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WML: How to Stop Biting Nails

As I mentioned previously, I’ve had some success with stopping nail biting.

I did not really start biting nails on my own. I picked it up from one of my childhood friends. You know, peer pressure. In fact, it was the same friend that cost me that front tooth which I will be replacing with an implant now. Two things to remember him by. Grrr.

I analyzed my nail biting and came up with the following conclusions:
a) I usually start biting a nail that is longer then the rest, has overgrown cuticle or jagged edges.
b) I bite my nails more when my hands are dry

Ok, so here’s how I stopped:

I went to a Dwayne Reed drugstore and bought myself a whole bunch of manicure stuff:

  • a couple of nail files
  • nail buffer
  • nail cissors
  • cuticle sissors
  • cuticle stick
  • Orly No Bite bitter clear polish
  • Sally Hansen Problem Cuticle Remover
  • Sally Hansen Radiant Hands, Nails & Cuticles Creme
  • Sally Hansen Maximum Growth
  • Sally Hansen Thicken Up!� Strengthening Nail Thickener

    First I took care of the dry skin. I really like that Radiant Hands, Nails & Cuticles Creme – it almost doesn’t smell.

    Then I took care of the cuticles with the cuticle cream and cuticle scissors.

    Polished away jagged surface of bitten nails and buffed their surface.

    For a weekend I used the bitter nail polish thingy. It’s wasn’t very bitter, but it reminded me.

    More importantly, I kept a nail file at work, in my bag, near my computer and at my bedside table. The hardest thing is to stop after biting a nail. By polishing away the jagged edge as soon as you transgress it’s easiest to stop.

    I applied the “Maximum Growth and Thicken Up” thingies from time to time. Nails that are bitten for a long time do not grow very well and are thin. These two products help a little with that.

    I think at some point I am going to get a manicure and a pedicure. Maybe it’s not very manly, but I am very secure in my masculinity.

    [update] Even after all that I was not able to quit completely. These days I can go without nail biting for up to a month at a time, but I am a full blown nail biting recidivist. That moisturizer really helps though.

    If you are coming from Lifehacker link, please don’t forget to take a look at the rest of WML posts and other good stuff.

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    My Investment Strategery or Watch Out, Warren Buffet

    My investments remind me of this Seinfeld’s monologue :

    “I’m not an investor. People always tell me, you should have your money working for you. I’ve decided I’ll do the work. I’m gonna let the money relax. You know what I mean? ‘Cause you send your money out there – working for you – a lot of times, it gets fired. You go back there, “What happened? I had my money. It was here, it was working for me.” “Yeah, I remember your money. Showing up late. Taking time off. We had to let him go.” “

    The first stock that I ever bought was of a now defunct company called Molecular Biosystems that traded under the ticker symbol MB. Their only product was a special contrast agent for CAT scans or something like that. I bought the stock because of the name. It seemed cool. All scientific and such. And just two letters. I think the return on investment was something like -50%. I don’t remember.

    Since then I’ve read a bunch of investment books, and was very impressed with Warren Buffet’s investment strategies. I decided I’d buy only a few stocks of companies that I liked, knew and understood.

    The list came down to 4 companies. Palm [PALM] (actually 3COM when I bought it and later, after I’ve got PALM shares after the split I bought Handspring [HAND]), Gemstar[GMSTE] (I bought TV Guide shares, they were later converted to GMST shares), Krispy Kreme Donuts [KKD] and Berkshire Hathaway [BRKB].

    Out of the four, I invested in 2. Palm and Gemstar. And here’s how I did:

    Interestingly enough, at some point, when I was down about 15% (after being up 70%) I considered selling all the stocks and buying a La Marzocco instead. I didn’t.

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    All I Really Want for Christmas is a Memex

    I am finishing up “Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing “. Next up are “The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal” and “Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century”. I’ve read a good chunk of Ted Nelson’s “Literary Machines”. It’s difficult. Just like Nelson’s personality. I’ll write about all of that in a little while.

    I can’t fricking believe how expensive “From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind’s Machine” is. You know, overall, used books at Amazon got so expensive. I used to be able to find almost anything for a few bucks, but now people have snapped up all the cheap copies. The only advantage of buying used books there is that they will be shipped faster. This sucks. Where is Xanadu? Where is my Memex? Where is my flying car?

    Speaking of expensive. I’ve finally broke down and purchased a Tablet PC. It’s an Acer TMC102Ti . I’ve got it for about $1700 at ecost.com, and it comes with a $100 rebate. I finally own a laptop! I’ll post a review soon.

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    Duct and Cover

    Tom Ridge advised everyone to buy duct tape for bio and radiological protection.

    Yeah, you should use anything but duct tape to seal ducts, but it works great on everything else. It’s good for automotive repairs, spacecraft fixin’ and many other things.

    It’s so good, apparently “In Finland and Sweden, some folks (we are told) refer to duct tape as “Jesus Tape.”” I’ve heard that at NASA it’s called “engineering tape”.

    Oh, I did not know it came in Beige, Black, Blue, Burgundy, Brown, Gold, Floral Green, Green, Olive Drab, Orange, Purple, Red, Silver, White and Yellow. Mmmm, purple duct tape.

