Wordle And Other Games

Damn, tried Wordle tonight.  It's addictive.  Some players have said it is like "Jotto".  I never played that.  But I started beating Woordle after the 3rd game and went about 15 for 20 afterwards.  I always find a way to figure out how to play games well.

I understand it as an older game called 'Mastermind'.  That wasn't a word game, but it worked the same in general.  It had 4 colors of pegs.  One player set the 4 pegs in secret, colors arranged and duplicated as desired; the other player had to end up with the same colors in order to win.  

The set-up player had to set pegs on the side after each try according to "right color right spot" or "right color, wrong spot".  No pegs meant "no color in any spot".  Took about 12-20 turns to win or lose (I forget).

I played it with several intelligent people as the set up person.  None ever got the pegs right by turn so it was always a bit maddening.  I would show they erred, in like, "turn 7".  As set-up player myself, I always got it right.  It's just logic.  

It was one of those games people didn't want to play after a few times.  They couldn't do either side right.

Naturally, *I* loved it.  When the set-up player got pegs right, I solved it.  When I was the "set up" player, it was 50-50.

I'm like that about weird complicated board games.  I "get" all the rules immediately.  Just a talent (or maybe a mental rule-weirdness ability).  I've never met anyone like me in that regard.  I'm just a person with a particular ability to understand game rules really quickly and understand how to use them...  

There was a game club when I first moved here.  When I discovered them, they had just disbanded.  I tried to start a new one, but got no takers.  I have a bedroom closet shelf filled to the top with games I will never play again due to lack of opponents...  It seems so sad.  I would sure love to play some of those games.

On the other hand, it has been many years since I tried.  Maybe I should join a local social media page and try again.  I can't be the ONLY person around here that likes board games!

Can't Stay Away

I thought I would probably just stay offline for a week and see what developed after US Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg died, but there is little value in doing that. The Republican party has made it clear that they will appoint a very conservative justice to replace a liberal one.  I just didnt expect them to act so fast.

There are couple things going on here and I just can't stay silent.  The first is that Justice Ginsberg was an unusually thoughtful and careful thinker.  I always personally thought she was special.  While I don't try to read detailed legal decisions, I always found summaries of her questions and arguments to be clearer and more focused than most other Supreme Court Justices (some of whose were downright bizarre and represented political goals more than they did law).

The second is that her replacement will likely be extremely conservative and likely to tilt the Court to a degree of reactionary conservatism.  I am scared, angry, and worried about a generation of reversals of basic civil right decisions.

For the benefit of those who do not pay as much attention to The Supreme Court as they do the Presidency or Congress (as so many do not in the US and do not really need to elsewhere), here is a brief summary of the politicalization of the US Supreme Court...

In our history, there have been times when the Supreme Court nominees were very political chosen.  But after WWII until a few decades ago, nominees were generally moderates chosen for legal expertise and a sense of some political neutrality.  That was mostly because both the Democratic and Republican parties had liberal and conservative members and no extremely ideological judge could get through the Senate for approval.

As the political parties began to chose a side in "self-purging",  Supreme Court candidates became more representative of party politics.  One could blame Richard Nixon for bringing Southern Democratic conservatives and Republican conservatives together to form a new majority Republican party under the idea of "law and order" (a code word for racism and white supremacy).  Economic and liberal Republicans moved to the Democratic party which promised "a big tent".  I was one of them.

Over the next couple of decades, both parties spread apart ideologically.  The Republicans realized that taking over The Supreme Court had advantages for a decade or more (the Democrats, to my constant amazement, never seemed to catch on to that).   Republicans went for advantage; Democrats stayed respectful of the Preident's right to select Judges at all levels

In this century, timing of Supreme Court retirements and deaths has given the Republicans the opportunity to name more Supreme Court judges than the Democrats.  But it isn't JUST that.  There is a major difference between Republicans and Democrats.  

Republican politicians come from businessmen and lawyers used to fighting to win by any means.  Democrats tend to come from community activists used to succeeding by creating consensus among groups.  Republicans enjoy high-stakes poker; Democrats let their kids win at Candyland*.  Let's say both play chess.  Republicans will try a a Fool's Mate playing their Mother; Democrats will try to let their friends get a draw.  Republicans are Dad who sends you to your room for not finishing dinner; Democrats are Mom who sneaks you dessert later. 

