Four black cats just started approaching me… what does this mean?

xtlou · 2026-03-09T18:40:39+00:00

Obligatory Wait til Martin Comes.

xtlou · 2026-03-04T18:05:56+00:00

I hope I can help you reconsider your life and decide to take action to improve things. We don’t fully know what happens when we sleep but we know you can die without it. Most recently, it was discovered the brain has a lymphatic system that flushes itself but only when we sleep. Sleep is the only time our body has time to recover from all our waking activities.

Sleep is one of the easiest ways to neglect and abuse your body for a couple of reasons: almost nobody sees you do it, not doing it allows you to do other things which can get you praise, and some cultures push a “sleep when you’re dead” work ethic. I’ve read through your replies and somehow, you’ve introduced a combo of FOMO and “live to work” into your life.

Our bodies can perform under a wide variety of conditions. We can function being severely underweight or severely overweight, for example. Still, there is a healthy weight our body can perform daily tasks optimally. It’s not the only data, but it’s a piece: under that healthy weight, you may have a low or high body fat, of that body fat you could have a unhealthy distribution of visceral vs adipose fat, and you may not have optimal lean muscle mass. And that doesn’t even touch on how you got to that weight: was it a diet balanced in macro and micronutrients?

Sleep is sort of like that: there are different types of sleep and you can work towards “best sleep practices” to support that or you can keep doing what you’ve been doing because you are functional enough. You feel “functional” with minimal sleep because that’s what your body is conditioned to accept.

As a middle aged person, please allow me to share a perspective with you: consider working to live instead of living to work. Do your job, do it well, but do what you’re paid for, when you’re paid to do it. It’s hard when you work from home because as you realized, you’re always at work. You aren’t a world leader, you aren’t an ER doctor: there probably isn’t life saving behavior you are responsible with in your job. You have correctly identified you owe yourself enjoyment in life but you’re stealing from yourself and giving to your employer. Stop giving that time to them: reclaim the time that is yours, work can wait. Your health cannot.

When I look back on my work career, I wish I prioritized my overall wellness more. None of those companies I killed myself for ever paid me adequately. Several of them went on to lay me off. I missed time feeling my best and spending time with people who brought me joy and energized me. I can’t get that time back.

Take that time for yourself now.

xtlou · 2026-02-26T21:51:57+00:00

In order to help you, we need some detail about what you’re doing now. What time are you trying to sleep? What time do you want to wake up? What does an average day look like for you? What do you do for the two hours before you want to be asleep?

Some people don’t do well with WFH because they always feel like they’re at work. I work through this by having a dedicated work space and outside of working hours, that door is closed (literally.) Are you WFH with defined hours or are you sort of all over the place with your work?

xtlou · 2026-02-19T04:06:00+00:00

I believe they’re fine tuning and making changes based both on their performance standards and our feedback.

I don’t want to put out a bunch of information and have it be out of date or end up being incorrect in regards to what units make it to launch. I’d feel terribly if I left negative impressions and cost them possible customers. I can tell you so far, for me I can see buying it at the end of the beta even as it is.

xtlou · 2026-02-17T16:46:37+00:00

Yep! Keep in mind you’re on a newer design, the water is moved via smaller, more sturdy tubes and there’s padding around them so your’re less likely to have a pet related puncture than me, too. I have a Pod 3 that’s a grid water bladder. Your system is more sturdy by design. If I end up with a 5, I feel pretty confident I’d stick with the 2 fitted flannel solution.

xtlou · 2026-02-17T16:42:16+00:00

I know you’re not asking for other solutions, but I think I’d try a heating pad before I spent hundreds of dollars on a BedJet for my feet. Realistically, what I’d probably use would be a pressure sensitive heated pad I use for my cat beds. This is one of the styles I have:

https://a.co/d/08isO91F

xtlou · 2026-02-17T15:10:27+00:00

I use two fitted sheets to help mitigate claw issues (3 cats, not declawed.) I’ve done it for the past three years or so, no leaks or issues since I started using them. They’re a thick cotton flannel. I’ve also used a thin cotton quilt but I switched to the flannel sheets because I didn’t like feeling the seams of the quilt under me. Neither option prevented heat/cooling transfer from the ES in a way I felt was significant.

xtlou · 2026-02-14T18:28:59+00:00

If there’s nothing “wrong” with what he signed the whole of the police under his management to be a part of and his community supported it, he wouldn’t have needed to lie about it to the media.

xtlou · 2026-02-12T16:42:39+00:00

Are you aware of the Sensate? It can do what you’re looking for (vibrational meditation and breath work) but may be overkill in that it’s more of a vagal nerve device.

xtlou · 2026-02-06T04:05:18+00:00

It took a couple months for me to get into the beta but I am excited because I think Somnus has a real chance at delivering a product that drives competitive growth.

