long day, looking for our baggage and trying to find a way to fly back.

And that's when Shruti woke me up.

I told her I had a very weird dream about being in a plane that had to be landed in an emergency and had to go find our bags as they had fallen out along the way.

As I went back to sleep I wondered how the robot found its way into the plane, and if those duffel bags were the target of the robot - and most importantly, if there was something illegal going on! I had vague thoughts about how such a robot could be built as well. It seemed quite cool and would have been interesting to take apart, although the cutting wheel probably make it quite dangerous!

the wrong house

it was afternoon. I had just come home from cycling... I had my helmet on, and music playing on my Bluetooth earphones. I left my cycle by the front door and got in.

i remembered today was bin day so I might as well bring the bin back in (the bin is usually collected around 9am). 

I stepped out and suddenly realized neither of our cars nor my motorbike were in the driveway. weird - my first thought was that they were moved to let the bin collection. but nobody else could move it, and they've never had to be moved before, and besides the bin was always kept at the end of the driveway, so nowhere near where the cars or bike would interfere. still, I thought, I should go get the bin back anyway, and think about the cars and bike later. I stepped out onto the driveway and looked for the bin. there were no bins about - neither ours nor the neighbours. now that I paid attention to the neighbours' houses, I realized something was weird. there was no car in the neighbour's driveway either. in fact the entire layout of the area was wrong, even though the houses looked exactly like they should. I looked at my own house and it was wrong too - it was like a mirror image! the door was next to the left edge of the house when it should have been along the right edge!

the house had a name plate next to the door. it was a similar size to mine, but was a completely different design - the house number was wrong, and the street name was etched into it too - it was something similar, but a little different (I noticed the name and remember it, but am not going to put the name here on my blog 😂). 

I decided something was definitely wrong and I had to ask someone. I looked around and nobody was nearby. there was an unfamiliar family at the house 3 houses ahead on one side. on closer observation it seemed like more than one family, so I decided not to disturb what must be a social gathering. opposite that house was another house, and as I was looking around I saw the door open. as I walked towards it an unfamiliar lady stepped out. 

I realized my helmet and earphones were still on and my music was still playing, so as I walked towards her I took off my helmet and tapped my earphones to pause the music. strangely enough, the music didn't pause. I had reached the house by then, so I took off the earphones. 

to my utter surprise, the music continued despite my earphones being off! I held one of my earphones close to my ear to check if music was indeed coming from it, and I could hear some sounds - but that was different from the music I could hear! and the music I could hear wasn't coming from somewhere else - it was literally music coming from my ears, as if from earphones, even though it wasn't!

I collected my wits and apologised for interrupting the lady, and explained that I seem to be lost, and asked her if she lived here (it didn't strike me at the time that someone leaving their house alone probably lived in it!) but before she could answer another lady stepped out as well, with a couple of kids I didn't pay attention to. she was joined by the other lady as she replied that yes she did live there. 

I explained that I'm confused as I'm trying to get to x (my address) and this street looks very similar but is different. both the ladies were confused, as my address sounded very similar but was obviously different, and they didn't recognize me either. I told her my house was in a corner at the very end of the street and overlooked a playground. I pointed to the space on this street where my house would have been, and that's when I noticed what was wrong: the house I had just left from was adjacent to where my house would have been if it was my street. I noticed that the space that should have been my house was instead a covered parking space for two minibuses! one of them was a schoolbus, in fact. and then I noticed that the space beyond the two buses was a rock wall - and when I looked up along the rock wall, it was the side of a very high hill! so high, and so steeply cut, that the houses next to the hill seemed to be at risk of landslides/boulders, etc - very unsafe!

meanwhe the ladies were discussing which street overlooks a playground nearby, and concluded that while they weren't very sure, it was probably just a couple of streets away - but they pointed in the direction of the hill and confirmed it was on the other side of the hill. 

this worried me. I only had my cycle, and the hill was massive - would I be able to cycle all the way to my home? the ladies reassured me it's not as steep as it seems from where we were looking, and it's literally around the corner - walking distance! I considered leaving my cycle there and walking, but then I'd have to get back and take it later, and I wasn't even sure if the ladies were right about my street being nearby. best to retrace my steps and try to find my way, I thought. 

