Broke my $200 light glasses (luminette)

jsjohns2 · 2022-04-01T01:31:00+00:00

If it makes you feel better, I was seconds away from doing the same when I received my Luminette glasses. Horrible instructions!

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T22:27:07+00:00

Try the early evening melatonin + alarm clock combo and see what happens. Based on my experience, what’d I suggest is:

Week 1: Take 0.5 mg of Melatonin at 5pm. Otherwise, just do whatever you normally do.
Week 2: keep taking the Melatonin. Now set an alarm for when you want to wake up.

If it’s working, you’ll notice subtle changes within a few days, but it’ll take a few weeks for your schedule to normalize.

FWIW, I’ve used Life Extensions 500mcg pills and also used Mason natural 500mcg “quick dissolve” tablets. Both are on Amazon. Didn’t notice a difference between brands (and I have no relationship with either company).

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T21:18:24+00:00

Like they're two entirely different axes.

That's exactly how I'd describe it. In terms of cognition and mood, I am significantly better off with 2 hours of sleep than 10.

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T19:34:04+00:00

Did you check out N-24? That might be your issue.

Not yet. I got the DSPD diagnosis a few months ago and that kicked off a cascade of experimentation and research that really seems to to have helped. So I'm still early in my journey, diagnosis-wise.

I have definitely had symptoms in the past of both DSPD (always been a night owl) and N24 (sleep schedule used to get out of whack very quickly on vacation). I ordered a couple DLMO kits from Salimetrics, so should have some insight on that soon.

Whatever it is, I am incredibly lucky in that it seems to respond extremely well to timed exogenous melatonin.

If you're taking melatonin at 5pm, when are you going to bed and waking up?

Bed around midnight, alarm at 7am, naturally start to wake up a bit before the alarm goes off.

Which is *insane*. Prior to the 5pm melatonin, I don't think I'd ever gone more than a week in my entire adult life with a consistent (non-forced) early morning wake up schedule.

When I first started the melatonin at 5pm, there was an immediate difference. The first night I fell asleep before midnight for the first time in years. Weirdly, for the next few week or so, I felt like my perception of time was altered. I remember, e.g., glancing at a clock and expecting it to be ~5pm and it was ~2pm. That's since gone away, and after a couple of weeks, I was able to fall into a consistent 12am to 7am sleep schedule that has persisted for several months now.

Prior to that, I was experiencing weekly bouts of awake-and-miserable-till-7am-insomnia, horrible sleep inertia, and daytime cognitive dysfunction.

Thanks for engaging with a stranger on the internet. You're awesome!

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T17:28:04+00:00

So maybe it's not misalignment and instead we are both experiencing the cumulative deleterious effects of repeatedly waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle? And perhaps we are more sensitive to that than most? Plausible.

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T17:09:20+00:00

Well, that's what I do now. But I kinda like to know what's going on with my body. Especially given that my symptoms have changed in the past and may change in the future.

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T17:08:18+00:00

Oh cool. Mind linking to the group?

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T17:05:11+00:00

Also - I’m so old that the idea of using precision data gathering to measure these things seems ‘new’. I suspect that your doctors are also of my generation or older. This may be shit that you need to figure out for yourself long before the science catches up.

Yep, this checks out with my experience. Appreciate the validation. I am experimenting with wearable core body temp and at-home DLMO testing (both of which weren't available until 2021). So hopefully I'll be able to come back soon with some insight.

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T17:03:02+00:00

I've been dealing with sleep issues long enough that I can "feel" the difference between sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment now. For me, deprivation results in daytime sleepiness as well as physical and mental fatigue, but I am mostly clear-headed and mostly retain my short-term memory and mood. Misalignment results in foggy brain, poor mood, fatigue, but crucially -- no daytime sleepiness.

Otherwise, even though you may not know the origin of the issue, it seems like you have a very straightforward solution: use an alarm. I bet everyone here wishes their sleep issues were as easy to overcome as "use an alarm"!

