[STACKED] BLACKICE's EmperorQ + Quantum Limitless Journal

[BLACKICE]

I started EmperorQ (EQ) yesterday, and decided to get a feel for it by itself for a couple of days before adding in the rest of my stack, which at the moment is Quantum Limitless ST2.

I listened to it just after lunch. I listened again after returning from a walk later in the day, and had a bit of a headache so decided to lay down and read while listening.

As I mentioned in my other journal, lately I’ve been reading medical and health-related books. I had a few of them beside me yesterday but instead picked up an adventure fiction novel, which I haven’t been reading much lately. I felt like reading about something more exciting than telomeres.

I read for a while, until EQ ended, and I was about to hit repeat and keep reading, but instead I put the book down and went to YouTube. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and then I found a video of a custom electric bike (tadpole trike) with an insane battery system. This thing was able to do 50mph and was keeping up with cars, and even out-accelerating them. I watched for a few minutes, and then I realized… why am I watching this? I’m not especially interested in bicycles. I thought about it for the moment, and realized that it was because it was something different. Something novel, that I don’t usually pay attention to.

After that I watched a few marketing videos, and learned some new things that I’d like to try out. I used to watch a lot of marketing videos, but have been more focused on health stuff lately, so this was a bit of a change back.

Later in the evening, my wife and I had been planning on watching one movie, and I really wanted to watch Ocean’s 11 instead. Luckily she loves that movie too, so we watched that. I’ve seen that movie probably 20 times, and I love it every time. Why that movie at that particular moment? I really felt like seeing a clever scheme.

Last night was interesting. I had difficulty sleeping… not trouble falling asleep, but I woke up multiple times during the night. I also had crazy vivid dreams, that seemed rather significant.

In the first dream, I was at my wedding, yet for some reason the reception was being held in what looked like a buffet restaurant, and there was 100+ people there. My wife and I were starving, but people kept interrupting us when we tried to eat anything. Like a scene in the TV show How I Met Your Mother, but less funny. I kept trying to suggest things we could eat, only to have something prevent it. Finally I walked into the kitchen area and said “This is my wedding, but I can’t get any food!” A chef ran over with a huge slab of salmon on a plank, and handed it to me but as soon as my wife reached for it too, he said “Oh, she can’t have this. It’s not cooked yet.” I told him we eat sushi all the time and I’m sure it would be fine, but he insisted that it needed to be cooked properly first and then proceeded to put it in what looked like a pizza oven. The fish came out the other side, way overcooked, and now it looked nasty. He handed it to me, but I said we didn’t want it anymore because it had looked perfect before.

Then I woke up.

In the next dream, I was visiting my parents house, and their backyard was full of holes, mud, standing water, and looked like a messy construction site. The details on this one were very fuzzy, but it seemed significant that someone was out all night and I was waiting up, but was the only person who cared. Whoever it was returned home early in the morning, and it seemed perfectly normal to everyone except me.

Woke up again.

The last dream I remember, I was going out with some friends, and one of them had brought some younger friends with her (late teens to early 20s). We were all going to see a movie, but for whatever reason everyone else had to leave and I was standing there with the friend’s younger friends, who were all late high school/college age. Most of them left, but one girl stayed and asked if I wanted to hang out. I said sure, why not, and we went to a nearby coffee shop. I should mention that in this particular dream I wasn’t married, but I was relatively close to the same age (30s) as I am in real life.
The girl and I sat at a table and talked about people we knew, and the movie we’d all planned to see, and then for some reason she had to go run an errand or leave for a short time, but said she wanted to hang out again later. She asked me if I’d watch her laptop for her and then she left. I sat there for a while longer, thinking about this cute girl that I’d just met, yet who already trusted me enough to babysit her computer. I then got up to leave, as we were meeting up later, and I went to visit another friend.
I then found out that this girl was still in high school (18-19, fwiw) and my first thought was “wtf, I basically have a date with a high school girl, that’s weird!” but another part of me also thought “ha! still got it…”

It seemed significant that I know who this girl was, so she told me her name several times and spelled it out. It’s not a name I recognized, though the last name seemed the most significant… it was Wilde, with an E. Again, that seemed important. I did in fact google that name, and there are several people with that specific name, none of whom looked like the dream character. Not that I’d expect them to of course.

Then I woke up, and stayed awake as it was time to get up.

