sleep deprivation

the only days i'm awake early in the morning are the days i never went to sleep?

i always like it when i realize that it's past midnight and it is an xkcd day. it usually makes my night. it's one of the funniest web comics ever. a perfect mix of sarcasm and nerd jokes. you should go check it out (and be sure to read the hover text for the comics).

I worked on a project a while back that never quite solidified into a clear design plan or development goals. This was my first real experience with "feature creep," or the tendency of a project to increase in scope and requirements beyond those originally foreseen. In this case, we were making changes to the project requirements up to the day before the product was released. Feature creep delayed the release by several weeks. Feature creep cost me six consecutive nights of sleep.

The result was far from desirable. The final project was somewhat patchwork—because it lacked proper planning, it grew one ad-hoc step at a time. The interface wasn't nearly as intuitive as the original design. Proper planning would have resulted in a cleaner, more elegant design. Proper planning would have ensured that the product launched on time. Proper planning would have saved the project. Lesson learned.

it's 7:00. i know this because my alarm clock is going off.

and i haven't been to bed yet.

i suck at this game.

haven't really slept since monday.

i'm going to bed.

in no particular order:

• congrats, myspace… you got one through adblock plus. the first ad i've seen on myspace in months.

• the light in my bathroom has had issues since i moved into this place… if it stayed on for more than ten or fifteen minutes, it would randomly turn off. then a minute or two later it would come back on. and then again. rinse and repeat. made for some interesting late night showers and bathroom visits. i always thought it was a wiring problem. but tonight i pulled off the globe to look at it. turns out the bulb is one of those helical florescents… bad ballast. makes perfect sense now. changed it out and now it works great.

• for some reason i never eat breakfast. maybe because it would be wasting a few precious minutes of sleep-in time. but i always feel like breakfast food late at night. especially after dancing. tonight i made biscuits and gravy and hash browns. and i keep picking at the cold remains of hash browns sitting on my desk. someone please take them away.

• who decided that table cells should use a <td> tag? <tr> i get. that's a row. <th> is a header. this makes sense… but <td>? wtf?

• one of these days i'm going to get a backlit keyboard… i don't mind using my keyboard in the dark so much, as long as i'm not trying to hit any of the odd keys. normal typing is fine. but print screen, or insert… i have to keep hitting those ones until i get it to do what i want.

• i just found out that a friend of mine has a job doing web design… doesn't even program it. he makes css and templates. raking in 50k a year. he's about to graduate in film and he has a job desiging web sites… while i'm working for chump change. forget this.

• i think i accomplish more between two and eight am than i do the during other eighteen hours of the day. unfortunately that's when normal people sleep. when do i sleep? sundays mostly.

i focus my entire being on whatever ugly little mole pokes its head out. that's my nature. if i think about the other moles, i won't get to the current one before it's too late.

i beat one of 'em down, and another one appears. the quicker i whack one, the quicker the next shows up.

behind in school. behind in work... behind in pretty much everything, i think.

i don't even like to go to sleep anymore. it seems like i'm wasting time.

so that's my dilemma. how do i take my eye off the current problem long enough to think about what's coming next?

like a rock star.

my life = suck.

do you ever have something to do and not have enough time to do it. even if you don't sleep? at all? i've been up for almost forty hours straight. and i have about sixteen more to go.

should be a blast.

if you want to hear something entertaining, you should call me around noon tomorrow. and see firsthand the effects of sleep deprivation and increased stress on a fragile mind. it will be great!

farewell. i return to the insanity. see you in a few days when it's all over.

you know why thursday nights are the worst? it's because i get off work at eleven, come home and watch family guy and futurama, and then can't fall asleep. but the whole while i dread the coming of the morning. you see, after closing on thursday night, i have to open on friday morning.

and that's a terrible thing to do to a guy.