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I’ve been out of the state each weekend for the past four and felt that was catching up to me.  My average sleep time over the past three weeks dipped below 6.5 hours where I normally average 7.8 and prefer 8.5.  I was going to sleep in on Saturday before going to the shore but first I had to put in a long day at work to take care of some things so the next week would be reasonable.  Instead, I slept for 14 hours.  I’ve slept this long and indeed longer in the past but usually tied to illness and now I had the added bonus of my fitbit which tracks my sleep.  Here was the timeline so sayeth the sleepgraph:

6:30 AM – first wake-up.
6:39 AM to 8:07 AM – Every 9 minutes to hit the snooze button
8:10 AM – I either hit the alarm in such a way as to turn off the alarm or my clock gave up.
8:50 AM – I have an active period that I think is me using the bathroom.
1:04 PM – Receive phone call, decide to get up.  Fail to get up.
3:22 PM – I actually wake up.  But this is preceded by what appeared to be very placid sleep.

Thank you, fitbit.

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During the bustle of my camera bag again being flagged for dissection by the TSA on the way home from Phoenix, I lost track of my Fitbit which had been loaded into one of three screening bins and it never made its way back to my pocket.  I wasn’t going to pay $115 for a new one and after having a morning where I made no progress on my work project I fired off a letter to Fitbit.  I mentally prepared for the phone conversation when they declined my request for a free replacement; after all the prostoletyzing I had done for them, how I was an early adopter, and, oh, by the way, how their little device couldn’t possibly cost $115 and must be mostly for the back end stuff,  I was ready for a fight, and if I won or lost I was going to feel good.

Later that day, I got a response of “replacement will be issued within 24 hours and should arrive in 5-8 days”.  After I had spent a whole afternoon planning on getting angry the jerks reply with quality customer service in a timely fashion.  The nerve.

[Editor’s note: I’ve come to learn that recently some people think things like the line above are to be taken literally, e.g. I was angry I didn’t get into a fight.  They are not.  It is a commentary on the humorous reversal of me being prepared for a cliche battle with customer support and it’s avoidance through Fitbit’s quality response and only the momentary hint of disappoint at not being able to argue being replaced with a much better outcome.  Thank you.]