The rest of the day was busy, and I only got 1 loop of EQ in as I had calls and/or meetings most of the day. There was only one significant thing from the rest of the day, and that’s a political situation that is happening in the portfolio company that my company is part of. One of the VPs has been slacking off and not doing his job, and it’s been affecting a few projects that I’m working on. It’s been an ongoing problem for months and nearly everyone but the CEO is tired of it. I’ve recently brought much of this to light, and he got in a bit of trouble over it.
Today there was a meeting about a proposal I had, relating to a new technology partner that we’re going to be running clinical trials with, and I wanted to mention it at an upcoming conference. This guy managed to convince the company lawyer that it was such a bad idea that we could be sued for even mentioning it, which is ridiculous, but he took the opporttunity to slam the idea and me for even mentioning it, in front of multiple people.
Not cool.
Rather than just feel pissed off, I decided to not take it. At all. I had a call with the company GM, whi is well aware of what this particular VP is like, and he suggested going right to the CEO to pitch it. Which I will, this week. I’m tired of having to deal with this guy’s BS simply because he’s buddy buddy with the CEO. His job role is to support the other division heads, and instead he throws up roadblocks and makes a fuss whenever someone has an idea thrat he can’t take credit for.

This isn’t meant to be a rant, rather my point is I didn’t get mad (annoyed, sure…), I just had a resolve to fix the situration. If that means going over his head, then so be it.

So, not quite the same “Get the f*** out of my way” attitude I had on EV3/EV4. This is different. This is more “Oh, so that’s how you want to play? Ok…”

And I’m still not sure what to make of the dreams!

I’ll give it another day or so with just EQ, then I’ll add QL ST2 back in.

Until next time!

[Lion]

@BLACKICE - man, I love Ocean’s Eleven too. I can watch it any time.

PS: do move this journal to the “Subliminal Club LABS” section since all the EmperorQ journals are to be put there.

[BLACKICE]

PS: do move this journal to the “Subliminal Club LABS” section since all the EmperorQ journals are to be put there.

Moved, thanks for the heads up! .

[BLACKICE]

I had a business trip this week (the last one for a while, as everything else including the conference I was scheduled to speak at has been cancelled or postponed), so was away for a couple of days. I’m generally a pretty easygoing person, though not often regarded as being exceptionally funny or entertaining. Typically I think I’m quiet, although my wife may disagree sometimes…

On this trip I was working closely with some of the staff from our office in Seattle, and conversations felt different. I was in a good mood, and conversation flowed more easily than it usually does for me. I was making jokes as we worked, and everyone had a good time. On the last trip to this office, the staff had a good time joking with each other but I was in “boss mode” and wasn’t really included. This time was noticeably different. I’m definitely feeling some socializing effects from EQ now I think!

My dreams are quite interesting as well. For a couple of days I was unable to remember any dreams, just vague notions of the general theme of the dreams. Specifically, I was looking for something but was unable to find it, or I was attempting to do something and wasn’t succeeding at it.

The night before my trip, I dreamed that my credit card had a problem and stopped working. That actually happened the next day.

I stayed at the same hotel that I stayed at 6 weeks ago for my last trip, and it was the same girl at the front desk. I’ve only talked with this person once before, yet I remembered her name and face as though I’ve known her for a long time. Rapport + memory features in EQ?

The night I was away, I had a very bizarre dream. I was at my parents home (a lot of my dreams happen there; I think it’s my archetypal definition of “home” or at least “in a house”. I’ve lived in the same condo for many years now, yet I don’t recall having many dreams that took place here, if any) and I had a dog that was a sort of guard dog that understood my commands. There were other dogs there, and they were trying to attack a small rodent that was about the size of a guinea pig or small rabbit, which appeared to be giving birth to fully formed smaller rodents… size of hamsters or smaller. I pointed at the mother rodent and ordered my dog to protect her, but that meant that she was separated from the babies, which scattered. I got the other dogs out of the house, and went to find the baby animals to help them. I found one, except now it was a baby bird (or perhaps a pterodactyl, it looked a bit dinosaur-ish), and it was in bad shape. I ran to get a syringe to help feed it some milk (??) but I kept getting the wrong amount and had to start again. A few minutes later I ran back but the baby animal was dead. I woke up feeling really out of sorts.
The other dreams were less specific, but all had the themes of solving puzzles or solving a mystery, but in the form of being walked through how it was solved rather than me trying to figure it out. Every single one had beyond ridiculous Rube Goldberg-esque plots and setups, things that would require nigh impossible levels of luck to actually work out. I usually have bizarre and detailed dreams, but lately they have been different than normal due to the consistent themes.