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    Beeeep beeeep beeeep beeeep SLAP

    Most people I know don’t like their sleep to be interrupted. I, on the other hand, as long as I don’t have to get up right this minute, don’t mind being woke up multiple times.

    First of all, the actual process of falling asleep after quieting the harsh beep of the alarm clock is a very pleasant experience. Second, I find that a short series of naps is more refreshing than a long “wow, how long was I out” sleep. I also a series of alarms has a much greater chance of waking me up from an REM state. This is the best way to wake up: the brain is already active and the dreams can be easily recalled.

    At some point I wanted to make an alarm clock that would detect either eye movements or the brain waves associated with them and wake me up during REM. Understandably, for the lack of time, skills and gumption I never got further than playing with a basic stamp microcontroller and reading EEG newsgroups. I suck.

    Anyhoo, this morning, between the infamous 9 minute alarm clock buzzes, I had 2 dreams.

    In the first one, came for a visit to America. We went to explore the power station at Brooklyn College. Tema had a really old looking key that opened the gate. As a side note (not a part of the dream): Brooklyn College has some very interesting infrastructure. There are tunnels connecting all buildings, a power plant, a heat plant and a buncha other interesting things. I’ve heard that there is a linear accelerator somewhere. Right. So we explored the area around the power plant a bit, I pointed out Monk parrots to .

    You’d think I went clubbing with in the second dream, but I didn’t. Instead I was still in Brooklyn College. My high school English teacher was giving a lecture standing behind a podium in the middle of the quad. He said: “the time now is [don’t remember] and the temperature is 28 Therms “. I asked him is there is a thermometer on his podium that measures temperature in “Therms” ( I think a Therm is the same thing as BTU). He said that that was the case. For some reason I called him Alex, even though his name is Alan.

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    Exoskeleton Troubles or Crown of Despair.

    I’ve finally stopped biting my nails (and I’ll write a detailed howto article about that in a little while). But as soon as I fixed that, I broke my one an only fake tooth.

    You see, one of my childhood friends was chasing me (with the intention of beating me up for something or other), and caused me to trip. I chipped my front tooth. When I was already in the US, my former half-assed dentist talked me into killing off that tooth and turning it into a crown. The result of his work was pretty sucky — the crown came out in a year or so. But by then I had a really, really good dentist replace it. And that lasted my a good while.

    But a few days ago I carelessly bit into a piece of chicken. There was a loud crunch and…..

    Luckily my other childhood friend is a second year dental resident (yes, dentists have an option to go into residence, although it’s not required). I could not get a dental appointment with my regular dentist until the 18th, but my friend took that x-ray the same day.

    In any case, I’ll need an implant (or a bridge, which I don’t want to do). For a couple of months I’ll have to wear a temporary replacement called a “flipper”. I know, har-har, flipper.

    But at least the implant is cool. An implant is basically a titanium screw that goes directly into the bone. It’s installed by either a dental surgeon or a specialist.

    Woohoo! Titanium! I’ll see if I can get a laser cannon, cell phone or a supercomputer mounted in there. We have the technology, right?

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    Oral Picard on a Spiral Staircase or Otterby dAttabroth

    I’ve started what I am hoping to be my last semester at Brooklyn College. I am taking a speech course and a database management course.

    The speech course is taught by an professor from NYU who looks very much like Captain Picard. He repeats himself a lot, tells cheesy stories and does not like my comments. The syllabus says that we “will be graded on oral performance”. Yeah, huh. I guess if I don’t miss too many classes and don’t piss him off too badly I should pass. Oh, and the class starts at 9 AM on Sunday. And there are no places where I can get an espresso. Arrrgh.

    The professor who teaches the second class annoys me in oh so many ways. First of all he always smiles. Literally, says every word with a smile. Secondly, he teaches by example rather than by explaining. In the speech class we talked about non-verbal communication, and the professor didn’t much like my comment about a test for engineering thinking , which goes like this: you ask a person to quickly define a spiral staircase.


    A person who thinks like an engineer will explain verbally , for instance, that a spiral staircase is a staircase that was bent into a spiral. A non-engineering type will try to explain with gestures : “you know, it’s a staircase like [whistles and makes spiraling gestures]” or examples – “ya know – like that staicase at Bill’s house”

    How did you do?

    Well, instead of explaining, this database professor gives examples. And spends lots and lots of time writing example tables and data on the blackboard (when he could have just given everybody xeroxed examples from his notes).

    His accent is pretty heavy. I’ll write phonetic spelling of some of his pronunciations, and you try to guess what it means:

    “Otterby” – “order by “
    “sIkkle” – “single “
    “valU” – “value”
    “noW” (this is a tricky one) – “NULL”
    “dAttabroth” – “\date of birth”

    That’s not too hard to get used to though.

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    Frustrating Dream Recursion

    Had an interesting recursive dream today. At the very beginning of the dream I realized that I was dreaming. Great, I thought, lets try to do some lucid dreaming. But as soon as I though that, I was kicked out of the dream state. I was desperately trying to fall asleep and get back into that dream, but failed miserably. That’s because the part about me trying to fall asleep – that was also a dream.