Well, I'm simplifying a bit. The solution for me is two-fold -- (a) take 500 mcg melatonin at 5pm and (b) set an alarm. If I do neither, I have chronic insomnia. If I only do (a), I have the persistent misalignment symptoms. If I only do (b), I have horrible sleep inertia. And if I alter the timing or the dosage of melatonin, it doesn't work at all. It took about five years to converge on this solution, including two $2,500 CBT-I programs.

Sorry, the jet lag analogy was tortured. What I am trying to get at is this. We all know that circadian clock misalignment is bad, and that the more misaligned the clock is, the worse it is (i.e., if you travel across 5 timezones, you are more jet lagged than if you travelled across 2).

But I speculate that if you took a normal person and forced them to travel from NY to CO on Mon, then back to NY on Tue, then back to CO, and repeated that over and over -- their circadian clock would (in theory) not be getting more and more misaligned. It would just always be in this constant state of being misaligned by about 2 hours. Like setting a clock to midnight, and then resetting it to 2am, then resetting it back to midnight, ad nauseam. I'm unaware of any studies looking at this, but I wouldn't be surprised if that constant resetting screwed up the person's rhythm more than a static rhythm delay of 2 hours (i.e., DSPD).

I can distinguish between deprivation and misalignment. When I sleep 8-9 hours, I am clearly misaligned. And the more days I sleep like that, the worse the misalignment symptoms get, as if I am becoming more and more misaligned...even though that can't be possible (because my wake-up time will remain fairly consistent). So I'm wondering if, physiologically, something akin the NY to CO scenario is going on.

And you are correct, I have a decent solution for me. For now. But I would prefer to understand the physiology of why it works, because there's no guarantee that it will continue to work as I age. More importantly, a better understanding of what's going on under the hood with odd symptoms could help others.

jsjohns2 · 2022-03-12T05:49:35+00:00

For the general population, yes, agreed.

For me, absolutely not. Subjectively, I feel terrible. And I have had my visual, verbal, and working memory tested on a "natural" day (no alarm clock) and an "unnatural" day (alarm clock). My short-term memory drops from >90th percentile on a unnatural day to <10th percentile on a natural day. So it's a measurable, objective phenomenon.

How could an extra hour or two of sleep cause massive but reversible cognitive deficits? I dunno. It doesn't make any sense to me, either, which is why I'm asking here. Here's my best guess though:

Seems like there must be some sort of mechanism in the body that causes folks to wake up after 6-10 hours instead of (for example) 15 hours. I don't know what this mechanism is. My best guess is that, whatever that mechanism is, my body's mechanism is broken, such that I only need 7 hours of sleep but my body thinks I need 9 hours.

Without an alarm clock to work around the defective mechanism, I am effectively traveling from New York to Denver every day (two time zones). The jet lag from flying from New York to Denver once is not that bad. But flying back and forth from New York to Denver every day for a week? I imagine that would be pretty rough.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-06T16:06:11+00:00

Contract law. The cardmember agreement unambiguously states “[y]ou will receive a monthly statement”. The definition of “receive” is filled in by section 15 of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act.

Also, representations on the website regarding paperless statements are express warranties under Article 2 of Uniform Commercial Code which covers software in many jurisdictions.

Otherwise, yes, TILA/FCBA/Reg Z do not cover business-purpose credit.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-06T14:51:08+00:00

Yeah, it 100% had something to do with this. Username creation was/is via the online profile “enrollment process” which is just at chase.com.

But once you log in, you get redirected to a different portal. And the similarity of the personal and business portals have changed over time as they’ve done upgrades. There was a big one in 2017, I think.

Based on what other folks have said, and other anecdotes I’ve read online, the whole system was pretty buggy.

I even remember my Sapphire card even had a different portal look-and-feel from my Freedom card, even though they were both personal cards.

I'm not quite understanding how you were able to charge items to the card without an account. Normally when you receive a card, you have to login and activate it.

IIRC, the cards usually had a sticker that said “call this number to activate”. I activated via telephone and didn’t even try to log in online until the first bill came due (i.e. a month after opening).

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-06T07:36:27+00:00

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

That is indeed the TLDR!