On the way home, my colleagues were getting increasingly nervous that we may not be able to fly or if we’d be exposed to illness if we did. I didn’t feel any anxiety at all about it, and in the end we were able to fly back on the company’s private plane so no exposure to other people. The next couple of weeks will tell if I was careful enough I suppose!

[BLACKICE]

Dream journal today as I just woke up and coffee is ready, but I want to get this written out before I forget details.

I had a very bizarre but specific dream, unlike any I’ve ever had before.

I was visiting my business partner and he gave me a large amount of cash, but told me it wasn’t active. Like… it was decommissioned serial numbers, or something to that effect. So it was money, but nothing I could use. I decided the best thing to do with it was to put it in a blender, which turned it into money-colored sugar, for lack of a better term. I kept that in a jar, and held on to it for later.

At a different point, I ran into an old friend of mine (J) and he started handing me wads of cash. I said “what’s this for?? how much is here??” and he said “I just had it extra, so you should have it. I think there’s at least $10k there.” As he handed me multiple wads of bills folded together, I estimated there was easily 10x that amount, but I didn’t say anything. I asked if he had a bag or something I could borrow to take it to the bank, and he handed me a backpack that looked nearly identical to my own, but I could tell (somehow) that it wasn’t mine. I told J I would invest the money and share the profits, and he said “whatever you want to do!”
We went to the bank, which was also a post office for some reason, and he had some stuff to do as well. Some forms to fill out. At one point he needed a pen, and also to spit out some gum he was chewing, so he walked behind the counter to do so. Nobody seemed to notice or care, so he smiled and shrugged. After he finished his tasks, I noticed there was a huge lineup behind me and it was so busy everyone was shoving into each other. Screw this, I thought, I can go to a better bank. So, we left.
I went home at that point, which in the dream was my parents house (where I haven’t lived in nearly 20 years, but hey… dream.) I still had a backpack full of wads of cash, and I decided I shouldn’t tell anyone about it. I noticed 2 odd things right away; 2 pairs of my jeans were laying on the floor in the kitchen, with a passport on top of them. A red passport (mine is blue…). I picked up the jeans and put them into the washing machine, as they’d been on the floor, and put the passport in my pocket.
My father was there, and he asked me what I thought of the passport. I had no idea what he was talking about, and he said to open it. I did, and it was a photo of me that had been badly photoshopped to add black hair and a mustache, and it was a fake name. Southeast Asian, perhaps Indian or Pakistani. I said “wtf??” and he laughed and said “Pretty good, right?” I had no idea what he meant, so I told him I didn’t think anyone would believe it was real.
Then my mother came home, and she was talking about money. She said she went to the bank to get some money but they were all out, and at that point I told her “I’ve got some!” and started pulling wads of cash out of the backpack.
She asked where I got them, and I told her it was from J, and she said “oh, that makes sense.” or something to that effect.
Then my sister arrived with some friends, and they wanted to do some crafts to plan for an upcoming trip to Vegas. I pulled out the powdered money in the jar, and asked if they wanted to use that. Suddenly we were outside somewhere, and there were lots of jars of colored powder, so they started mixing them together to get “just the right color”. Then, just as fast, we were back in my parents kitchen, and now they were mixing up some sort of liquids, and were putting them into soap bottles/dispensers. They had many different kinds of bottles/etc because… dream, right? None of the dispensers were working though, and they asked me to help.
I tried shaking them to make the liquid come out, but nothing was working. This was very distressing because now they suddenly also couldn’t locate their destination on GPS/Google Maps. I asked what they were looking for, and they told me it was a large fountain.
They knew the general location, but couldn’t find it on the map. I asked couldn’t they just go to the general area and then look around to see if they could find it, or maybe ask someone there?

My sister said yes they could probably do that, and then they got ready to leave… with their jars of mixed liquid, and a jar of colored ground up money/sugar/sand/whatever it actually was.

I looked down at the bag of money, and then woke up.

Any thoughts?? I’ve had money-related dreams before of course, but this one was really weird.