That may be changing as Democrats see the lack of benefit by seeking consensus and getting kicked in the face for trying.   

But here's my point...  

In February 2016,  conservative Supreme Court Justice Scalia died.  It was the right of President Obama to name and expect to have approved a replacement.  He nominated Merrick Brian Garland (who serves as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He has served on that court since 1997 with good reputation).  

Republican US Senate Leader Mich McConnell declared it was improper for a President to name a Supreme Court Judge in an election year  (this was 10 months before the election).  Most all other Republicans agreed and some even swore on camera that they would never change their minds on this issue as a "matter of principle".  Because the nominee should be chosen by the next President.

Now it is 2020, only 48 days before the next election.  President Trump is demanding to name Ginsberg's replacement and those Republican Senators who swore never to allow a Court approval at any point in an election year are saying they will approve anyone Trump names within days.

My Dad hated "lying"; I hate "hypocrisy".  They are close but different.

In a way, it doesn't matter what the views of Trump's nominee are.  It is the hypocrisy of the Republican Senators who changed their views just as a matter of winning.  I am disgusted by the amorality and
hypocrisy of the Republican party in this matter.

    -----------------

* When I was growing up, my family played board games a lot.  Dad was lethal.  Mom probably was kinder.  But Dad never explained how he won.  He just LOVED winnng at anything.  And when I got better at any game than him, he stopped playing it.  Granted, I learned a lot from losing and DID figure out his secrets slowly.

Move ahead to 1980.  My parents (who said we should always stay close together as a family) suddenly went and moved from MD to NH taking my minor sister with them.  So I visited them each Summer.  Sis liked to play board games too.  Her favorite was Careers.  I was lethal, like Dad.  And that probablt distressed her at first because I was her "adored Big Brother".  

But I kept showing her what I had done to win (and there were many ways), and she caught on o the idea that I was teaching her how to play games.  I explained there was a way of looking at how a game worked and taking advantage of that.  In Careers you could win by meeting goals you set in your mind at the start.  Any version of $, happiness, or fame that got you to 60.  But you just had to focus on it.  She mentioned that to me years later saying I had helped her look at some parts of life more analytically and clearly.

The point was Dad killed, Mom was kind, and I explained.   Dad was  Republican, Mom was a Democrats, and I was somewhere between...

Computer Problems 3

I'm not winning...  I got the NEW computer to load my Photo Library from the OLD one and thought my problems with photos was solved.  Well, sort of.  I loaded the files, but most were duplicated 2-6 times.  So I found  free program that was described as safe and effective on several Mac sites.  One thing ot does is remove duplicate files and you can specify which folders to search.

So I did that.  You click on "scan".  After it scans all the files in the folder, it compares them all to find the duplicates.  Then you click "remove" and hope...

It found about the right size of files (90GB).  It set about comparing the files. After several hours, it offerred "remove".  I clicked. After another several hours, It removed about 25% of them.  Argh!

I'm trying it again, because I still had the New one connected to the OLD one with a usb cable, and maybe that messed it up.

This is almost becoming a game.  Sort of like Tron or one of those old "quest" games where you form a team of characters and search a castle solving problems to get at the treasure at the end.  Well, better to view it that way than go running down the street screaming in frustration.  Though I have often screamed "WHAT NOW?" after some failures, I maintain a determined (and rather surprisingly) good outlook.

My entire Govt career was FIGURING OUT THINGS and SOLVING PROBLEMS, and to be honest, I kind of miss that.  So the game now is "Cavebear vs The Evil Computer".

The NEW computer doesn't have much on it yet (and the OLD one is actually working), so if it chugs away day and night I'm not really losing any functionality.

  ---------------------

But there is more to life than computers (no REALLY, it's true).  So in that spirit, here is my real life To Do list for the next few days:

1.  Feed the emerging spring bulbs with slow-release fertilizer to improve flower growth next month and bulb  regrowth afterwards.

2.  Lay down that packing paper shippers use as cushioning between the garden beds.  I save it.  I must have 100s of yards of it neatly smoothed and folded.  Then I'll cover it with large wood chip mulch.  That should kill the weeds.

3.  Three years ago, we had heavy snow.  There were enough fallen leaves on the top of my chicken wire garden enclosure for the snow to accumulate.  The weight bent the PVC-covered steel pipes I used.

