Brian Schnabel's Head Space
Where Magick and Mind Digitally Interlace.

Week of March 22, 2026, Personal Journal Entries: Streamlining Life and Work

Sunday, March 22, 2026: 7:29 AM: I am dedicating this week to getting back on track after two weeks of just barely sticking to a framework that kept things operational around here. I will not say my time was a waste, because it wasn't. After all, I got my blood test done and I made it to my doctor’s appointment in Vernon, Uber being a huge help in accomplishing both of these things.

End results? My lipid panel showed everything as high but not off the chart.

Also, after my office visit, I've been left with the strong feeling my doctor (Eric Hansen in Vernon NJ) clearly has an agenda that isn't mine, him not even acknowledging the health plan I had written out and handed to him. However, despite his dismissiveness, I now have a Apple smart watch model SE 3, which has been a big help to me over the past few days in sorting out my messed up sleep cycle and raising my activity level to Cholesterol Crushing, it proving to be more useful along with Copilot than Dr. Hansen will ever be again.

Yes! I've made the decision that I need to find a doctor who actually has a clue about blindness and its impacts on a body rather than putting up with the present jerk, who (like his predecessor, Dr. Chin in Sussex NJ) can’t seem to comprehend how blindness impacts a body or the reasoning behind not participating in current clinical trials.

Physiological Facts about blindness I can attest to first hand? Well… Anyone familiar with orientation and mobility for the blind will attest to the fact that you move differently when you don't see. Processing the environment comes at a cost physically as well and after decades of perfecting my skills…

To top it off, as discovered via a board of trusty’s member for the Seeing Eye in Morristown NJ back in the early 2000s, we now know that after decades of blindness, the brain does other things with the video circuit that are none reversable to date. You can perfectly restore the hardware of the eye, but over time, the brain loses the ability to interpret the inputs from the eye properly after a few decades of not receiving messages from the eyes at all.

Messing around with what is currently available via clinical trials would put extra stress on my body and negatively impact my mobility. I could go on here, but I think anyone with a brain can get the idea.

Now, having said all that? I think it's time to turn my attention to this week.

My second sight is letting me know it's time to get back to work on Brian Schnabel's Head Space. I’m also getting the sense from the internal messaging that the misgivings I have from time to time about putting my journal online are unfounded and impeding my ability to get this task done.

It doesn't matter what other people think of the site. Negativity queens always will abound and it’s a fact of life that can't be helped

My inner witch reminded me that I don't have to justify what I'm doing with the domain to anyone. I am entitled to write how I feel, most people not taking the time to listen or respect where I'm coming from when I’m talking with them via phone, video, or even in person, anyway. “It’s not yet against the law to express myself through writing.”

So, starting today, which is my Birthday, I'm getting back to my task-oriented days of the week. However, I’ll be making an extra effort in working to limit cognitive bandwidth by keeping a majority of the things I do in line with the theme for the day, only allowing for deviations essential to living physically and financially.

I am also reminded to keep an eye out for notices pertaining to my Housing Recertification which should start rolling in soon, someone connected with my housing situation having already been sniffing around Brian Schnabel's Head Space on March 6th. I wondered what the dream on March 5th about a Housing Program employee meant. Then, on the 6th a Newark region Verizon IP address arrived on my site, the post they landed on making it very clear what the dream was telling me. “Someone’s checking in.”

I look forward to this week being far more productive than the past few. I am confident that I'll be able to keep everything on track.

As far as today goes, I am letting my hair down a bit because it is my Birthday. But, going forward, I have a solid plan I can build on, and technology is key for filling in the blanks, particularly health wise, ensuring that I don't lose it all.

Sunday, March 22, 2026: 11:14 AM: I need to find a concrete way of recording my work progress that is a bit more along the lines of what I'm doing with the rings in the fitness app. I don't know if there is a productivity app for smart watches or phones that would help me achieve this, but it's worth looking into on Read and Research Tuesday.

Monday, March 23, 2026: 6:24 AM: Using Copilot of late for taking notes isn’t working as well as it did at the start. Using it seemed like a good idea because I have access to the conversations stored in it across multiple devices. It can rewrite things entered in fragments, often correcting spelling and fixing jumbled words, etc. It can also look through what’s there after a week of note taking/journaling and help identify patterns, positive, negative and otherwise.