I thanked the ladies and was about to walk back towards the house where I had left my cycle, when I thought I heard the doorbell ring. that's weird, why would the doorbell ring when I'm outside? but the music was still playing too. 

the doorbell rang again. 

this time, I opened my eyes. 

I was in bed. 

my bedside dock was playing the music I could hear all this while. 

someone was at the door, ringing the doorbell. 

I ran down so quickly I almost tripped down the stairs. 

Shruti was at the door. I opened it for her. 

the first thing Shruti said to me was "where's our bin"? 

I was so shocked that I had to check outside and make sure our cars and my motorbike were still in our driveway 😳 

what chronic fatigue syndrome has taught me about myself

yes, this was the title of the previous blog post, but as I started typing it I realized it went a complete different direction! these observations are much more significant and long term, so I feel like I must blog them anyway

1. chronic fatigue has made me more sensitive to things that were easier to ignore otherwise
   
   
2. the dopamine feedback loop of technology is almost all-pervasive and is literally dragging me down
   
   
3. mornings (waking up on time) absolutely set the tone for the rest of the day. the difference between waking up at 7am and 10am is the difference between feeling on top of the world (relatively speaking - it's still a struggle, but more bearably so!) and dragging myself through the day. if I'm still in bed after 10am I can pretty much give up on the day (with some exceptions - hopefully today is one of them!).
   
   
4. nights set the tone for the next morning. I absolutely NEED to be asleep by midnight, and that means winding down physically by 11pm, and mentally by 11:30pm. if I want to feel fresh the next morning, midnight is too late, and I should aim to be alseep by 11 - something I haven't managed to do in months, which explains my worsening fatigue. I need to wind down, not get things done. I need to resist the urge to tackle things as I see them, especially as bedtime approaches.
   
   
5. productive non-work time needs to be used productively. it seems like my productive time hits me when I'm in the mood for entertainment, and that's where the tech dopamine feedback loop takes over.
   
   
6. I tend to prioritize short term rewards over long term rewards even though it seems perfectly possible to do the latter. before chronic fatigue hit, I was easily able to do both by just pushing myself to tackle the long term stuff when I was in the mood for it (which usually happened after 10pm, frequently after midnight!)
   
   
7. timeboxing is my weak spot. I lose track of time when I'm being productive. I have all the tools, I just don't use them, and that's what turns positive activities into problematic knock-on effects.
   
   
8. physical activity is a feedback loop. once I cut down on it, it just gets worse until it feels like I cannot get out of the loop. it literally took me all of last week to bring myself to the point where I could get out and go for a walk. I have literally dressed up and then given up.
   
   
9. the small thigns add up. I do not factor in the effort I need to take to be ready to get something done, some I frequently have to give up before I've even started. the small thigns add up even more when it comes to my moments of weakness - mornings and nights.
   
   
10. chronic fatigue has unmasked the problematic areas of my life that I have literally struggled with since I was a kid - just that the ability to ignore them and carry on has been taken away.

wait, 10 is a repeat of 1! I think that'as a hint I should stop here. Time to get some long term things done, and make sure the negative cycle ends today!

what am I doing wrong?

Sitting on my couch at 1pm on Sunday afternoon, still groggy and not feeling fully awke, my "morning" (made half an hour ago) coffee half-drunk and cold, but sipping it anyway as it's too much trouble to reheat it... and the inevitable thought hits: how did I get here? Not in the metaphysical sense, but in the more short term sense. What did I do wrong yesterday? And this morning? Does the problem go further back?

1. I got into bed at like 1am. But I was unable to fall asleep. after 20 minutes (the amount of time I was told I should allow myself to go to sleep - and if that doesn't work, I need to get out of bed and do something that calms my mind down to prepare itself for sleep - lying in bed for extended periods is counterproductive). during those 20 minutes I had put on my favourite playlist (DJ Tiesto) on the ipod bedside dock.
   