It took a week to pull each one out of the sockets, straighten then, and replace them.  So I bought more steel poles to support all the centers of the existing pipes.  I need to set them up.

4.  I planted a lot of pansies last Fall, but I had some left over and put them in planter pots.  Ivident;y that doesn't protect them from the freezing weather enough (they and small and withery).  So I might as well bury the pots in the garden soil for insulation.


5.  I have briars growing in the front yard landscape bed.  Bad look.  So I better dig them out before they spread .  It rained a lot a few days ago, so the soil is workable.

Cheers...

After Some Thought...

Well, not posting in order to try to escape some bad habits has been interesting.  I would say it worked about half-well.  The successful part was finding the sites that kept me up all night for no really good reason  But, as I sit here, I have a glass of wine at and and a pack of cigs.

Apparently, I am still stuck with wine and cigs when I'm on the computer for any longer than it takes to check email.  Old habits die hard, and sometimes don't die at all.

But less is better.  There is a difference between a pack of cigs and 2 glasses of wine vs 4 packs and a bottle.  The less is because I've stopped visiting a discussion board that kept me worked up all night and a game site that has been failing for a couple years.

The discussion board is an atheist site.  I'm an atheist, for anyone who didn't know.  I spent a lot of time there over the past 2 years.  I enjoyed the discussions and arguments, and there sharp people there on both sides.  But I realized that I wasn't changing anyone's opinion.  The other atheists just agreed with me, and the theists (ranging from creationists to philosophical believers) were as unlikely to be convinced to change their views as I was.  So there doesn't seem to be much point in debating there.

The game site was a wonderful discovery some years ago.  I joined because there were free classical games (Risk, Hearts, Backgammon, Scrabble, etc) and I enjoyed that.  Then I discovered that, by joining the site for a modest fee, I could play more dedicated gamers and earn a rating.  That interested me. 

But the site is losing paying members (who normally feel a duty to complete a game) and the free players just leave the instant they aren't winning.  I just received an email notice that my annual membership is up for renewal.  I think I'll give it one more year, but I suspect that will be the last.  Which is a shame, because I really worked for all those rating points.  Still, nothing lasts forever.

I've been busy while I was away.  Not staying up all night meant I slept better and was more active in the daytime.  I'll post about that soon, by project. 

I've decided I enjoy posting about things I actually do myself that mean something around the house and yard than arguing with intractable people about topics that will never be resolved or playing games that don't mean much.

An Interesting Person

I visit many odd discussion sites.  One is an atheist forum ( I am an atheist).  But because almost all of us there are atheists, a lot of the discussion is not about atheism.  One of the threads was about games.

I am a game-player.  And I don't mean the latest online game; old across-the-table board games.  This one guy and I started talking about old games.  We knew and had played the same ones.  So I mentioned a few odd ones.  One was a game were you searched for subs in 3D under a cover.  He said OMG, I loved that game but couldn't remember the name and he had been searching for it.  It was Sonar Sub Hunt. 

The green halves lift up and you snapped in plastic rectangles for subs and round ones for mines.  The grey things in the corners were working periscopes so you could watch your opponent move his destroyer around (just under the green covers).  If he brushed a mine, a buzzer sounded and he lost a destroyer (I think you got 3).  If he pressed a button it pushed a spring down and if it hit one of your subs, a light came on above (so no cheating allowed).

It was really quite a complex mechanical game for the 60s.  Sort of a version of 'You Sunk My Battleship'.  It was quite a popular draw for my neighborhood friends, and my Dad and I played it often too. 

Being basically a random-luck game, it was pretty fair for everyone, but it sure was interesting. 

My forum friend was thrilled to have the name so he could search for it on Ebay.  I checked, it is available there, for $100.

So I threw in another odd game I had played and said NO ONE had ever heard of it.  It was called "Feudal".  HE had and loved it, and described some of the strategies he used.  They were my strategies too.

And since MY strategies were not the ones my only opponent (a roommate) used, it was interesting that we thought alike about that..


So we compared more complex games from Avalon Hill.  That company specialized in replicating historical battles in great detail.  Like, in Gettysburg, all the units entered the board at the correct times and by the correct roads, the terrain mattered in attacks and defenses, etc.  He played that for years too as did I.