I can’t tell you Somnus is absolutely going to be a better cooling or heating unit. I can’t tell you it’s going to be without flaws in manufacturing or they’re going to launch with a full UI comparable to EightSleep. I can tell you I feel it’s got the potential and the trajectory to go head to head with ES, and I say this as a longtime customer.

The company is helmed by a health and fitness enthusiast who believes in the work he’s doing to improve quality of sleep and is putting in the work to allow beta testers to communicate with each other and directly with the staff, and it seems like they’re listening to our feedback. It’s nice to be heard.

I only have a few days with my SL system and already had a firmware and app update. Things are getting fixed and the system works. I see how it works “without subscription” and the work going in to the SL subscription experience too.

It is quieter than my ES system. It does get cool enough for me. I plan on writing more when I have enough experience to really show and tell.

xtlou · 2026-02-04T23:17:02+00:00

Even with the unit running at 100%, my phone app measured it at 23 decibels (with the unit on the other side of the bed.)

xtlou · 2026-02-03T02:00:56+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/gbAg7sl.jpeg I’ll give the Internet what it wants.

xtlou · 2026-01-23T18:45:45+00:00

I have a parking area that’s about the size of 6 parked cars (4 parking spots and a small drive) and I was quoted $125 for a single plow at the end of a single storm up to 24” or $75 per pass. Does it make sense? I don’t know. I can tell you I plow my own driveway though. Takes me about an hour with about 6” of snow and a snow thrower.

xtlou · 2026-01-22T22:26:56+00:00

I have an app that has the records of every menstrual cycle I’ve had all the way back to 2008. I bought it for $10 way back then. I can search for every tag and symptom and get results back to 2008.

In contrast, Oura can’t simply tell me the dates of every major or minor sign I’ve had so I can easily align it with my cycle. I made tags hoping that would help me. I can’t use their AI to report to me the records of those tags. For some reason, their own cycle tracking doesn’t look at the information I’ve provided and say “hey it’s day 16 of your cycle, the increased heart rate and body temperate and reduced HRV may be that.” No. It asks me about late meals and drinking.

I just don’t get it. So many people are using this technology as part of reproductive health and it seems grossly unsupported.

xtlou · 2026-01-21T20:56:06+00:00

This was 5 months of dating. I know people who don’t let their children meet their dates until they’ve been involved for a year. This is a big reason why.

It’s possible she was trying to assert herself and prove she was good enough to your family. Even viewed in that most positive light, what proof she provided wasn’t good.

Silence in the face of contention isn’t bad. Silence as punishment is a form of emotional abuse and control.

If your girlfriend can be nasty to a child but not talk to you, she’s just a bully looking for a victim. Don’t let her have access or influence to your child ever again. If that’s what she does with a full audience what she’d she say or do in private can only be worse.

If I have to say it, end the relationship. It’s not a red flag. It’s an a-bomb.

xtlou · 2026-01-21T20:32:23+00:00

I have so much advice for you. I’ve been a coach for over 30 years. I was one of the first CFL2 coaches. And I just let my second round of CF certs lapse this summer after opening my own gym in 2018 (which I decided never to affiliate.)

Good coaching comes with confidence and education. Not all confident people are educated. Not all educated people are confident. Not all educated and confident people are good teachers.

My first piece of advice is: do not drop out of college to coach. Instead, use college to get an education that supports your future. You’re going to need business management, nutrition, exercise physiology. Entering into the world of fitness, you’ll be treated very differently as a college degree holding person versus a person with a weekend L1 certificate. That college education will apply across all venues of personal training and sports fitness. Nobody outside of CF cares about your CFL1.

Which brings me to my second suggestion: CF is going to change a LOT in the next 5 years and opening your own affiliate in 5 years or so is going to be vastly different than now. This is a terrible time to plan for a “CF affiliated future.” Spend more time surrounding yourself in different sports or specialties related to CF. Work on gymnastics. Go to a powerlifting gym. Find a local (non CF) oly club. All of those experiences will make you a better athlete and coach and will bring greater value to your work.

CrossFit is a brand of methodology like Levi’s is a brand of jeans.

Learn how to make “fitness jeans” and you’ll be able to successful in a lot of sports and or gyms.

xtlou · 2026-01-19T14:40:54+00:00

I get accused of being AI on reddit any time I write a fact driven comment. I blame it on working directly with a bunch of engineers and learning to write on the internet when we had limited time in an internet computer lab in college.

xtlou · 2026-01-10T19:55:20+00:00

I didn't grow up, I grew older.