Problems that have been arising using Copilot as note taker? It keeps asking questions and going off on tangents when instructed not to. It doesn’t write things accurately when it comes time to produce a conversational version of the notes taken; often embellishing when specifically instructed not to.

Solution to this problem? Use Microsoft Word whenever possible. Use email for sending myself notes/journal entries when on the fly that can easily be transferred into Word later. When I want analysis of what I’ve written, simply upload the notes in question and let Copilot attempt to do its thing that way rather than using chats for notetaking.

I will need to simply clean things up manually when it’s clear Copilot is having a bad hair day. Copilot’s bad hair days certainly seem to be pretty frequent of late.

What I need to do on this Financial Monday? Get caught up with my bank statements… Get things set up for April’s budget… Start and update a 2026 earnings report so it’s ready for presentation to state and federal agencies who will wish to see it… And… While I’m at it… “Update my annual income information with banks I do business with.”

Second Sight generated Information? There’s a chance I may run into Bader Qarmout in the near future, and opportunity for cash or monetary gain may be pending.

Also, it’s been indicated to me that there is a slight chance of intimate contact in the near future. However, given the track record of that once precognitive symbolism, I doubt it.

Monday, March 23, 2026: 12:26 PM: There are a few things to note, which I forgot to mention earlier. Firstly: At one point during the messaging from my inner vision, the matter of me justifying what I do came up again, it clearly being indicated that I do not need to engage in this activity. Perhaps this came up because I saw Dear Old Dad attempting to access my website last night in the server record at 9:34 PM?

I’m also thinking of changing the main page of Brian Schnabel’s Head Space from a splash page to a traditional main page with the latest journal entries displayed. I’m not sure about that one yet though. It might help the site take better with the search engines but that’s not a guarantee.

Monday, March 23, 2026: 1:59 PM: I’m done with the financial stuff for today. I’ve been working since 9:20 AM this morning in a different manner that I believe I’m going to stick with. I’m working forty-minute segments with twenty-minute breaks in between.

They say in books like the 5AM Club and others that one should work for fifty minutes and break for ten of each hour in order to give one’s self an opportunity to recover, mentally and otherwise. But, that doesn’t take into account those of us who process things differently from your average sighted person. “Doing this seems to help!”

Tuesday, March 24, 2026: 7:08 AM: In addition to researching productivity options today, I intend to keep reading The Art of Seduction by Robert Green. I’m thinking I’ll get the party started at around 8:30 AM with the research I want to do and then take my first break at 10:00 PM and see how it goes.

I got my rings closed out yesterday on the health end of the equation. I also actually met my sleep goal of six and a half hours within the allotted eight-hour period last night.

However, right now, I’m feeling like a three-mile walk is in order before I do anything else today. So, I’m off to do that, now.

Tuesday, March 24, 2026: 9:03 AM: And now I’m finally sitting down to get a few things done. I’ve installed my Gmail, and BriaSphere accounts in Outlook Classic to work alongside my Hotmail and iCloud addresses for backup purposes. This will also give me greater efficiency, filling in the accessibility blanks some web interfaces still have.

Tuesday, March 24, 2026: 2:21 PM: It would seem that I’m not going to find a productivity app that meets my requirements. However, I can work around this simply by using the Clock app in my iPhone, which communicates with my watch when the phone is locked. This will do.

I did look at the Reminder’s app and the Callender app As Copilot had suggested, however, the behavior of the Reminder’s app with VoiceOver was less than desirable, and the Callender app wouldn’t let me configure things the way I wanted.

Using the Clock app to manage my time in a ring like manner is going to have to do and was the most efficient to set up. I’m now going back to reading Chapter 5 of Robert Green’s Art of Seduction.

Wednesday, March 25, 2026: 6:33 AM: I’m Now up to IOS 2026.3.4 in my phone and Apple Watch OS 2026.3.4. Why in hell my phone has taken two updates in two days is beyond me but it’s all over now for the time being.

The SE 3 Watch I have took forever to update, and I’ll never bother to do that again just before bedtime. As a result of taking the update when I really wanted to be sleeping was that things didn’t finish until shortly after midnight. Even though I slept for two and a half hours before the update was completed, the watch says I only slept for 3 hours and 12 minutes and gave me a sleep score of 36.

