Finally. The new hard drive arrived, so I am once again with computer.

Site News: The Archive button to the left now actually leads somewhere with content now. The January posts have been placed there for safekeeping so they can be enjoyed into posterity.

Mike and I have been talking about creating a "Sleeping in Public" club. I could get www.sleepinginpublic.com, or something, and it could be about tips on where to go, and how to and stuff like that. There could be stuff like "Extreme Sleeping" where people tell mind-melting stories about "eXtreme" places they've slept. One could keep a log of all the places where they've slept in public, and rate them. People could organize public nappings. I think it would be funny. There could even be an activism wing where we fight for sleeping in public rights, because in many cities it is illegal.

This is all in a "What if" stage at the moment, though. I'd have to learn some kind of web-programing language like PHP and SQL for it to really work how I would like. In the mean time however, here are some tips I've picked up for sleeping at the University of Minnesota.

My favorite place to sleep is in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering building in the study space. There are comfortable chairs there and it's dimmer than most places. It's pretty quiet too. If you want it to be really quite, though, the library on the second floor of Wilson is good. The chairs are hard, but there is a nice high desk to lay your head down on. There are also some more comfortable chairs in the reception area. There are many places to sleep at Coffman Union as well. The big, fake? leather chairs are the most comfortable on campus, but it can be rather noisy there. There is also the TV area, and the cafeterias downstairs as well. At all of these places there are usually people sleeping, so you don't need to worry about braking some social taboo. They're all safe as well and you're not likely to have anything stolen while you are sleeping. While I don't recommend sleeping in class, sleeping in a class that you're not actually enrolled in is pretty cool. I've personally slept during a physics lecture I wasn't enrolled in at Tate Hall 150. The really big lecture hall that you see when coming in through the front doors. There is almost always a lecture going on there, and the classes are usually huge, so you don't have to worry about the professor picking on you. Any large lecture hall should do, though.

All my classes are on the East Bank, so if you've got tips for the West Bank, or St. Paul, why don't you share with us. Click on the "Rumor" link at the bottem of the post to leave a comment. Any sleeping in public stories/tips are welcome in fact, no matter where you've been sleeping.

America has plenty of public sleeping opportunities to be sure, but Japan is where the action is at. Sleeping in school is A-OK with most teachers. We're talking high school here, not college. I, and many of my classmates, slept through many a physics lecture without a peep from the teacher. It helped that he was sort of a weird guy and would stare into the chalkboard for about 98% of the class period, and whenever he actually faced class, he would scrunch his face up, roll his eyes into the back of his head and have eyelid spasms that had to prevent him from seeing anything. But it wasn't just him, it was OK with every teacher except the chemistry teacher. Sleeping on public transportation is almost expected there. There's something about the movement of a train that makes it very easy to fall asleep. I missed my stop more than a few times because I slept through it. And if you can't find a chair or bench, the ground works just as well.

-Seth