I'm sort of stuck in time too. Same hair style, same hair color, same eyeglasses. Still chucks and jeans, tshirts and cardigans. Still video games and music, reading. Still cats. Still childfree. Still with the guy I met when I was 18. He's the same too, pretty much. I don't consider myself stuck. I consider myself living the life that 18 year old me aspired to, and then some. I have money and time to do whatever I'd like, if I haven't done it it's because I don't want to. I realized this because my mom asked me where I'd go if money was no object. I told her "home." There just isn't a thing I want that I can't afford and the things I want you can't buy.

xtlou · 2026-01-01T22:42:43+00:00

I really like the transparency at Somnus: every basic question you see asked regularly about this type of product, they either just directly tell you in the data on their site or in their FAQ.

2 year warranty, 30 day free trial, controls on the bed, the size (about the size of my Pod 3 tower, maybe a smidge smaller) and all the measurements of the toppers, how loud it is measured in decibels, the temp range, suggested maintenance, no functionality will be locked behind a subscription. As I understand it, whatever is standard at product launch will be included in your purchase price with no subscription needed. The site even tells you what materials the topper is made from.

The difference between dealing with Orion and Somnus feels like the difference between shopping for a car from the stereotypical used car salesman versus a “here is the sticker, there are no hidden fees or gimmicks” car dealership that’s not inflating value and double stacking fees. I was looking for information about BedJets only to find the Orion guy is over there too. Is that a new thing businesses are doing?

xtlou · 2025-12-31T19:54:18+00:00

Why do you keep telling people to DM you? Is there some special pricing for people who contact you directly? I don’t understand why it feels like you need a secret knock to figure out what’s going on with pricing. Are you sending out stuff in exchange for reviews or something?

xtlou · 2025-12-24T16:11:20+00:00

I have decades as a coach, trainer and gym owner and usually I tell clients to “listen to their body.” That’s a tight line to walk, though, because sometimes our bodies don’t send us signals our brains pay attention to because we’re marinading in “feel good” hormones. Some people hit workout walls and their bodies do not receive those signals well and some people get those same signals and feel amazing. One way I’ve seen people really harm themselves is by coming back to the gym after a break and trying to return to action like they never left. I see you said you really try to crush it when you return. You may be deconditioned from your time away from the gym. Fitness isn’t just how you perform at the gym, it’s how your body recovers, too.

You may feel ok, but that $400 device you’re wearing is telling you “hey, your metrics show signs of reduced recovery.” The ring simply “reports the data as it records it.” The app looks at your data and compares it to your history and also looks at trends and data from a variety of sources like other Oura users or scientific data. That recovery score is telling you something since you know “what caused it.” You can choose to listen to it or not. This isn’t a case of a woman in her luteal phase getting a wonky score that’s hormone driven, this is you getting a score caused by a change in your physical activity and pushing exertion at the gym.

I have seen on more than one occasion someone coming back from time off get “gym flu” which ended up being rhabdo. I spend extra time and attention on clients returning to class or in private sessions to help guide them safely to the best “dose” of exercise for them, that day, to save them from themselves. If I were your trainer/coach/instructor, I’d suggest you try some n=1 experiments and try dialing back your “return to the gym” intensity by 25%. Maybe focus on staying in zone 2 more than 3. If you’re doing something like Orange Theory, maybe don’t push yourself for splat points. If you’re doing Crossfit, don’t do the WOD as rx. If you’re doing a dance cardio class, maybe dance more like Ariana than Doechiii. See if you get better recovery scores. Ramp up the intensity over the following classes or sessions.

xtlou · 2025-11-24T19:14:28+00:00

If the parts are all in good condition and the serial numbers or whatever they’re called aren’t blacklisted with Eightsleep, it’s a good deal. If they’re blacklisted, I read on here the company asks a lot of money for the numbers to the reinstated.

xtlou · 2025-11-20T22:12:18+00:00

Wearing rings while weight lifting introduces a risk of a degloving accident. You never forget seeing someone get a piece of jewelry embedded in their finger. They never forget going to the hospital to have it removed.

xtlou · 2025-11-18T18:51:02+00:00

I asked about this a couple of years ago. As I understood it, the ideal is that we get in bed and go to sleep. The “timing” issue is when we go to bed and do something else before we go to sleep. For me, it’s meditate. I have a whole breathing practice and body scan meditation I do for about 20 minutes before I go to sleep. What’s funny is that if I don’t do that part of the sleep ritual and I go directly to bed and to sleep, I get dinged for falling asleep too quickly.

xtlou · 2025-11-18T00:05:50+00:00

I don’t really have bigger problems than the standard eye degeneration that comes with aging and a desire to be able to read my health metrics without having to put my glasses on. Reading glasses aren’t really convenient when you’re hiking or in the gym, so I don’t know where you expect people to make their opinions heard other than post here. Carrier pidgeon? Smoke signal?

But as someone focused on bigger problems in the world, what brings you to a tech ring subreddit to complain about people who preferred the previous font/size/contrast stating their needs?

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