However, that wasn’t unexpected as it had to be on its charger for the first half of the night. While it says my sleep sucked last night, I know better. The watch is just another tool, “Not ruler of my universe.”

Today, I want to get to work on dealing with blocking all but regional traffic from Brian Schnabel’s Head Space. I then need to get real about how I’m posting to this site, me feeling like what I have is good, but could be improving upon the efficiency of what I’m doing there. I don’t want it to own my life. Web development and tech support for other people has taken me over for too many years. “This needs to change.”

I do want to get my journal online, as I set out to do. But I also want to get a book written. As I move to streamline my days, I’m pretty sure I can make it all happen. But, certain aspects of the way my life is structured right now are still problematic, and my focus… Well… I need to do something about that too.

And… I just remembered something else. I need to finish the Outlook Classic configuration of those new email accounts I added yesterday. So, I’ll deal with that when I return from my extended walk to Hayek’s Market.

Wednesday, March 25, 2026: 8:18 PM: I got Outlook Classic’s configuration updated to accommodate the new email accounts. I stumbled onto a script that is supposedly better than the built in cPanel IP Block that also writes to the HTAccess file, but I’ll know better on that one in a few days.

I was gunning for a PHP script, but when Copilot offered this one up out of the clear blue after spending months telling me HTAccess was totally inefficient for what I wanted to do… Well… I couldn’t help myself.

Now Copilot is saying PHP will slow my site down if I use it to make Sussex County NJ my primary source of visitors, shutting the rest of the world out aside from Legitimate crawlers. It was the other way around weeks ago. But Alma Linux has been updating a lot lately so maybe a few things have changed that I wasn’t aware of.

I worked until 5:00 PM today. The 40 minutes on and 20 minutes off method seems to work pretty well. I’m sticking with this one.

I fired off a text to my nephew and his wife this morning letting them know that I’m giving linking our fitness software together one last go. I gave them recommendations on what they need to do on their end to get stuff linked, if it’s going to do it at all.

And now… I’m writing this with a 20-minute timer set. Otherwise, I could go all night. That’s another new thing implemented and I expect to be keeping that habit in the bag, as well.

Thursday, March 26, 2026: 6:01 AM: On this House keeping Thursday, I’m going to keep the work session thing going, working for an hour and a half the first time around and then breaking for twenty minutes before the next forty-minute session. I think it will help me actually get more done. How much can I get done? I’m not really sure but with furniture to dust, laundry to do, dishes to wash, blinds and windows to clean, I’m pretty sure it will be a full day. Oh… And… “Let’s not forget changing the bed sheets.”

This morning, my second sight seemed to indicate a slight moderate chance of my running into Amanda Boehner. “Wasn’t expecting that to come up ever again!” But maybe she’s a metaphor? Will keep an eye on that and see.

I also suspect a rainstorm is coming that’s a bit more intense than what I’m getting out of the forecast at the moment. “Thinking unexpected violent thunderstorm here.”

My inner vision wizard also seemed to be suggesting that my recertification will go smoothly this year, me not needing to chase Goldberg Realty for a lease so I can get it over to housing in a timely manner. I hope that’s true. I really hate dealing with them and Housing because there’s always some kind of problem. But… Maybe everyone will surprise me, and an amazing level of competence will be displayed.

My sleep score was low this morning, me only getting about five hours and twenty-four minutes worth according to my SE 3 Apple Watch. I’m not concerned about it and have decided that pouring over the detailed data analysis is counter productive to my goals. The watch like my laptop and phone are merely extensions of me. While they do help me highly function without sight, accuracy wise they are flawed tools at best.

Friday, March 27, 2026: 6:20 AM: I got my phone bill this morning. Little higher than estimated but considering certain services were activated before the next cycle, it’s to be expected. “That’s what God invented the slush fund for.

On Financial Monday, I’ll look things over and make the needed adjustments, so I don’t price myself out of the water using extended credit. It might be worth taking advantage of my bank’s personal loan offer this year as I’ve decided to replace my main driver/computer with a Mac. AI can help me figure out which model would be best for me budget wise and usability wise, too.