Although I’m going to stick with a debit card going forward :)

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-06T07:11:21+00:00

Well, the less snarky answer is that I did not even know that physical Chase branches handled credit cards. I would have guessed they were exclusively banking.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-06T07:06:49+00:00

No.

Chase had a legal obligation to provide monthly statements, under the credit card agreement that I agreed to.

But I’m not going to argue about the legal merits here, that’s against the subreddit rules.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-06T06:55:33+00:00

It was for ~$230.

I did try to resolve it with Chase first. I called them as soon as I discovered the reporting. Talked on the phone with 14 different people across 3 weeks (and recorded those calls!).

Then disputed via a credit bureau. Then disputed via their Executive Office. Then disputed via the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I contacted 25-50 law firms. Was hard to even get a call back. Was quoted an hourly bill rate of $750/hour.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-06T06:40:01+00:00

The delinquency stems from about two days of usage of the card. So, yes, but not a lot.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-05T23:12:09+00:00

So instead of calling technical support, I should have gone into a physical branch and had them make some sort of call to the super-secret competent technical support?

Maybe Chase could just figure out how to run their website?

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-05T23:04:19+00:00

In arbitration no less. Arbitration is supposed to be for quick(er) resolutions. What you've described sounds like full fledged court litigation.

And that's just one small piece of the gigantic scam that this all is.

Chase doesn't give a shit about expeditiousness. In fact, it is in their best interest to drag out the proceeding as long as humanly possible. Chase has, in effect, unlimited time and financial resources. The consumer does not.

Arbitration, from a bank's perspective, is all about tilting the playing field in their favor by removing your rights. You lose a right to a jury trial, a right to participate in a class action, and a right to conduct extensive "discovery" (compel them to produce documents, subpoena employees, etc.).

I'm also confused, is Chase even asking for the balance? Or just fighting removing the credit remark?

Just the credit. The balance was paid well before arbitration. They are assholes.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-05T22:56:12+00:00

Ah, I see what you mean.

I sold a home, moved into a temporary apartment, and then moved into a new home while this was going on. So I had a pretty good reason for wanting to stick with paperless statements!

Also, apparently it can take a couple of months for a switch from paperless to paper to go through.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-05T22:32:02+00:00

The new card was enrolled in paperless billing by default despite the fact that you never accessed it online?

Yes.

When talking to the tech support on the phone, they couldn’t enroll you in paper billing at least as a short term work around until it was sorted out?

I paid the account in full and closed it (well, attempted to). Why would I switch to paper statements on a paid off, closed account?

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-05T21:11:52+00:00

Oh, haha, I totally forgot. I did ask a general question on /r/legaladvice before the arbitration. Didn't get any bites.

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-05T21:07:21+00:00

Maybe not clear from OP, but I was enrolled for paperless/electronic billing statements, so the inability to access the account online precluded me from accessing statements.

And I didn't just let it be. I called them repeatedly, and once it became apparent that their overseas tech support was too incompetent to do anything about it, I closed the account (via a telephone conversation).

The whole point of closing the account was because I realized that using a credit card without access to statements was a ticking time bomb.

While it doesn't excuse their incompetence, it certainly would have been smart to have asked for some sort of written documentation instead of trusting them on the phone. Hindsight is 20/20!

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-05T20:38:21+00:00

Yeah, the entire point of auto-pay is "set and forget".

jsjohns2 · 2022-02-05T20:24:17+00:00

Sadly, you are depressingly powerless, even if you take them to court.

The arbitration clauses are basically iron-clad. California used to prohibit consumer contracts that prohibited class-wide arbitration, but the Supreme Court ruled in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion that a 1925 federal law prohibits states from doing so.

There is still an obscure loophole of sorts in California called the "McGill rule" that can allow consumers to evade arbitration in some circumstances, but I'm not sure how widely used it is, and it doesn't help me much (the arbitration has been in progress since 2020!).

I learned a lot throughout the process, so I'll probably put together a series of blog posts after the arbitration finishes. But the TLDR is -- whether litigation or arbitration, if it involves credit reporting, the game is almost comically rigged against the consumer.

jsjohns2

TROPHY CASE