   What did I do wrong? Get into bed too late, without enough "calming my mind" first. Also played something that I like but wasn't calming enough.
   
   
2. I got out of bed and decided to do a bit of tidying up. I moved some of the stuff that needs to go into the atticc up to the landing, moved other stuff that had to be dusted and put away from the 2nd floor  landing to the 1st floor "office room". Stuck my watch on charge as it was less than half-charged. Entered the bathroom and was about to put away the electric razor head which I had washed on Friday night after shaving my head... when I noticed it wasn't as clean as I thought it was. I spent some time (no watch so no idea!) just washing it again, btu more carefully, with warm soapy water, which cleaned up about half the stuff stuck between the blades, but obviously that wasn't great. One thing led to another and after a year (or maybe two - I don't remember) I finally realized the right way to clean the razor head (and why it wasn't working as well as it should have) was to pop out this plastic retaining structure, so that the individual blades pop out. The blades were absolutely caked up with hair! And this was a really quick and easy way to clean the blades. So this was waht I was missing all these years! RTFM should have done it but the manual (as always) had been packed away as soon as I unboxed the razor without even a glance!
   
   What did I do wrong? Getting sidetracked into doing something simulating instead of calming, not keeping my watch on meant I couldn't timebox it.
   
   
3. After these razor shenanigans, I started feeling hungry! And it wasn't a mild hunger but the cloying hunger that I knew wouldn't let me sleep. So I headed downstairs, looked for something quick and not too bad to eat at that hour. I thought half an avocado should do it... but it didn't. A bit of iberican jamon followed - but that didn't help either. I decided to give it a few minutes to see if that helped, so while I was waiting, I unscrewed the jamon from its stand and tried to move it to a position that seemed more similar to what was on the box... but it didn't work. By the time it was mounted back firmly it was back in its original position, but with a bit of mess created in the process. So I had to clean up the jamon crumbs cos it probably wasn't a good idea to leave them on the chopping board overnight. I wasn't feeling any sleepier and still hungry, so I downed a single serving bag of crisps. At that point I decided I had to go to bed no matter what, so I took my watch (now almost fully charged), turned off the music (which had just been left playing all this while) and went to bed. Don't remember the time but probably soemwhere between 2:30 and 3am.
   
   What did I do wrong? Doing things standing up, physically intense (mounting the jamon on its stand took quite a bit of effort). Eating junk. Taking way too long away from bed at bedtime.
   
   
4. I went out for dinner with a couple of friends yesterday. The dinner was extremely hearty (I think I overate! but it was so good I couldn't help myself - I did leave a bit on the plate though, very uncharacteristic of myself but at that point I knew I was going to get myself into trouble! I got back home by 9pm, extremely tired, but I felt like I shouldn't go to bed so soon after eating. I turned on some youtube, and watched some absolutely pointless videos (the war on ukraine, why replacing generic windows drivers for SSDs with manufacturer-supplied ones won't help performance when the SSDs are part of a software RAID array, why Irish wool is barely turning a profit for all the businesses involved). During the first couple of videos I would pause them when I was getting out of earshot and resume them once I was back. Basically I refilled the bird feeders, took the recycling out, tied the recycling bin to its usual spot, took out the food waste, stuff that was mostly outdoors and involved heading in and out.
   
   What did I do wrong? Increase my mental load by mixing outdoor activity with youtube on the TV, when I should have just stuck it on my headphones or listened to music instead.
   
   
5. That done, I settled on the couch with more pointless videos playing. I was absolutely exhausted at that point and quicly moved from sitting to lying on the couch, and I was zoning out of the videos. At one point I definitely dozed off because when I woke up the video had finished. I ignored the sign though and re-watched the video, now fully awake. Once the video was done I turned everything off and went upstairs for a shower. Before heading up I put away my shoes which I had left outside the shoe cabinet to air out. I noticed a pair of shoes I had stopped using after my feet expanded was still in the shoe cabinet, and decided to wash it during my shower so it could be put away later. Washed shoes first, then showered, but both with the window closed cos it was too cold outside. Once done I left the bathroom window wide open to let the moisture out and told myself I'll get back in 20 minutes to shut it before going to bed. I headed downstairs to find something to do for 20 minutes. I found my tabled charged and decided to play some games on it.
   