We also compared playing other games.  We both played the same games and hated the same ones.  We are even almost the same age.  We have both tried to find local game clubs that play such games, without success.  We even like one computer game; Civilization 2 (that is a game where you start as a primitive society and slowly build or fight your way to either world domination of launching a spaceship to Alpha Centauri to establish a new colony.  You can also play the Civ games online against single or multiple players and against bots.

But it turns out that we are on opposite sides of the country and both hate traveling.  We will never meet.

But it is nice to know there is someone out there like me...  There aren't many.

Trivial Pursuit

About once a month, I play Trivial Pursuit on pogo.com.  I always win eventually.  This one was harder because several of my initial wedges vanished (stuff happens).  But I kept on.

I'm not actually good at true trivia.  I can't tell you how many #1 records The Beatles had or what Pete Rose's last batting average was.  I don't know how many leaves a palm tree has or what horse won the 1968 Kentucky Derby.  But they ask enough actual information questions for me to get by...  The Lone Eagle was Charles Lindbergh, John Kennedy's boat was PT-109, the volume of a circle is pi R2, etc.

I crushed it tonight, LOL!  I got the whole pie in 1 hour.  Hey, ya gotta have good nights at what ya enjoy, right?  Ask me about YOUR favorite topic and I'll get killed.  Maybe...

So I'm thinking of joining a bowling league...  Some balance in life is good.

Mark

Games

I love games.  The best are complicated.  I'm better than average at most but better at some than others.  I play Hearts well for example, but I couldn't win a night at poker to save my life (bluffs and counting cards are not my strong point).  My games involve tactics and some open-ended thought.  And I'm better at some in my later years than others.  I can't play chess worth a damn anymore.  But I play backgammon, cribbage and Risk pretty well.

And I've been playing a lot of Risk at Pogo.com these days in my spare time.  I learned the game at about 10, lost track of it in college as there was little time for such games with all that classwork.  Picked it back up a few years ago.

It's a fascinatng game with many ways to play.  The basic rules are that there is a world map with general nations defined.

 You need to take all the nations to win.  But there are complications.

You get armies in some nations to start.  You battle other players armies to take nations.  The dice decide the winners by repeated rolls for each army unit (and the dice are not generally good to me).  The more nations you have at the start of each turn, the more armies you get to spread around.  And if you control a whole continent (the different colors) at the start of a turn you get more (Asia gets 7, North America and Europe each get 5, Africa gets 3, South America and Australia each earn 2).

And then there are cards.  If you take any nation in a turn, you get a card.  The cards can be Cavalry, Infantry, or Artillery.  One of each or 3 or one gets you extra armies too.  So the gains are from number of nations, continents, or cards.  Deciding where to attack can become tricky.

And the cards change in value.  In one version of the game, a set of cards can increase.  They go from 4 armies and slowly increase to about 60 max (4-6-8-12-20, etc).  The nation count and continent values stay the same.  So the importance changes gradually from number of nations held, to continents held to the value of card sets.  And according to what you have, the values of each change. 

In another option of the game, the card sets are always worth only 8 armies  (8-8-8).  I don't like that game very much.  Its a game of super-cautious attrition.

So I said all this to explain THIS...  You gain player-points according to how many games you win.  You start at zero and the highest score I've seen is about 30 million.  I have 6.5 million.  Which is higher than average but no great shakes.

I lost almost 20 games in a row (meaning among 4 or 5 players I did not come in first even once.  So in frustration, I retreated to the game option of playing only "bots" (like playing the computer at chess).  I knew I was losing something at the strategy of the game.  I played the bots several games per night for a week. 

The Bots aren't pushovers.  They can calculate odds of winning any individual battle between nation armies better than I can.  But they can't (yet) think all that well strategically.  They can decide (for example) that they are likely to win a specific battle, but not hold a continent for that bonus of armies.

And here's what I didn't mention.  If you kill all the armies of a particular color, you gain all their cards.  Ans later in the version of the gain I like to play, that matters.  So I spent a week playing the bots to teach myself to focus of the continents and killing the colors (Bots). 

I lost the first couple games because I was still focused on the individual battles.  Then I learned to look at the long-term.  I gathered my armies not to hold nations but to kill off the Bots to get their cards.  Then I won every game.