While my current setup is good, it’s not going to last forever. Also, I’m not planning to renew JAWS for Windows unless the company does something miraculous to show the blind community that they aren’t just out for themselves, as Vispero appears to be now. The screen reader simply has way too much crap in it, including old code. Combine that with the requirement to run it using an account linking it to Amazon Web Services servers and you have a recipe for disaster.

This morning, I had a vision indicating that I might be receiving something I want in the form of a gift for helping someone out. The thing is, I don’t think I’ve done all that much for anyone of late. But I do tend to not keep score cards around so it’s possible I’ve done something for someone without realizing it. It has come to me this morning that, “I do help people through setting an example of how to live with blindness.”

My dreams this morning were filled with things like a ringing phone I didn’t answer, notifications going off on my Echo Dots, and the timer sounding off on my phone. When the phone rang, I recognized the caller as someone I know in reality. Therefore, should they call today, I’ll just let that one go to voicemail and wait to see if a message is left.

As far as the alerts and timer sounds go, I do suspect that the weather isn’t quite shaping up the way it’s currently forecasted. So, the notification on my Alexa Echo Dot makes sense. The time’s up sound, which was on my iPhone? I’m not sure what that is referring to, unless it was simply to signal that I needed to stop running affirmation statements and meditations during my waking moments between sleep cycles. “That sounds about right.”

Friday, March 27, 2026: 8:43 AM: I got back from walking at 8:16 AM and apparently covered 3.52 miles in 57 minutes. However, I only meant to do 3 miles, but it’s cloudy out and unless I’m on the same side of the road as my turn around point (366 Ridge Road, Newton NJ) neither the GPS in my phone or watch will notify me when I’ve reached it. “Price you pay when you’re not as big as a car.”

Today is Back Posting Friday, and I’ve got a lot of back posting to do for sure. I’m simply going to keep up with the original plan, just removing the splash page and replacing it with a full-on front page. I think, too, to make life easier on myself I’m going to dispense with the meta tags and titling I’ve been doing. Brian Schnabel’s Head Space is my sanitized journal online. It might as well have the look and feel of one.

I’ll leave everything I’ve done thus far in place for now. But going forward, I really do need to make life easier on myself for efficiencies sake. On next week’s Programming Wednesday, I’ll get to work on building a page generator to help things along, too.

Saturday, March 28, 2026: 8:22 PM: Over all, it’s been a good day. I didn’t get to doing any more back posting like I had wanted to… Me feeling it was more important to get down to the bottom of why I got a $246.72 phone bill from Verizon simply because I added an SE 3 Apple watch to my account?

It turned out that they had set two different profiles for the same hardware numbers and will be giving me an account credit on the next billing cycle. They can’t do anything about this bill because it’s already been issued. But, having been with the company for over 26 years, I think the CEO just might be hearing from me at some point… Certain policies being bullshit.

Dan Schulman’s company is losing customers left and right from what I hear. After my latest experience… “What a shocker.”

The guy I spoke to last night was struggling with his English but as was confirmed for me at the Wireless Zone today… Things are moving along with the corrections to my account. The watch is certainly functional but over the next few weeks… We shall see.

I hit the Hampton Diner for a late breakfast and Magan took care of me. Chris and Bonno were there as well. “It was cool!”

It was a nice day for walking in Northern NJ even though I didn’t know about No King’s Day until I got near the Newton town square. The noise was a bit disorienting with the event going on in the park but a gentleman named Fen was good enough to help me get back on track.

I could have done without the old bitch harassing me as I came up main Street. But, the only reason No King’s Day events are held at all are so bigots and other extremists can get together to show how much they hate everyone who isn’t the special kind of asshole they are. “Clearly blind people aren’t covered by Democratic socialists Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion policies, either.”

Then there’s the fact that “They are protesting something that isn’t based in reality” but that’s their problem. Ignorance is bliss so they really should be smiling more and yelling less in my mind.

As for the old bag with the big mouth? She was so focused on me… Yeah… I do believe she walked into a steal Lamp post. She shut up after that. “Problem solved.”

Despite all that… It really was a nice day for walking. A bit of a challenge because of the wind and heavy traffic… But… All in all… “Nice!”

Posting that's a little off the trolley at times... Brian is a single Newtonian Gardens Apartments resident, Self-Publishing Author, cPanel WordPress Web Host and Windows 11 powered computer tech. He’s a musician, sailor, hiker, cycler and some women would say, “Magical, too!”