   What did I do wrong? Ignore the obvious sign that I was exhausted and ready for bed, do more than the absolute minimum required before going to bed. Playing games on the tablet is the opposite of relaxing/winding down before bed.
   
   
6. I got out of bed at 9:15am yesterday. That's after setting an alarm for 8:45 (and another for 9, cos I was sure the first one wouldn't get me out of bed). That's the earliest I've got out of bed in over a month (if you ignore non-negotiables like catching flights etc). Earlier, I had figured that my energy levels are a lot better if I get out of bed when I first open my eyes - ignoring the urge for "a few minutes more" or "it's too early" - but back when I arrived at that conclusion and started practicing it, my eyes would open at between 7am and 7:30am. These days, without an alarm, my eyes first open at 11 on some days! Thankfully though I didn't feel the slight dizziness/rush of blood to the face (a hot flash!) I ususally get when I try to get out of bed, so I guess my body was OK with the reduced sleep/early wake up. The problem was I had only slept at 3am the previous night - I had friends over till midnight (I invited them over for dinner and we lost track of time) and after they left I had a shower and shave, and then tried to clean the razor. And finally, I took the tablet to bed and played games before falling alseep - only stopping when the tablet ran low on charge.
   
   What did I do wrong? Do more than the absolute minimum required before going to bed, knowing I had an early start the next morning. Play games when I was already ready to sleep. Play absolutely way more games than I should have!

In short, my biggest problems seem to be: sleeping late, not winding down before bedtime, doing more than I should when I am tired, ignoring the knock-on effects of having less sleep one night, on the next day and especially the next night! The other thing I have noticed is playing games is how I blow off excess mental energy, but I shouldn't be doing it when I'm already low on physical energy. I don't recognize in the moment when I'm not doing what I should be. I don't timebox activities that I am doing for a specific purpose.

On the other hand I think some things are being done right - I am not feeling isolated or down, I am doing an appropriate amount of physical activity. I am not ignoring my basics/baseline activity (it had actually gotten to a point where I had stopped showering before bed daily because I wasn't feeling "up to it"!). I am getting things done.

11 years of krist0ph3r.com

well, I actually missed the date. it was 3rd Feb. The email from goDaddy said I purchased it for 5 years, at what now sounds like a steal - INR 2635, so absolute peanuts. In fact I remember being presented the option of purchasing 10 years at the same rate, but going for 5 because I had no idea how useful it'd be - at that time I was still hoping to get my hands on kristopher.com, as the dude who owns it had a single notepad-written unformatted html page of some random text and a photo of a deer.

anyway, kristopher.com has now been revamped (so the odds of him selling/giving it up to me are slim to none), I renewed krist0ph3r.com at full price in 2020 (USD 114.84!) and I have embraced the domain as my identity (basically about a dozen initially burner emails are now in permanent use!) and I'm not going to discard 11 years of SEO just like that... so it's going to be krist0ph3r.com for as long as I'm of sound mental and economic status.

what's funny though is how little has changed since maybe the first month after I set it up - it's basically run like clockwork. the only things that changed were the subdomains (well, only one, added in 2016, and has stopped working now - I don't see the need to fix it 😁) and a bit of DNS shenanigans when I migrated from goDaddy to NameCheap in 2020.

Interestingly, this time of year marks the anniversary of many signups of things I still have active accounts for: I signed up for Facebook, twitter and my blog in Jan - Feb 2007! 19 years... is a very long time! Strangely enough, the person who convinced me to join facebook just showed up in my friend suggestions - obviously because she's now unfriended me. LOL. But I'm happy these sites have kept going for as long as they have. At least I know my blog can be kept alive for as long as the internet exists... Facebook and twitter, probably less so. So for anyone who wants to keep in touch, you can email me at any address ending with @krist0ph3r.com and I will get it - of course no guarantee that I'll read it, but you've got a path to get in touch.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. Happy birthday to the domain! Regular programming shall commence.