If you've ever played pool, you learn that it isn't enough to sink the next ball, its where you are placed to sink the following one.

I rejoined the human player group 2 nights ago.  I won 5 games in a row outright against some 20 million point players.  They knew me and my history of losing lately.  They were NOT thrilled.

I don't expect the winning streak to last.  The other players will adjust.  They didn't get their many points by being stupid! 

But I'm sure gonna enjoy the winning while it lasts!  LOL!

Games

I've stayed away from Pogo.com for a couple weeks.  I can spend the whole night there SO easily.  Scrabble, Risk, Hearts...

But I dropped in to play "one game" tonight and it seems there was a challenge from them to win 6 games of Scrabble in a week.  3,000 free token point and some badge.

Pish Posh.

Took me 7 games.  Darn, I lost one by 2 points cuz I couldn't find a place to  use that darn "J" I got right at the end.  The others, I won by 100+ points. 

They're clever, they keep me coming back...

Games

This was actually 3 days ago, but I have some posts scheduled and its just too confusing to go back and change the tenses of those.  So I'm writing this today in the present tense, but you are reading this a few days from now.  With that out of the way...

I play games of all sorts.  Board games, not people games.  And Dad taught me that there was no point in playing a game if you didn't try to win ("there's a reason you keep score", he said).  As the eldest child, Dad taught me a lot of card and board games.  He gave me no slack.  It was win or lose.  I respected that.  And it made me a good gameplayer.  I AM competitive.  Generally, I play to win. 

If you detect some guilt coming in here, you're right.

I was 20 by the time my youngest sister, Jennifer (deceased 2010 and sorely missed) started playing games herself.  I always won, but I showed her HOW I won, so she could learn (and she did) (which was more than I got from Dad).  You can ignore the father/son dynamics there...

And I still love to play games against people who are (or think they are) my equals (and a darn lot are better).  Otherwise you would be seeing me in chess or poker tournaments.

But, you know, lately I just don't care about winning so much.  Sometimes just playing is good enough, though I do try to win.  It's just that I'm not obsessive about it anymore.  Losing a game doesn't destroy my day.

So there I was at Pogo.com joining some games randomly (after staying up all night at them) and one game was doomed for me from the start because it was late in the game.  So the game ended and we started a new one.  Just 2 human players and 3 computer robots (who play quite well, BTW).  The routine is to kill of the Bots first, and the other guy agreed.  Something like this.


But then he turned the game over to his son (somewhere older than 12 and younger than 20 I would guess).  He was playing for a badge.  I know about the badges, but I don't pay any attention to earning them.  They just show up in my "space" sometimes. 

But this kid really wanted some particular badge and I was standing in his way.  He even attacked me before we killed the Bots. 

I felt for that kid.  I TRIED to lose.  Well, I didn't play suicidally, but I gave him every opportunity to win.  He got a winning position from his Dad.  And to be fair, I'm really good at comebacks.  Bit I really did try to let him win.  He didn't...  He even thanked me for the game.

So I feel like I failed by winning.

I didn't get a chance to explain to him how he lost (the games ends and all the players are gone).  If he learned anything from our game, I'll never know.

So my question.  Should I have tried harder to lose, or should I have tried harder to win faster?

I personally thrived in merciless competition, but some people don't.  So what do you think?

The Risks of Risk

I joined an online game of Risk last night blind.  By which I mean you can investigate the conditions of the game and have someone jump in while you are doing that, or you can jump in blind yourself.  I went in blind.  The situation for my color was horrible!  

The only human player had half the board (and she outpointed me 3-1, 12million points to my paltry 4 million) and was attacking my poor few nations.  I was fortunate that she ran out of armies while I still had 2 nations.  It may seem bad that she surrounded me, but it DID mean I was isolated from the computer players for a turn.   And she SAID she would kill me on her next turn.

And she sure tried!  I got JUST enough to survive her next turn and slowly managed to control Africa and then South America.  She decided to try to take North America and the bots fought back stopping her plan.

I moved into NA and slipped from Alaska into Kamchatka (Asia) breaking her bonus for that continent.   I had JUST enough armies to stop her getting Kamchatcka back, but killing that last bot in Europe got me extra armies and I swept through Asia, pinning her in Australia.  She had no more armies that turn (takes 3 right cards to get more armies and she only had 2).   I took Australia.

I could tell she was really pissed.  You routinely tell the winner "good game" as you leave.  She didn't.

It doesn't get much better than that.  When you come from almost nothing, and win, that's special.

Playing Risk Online

After practicing by myself for a few weeks, I rejoined online play.  It was weird.  The first 4 games I tried to join were apparently started by people who only start games to have inactive games.  Those games never actually start.  But the 5th game was weirder.

There were 4 other players, all who had many more game points than I did.  And I had a terrible position (scattered around Central Asia, which is about the worst place to be).  But 2 of the players had some sort of personal feud and I got Australia (barely).

Then they went to war over North and South America, so I took over Asia (while they also killed the other 2 players).  It may have helped that I had just watched 2 hours of US Civil War battles because I would have made a general proud with enclosing moves and attacks on weak places.

So there were the 2 "strong" players still fussing with each other in North America and FOR ONCE I kept my forces carefully organized and only attacked with strength slowly and had Australia, Asia, Africa, and finally, Europe.  And they both went "Hey wait, whats he doing?"

It was too late for both of them.  LOL!  Most satisfying game in quite a while.  I wiped them both out while they were trading incriminations about each other's poor play. 

The race may usually go to the swift and the battle to the best generals, and that's the way to bet.  But the quiet and the sly also win sometimes.  LOL!

Playing Risk

Risk is a brutal board game.  4 or 5 players all determined to obliterate you country by country, continent by continent.

I often join games in progress in weak positions because, quite frankly, improving a position is more fun to me than winning outright, and on rare occasions I do win. 

Tonight I won a terrible brutal nerve-racking game right on the last battle, and I recalled a Gahan Wilson cartoon from many years ago.  I love the clean unlethal internet/boardgames, but I always keep in mind that there is a reality of what the game is about.

I always think of this...

"I THINK I WON"!


Gahan Wilson was a genious...

Computer Games

I love playing people at board/card games.  And the only way to do it these days is by computer.  My favorite games are Risk, Scrabble, Hearts, and Backgammon.

A place to play is pogo.com.  Not a recommendation, just where I play.  You get an avatar to represent you, and I got it uo to 800,000 points.  And got really annoyed that I was staying up late at nights to play.

So I cancelled my account.

Oh was I regretful...  And I couldn't get it back.  So a few months ago, I started again from ZERO!

This week, I reached 1,000,000 points.

Just before...

And just after...

Yeah, that's my avatar.  Indiana Jones hat and camo outfit.   Suits me just fine, and I actually wear that stuff IRL.  LOL!

 I think that "84%" means percentile of all scores.  Which is good I suppose for a casual player.   The serious players play every night for a few hours.  I'm not obsessed; I just like to play once a week.

Now that I have my million (and lots of players have WAY more than that), I want to earn enough points to add a cat to my avatar and stay above 1M!  I mean, what am I without a cat?  So I better go play more now.  I think I need 25,000 to get my cat.

Victory!

If you know the game of Risk, you know there are many nations to capture.  I have a sad fate of always coming in 2nd of 2-5 players.  And tonight I was down to 3 nations of (something like 70).  I nudged my way into NA, and got control of it while the others fought elsewhere.  Then I got SA!

If you know the game, you that means you get 2 continents with only 3 defense spots (Brazil. Alaska, and Greenland).

The 4 opponents worked together to kill me, but I survived.  I eliminated 3 (1surrenderred) and I was left with 1 opponent who had most of Asia, Africa,  and Europe.   And they were very good high-ranked players.

It took 2 hours to win the game.  I'm thrilled.  Risk is a hard game to win online.  The players are very skilled.  I win maybe 1 of 20 games.  I come in 2nd usually.  So a real win was SO GREAT!

The point is that we all have barriers, and I beat one of mine tonight. 

Cheers!

ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!

I love playing board games.  Last week, I stumbled across risk.com.  I LOVE that game.  I stayed up til dawn 3 nights last week playing it over and over.  Thankfully it's free.

What I love about games is figuring out a winning strategy.  Then I get bored and try something new.  But I haven't gotten around the computer programs in this yet.  So I need to keep trying.

The first few nights, I lost every game.  The second few nights, I won a few.  The last few night, I won half. 

Off I go to try again...  I DO enjoy it.  But it would be nice to get a whole regular night's sleep!