Phase Shift
I travel a red eye 3000 miles to go ahead 3 hours in time, only to have the world fall back an hour. The rental car is two hours off, the hotel clock is one hour off, and for six days I work twelve hour shifts. The only timepiece I can trust is my android phone, which I look at infrequently.
On my return I fall asleep at 8PM and awake at 4AM. I find myself hand optimizing assembly for error detecting / correcting code on a microcontroller while the rest of the sane world sleeps. I can beat the compiler by several dozen cycles, until I realize it still won't be enough. I wonder if I can leverage the chip's built in DES engine, and then realize how many registers I would need to push and pop. I've wandered into madness. I don't NEED error correction. Surely a simple CRC for error detection would suffice.
The next day I sleep earlier, wake up earlier. This will not do. Desperate, I slug down a five hour energy drink at 5PM, up with another half at 7PM, praying to make it to 10PM or 11PM, then chase with some strange prescription drug given to me by a cute girl (wait, that's my wife!) only to discover myself very mellow, very relaxed, and very awake at midnight. I just want sleep, so I grab Valerian Root (1.5x my normal dose) and fall asleep sometime later... and wake up just before 6AM.
Now there are suitcases under the bags under my eyes. I'm grouchy. I need sleep.
On my return I fall asleep at 8PM and awake at 4AM. I find myself hand optimizing assembly for error detecting / correcting code on a microcontroller while the rest of the sane world sleeps. I can beat the compiler by several dozen cycles, until I realize it still won't be enough. I wonder if I can leverage the chip's built in DES engine, and then realize how many registers I would need to push and pop. I've wandered into madness. I don't NEED error correction. Surely a simple CRC for error detection would suffice.
The next day I sleep earlier, wake up earlier. This will not do. Desperate, I slug down a five hour energy drink at 5PM, up with another half at 7PM, praying to make it to 10PM or 11PM, then chase with some strange prescription drug given to me by a cute girl (wait, that's my wife!) only to discover myself very mellow, very relaxed, and very awake at midnight. I just want sleep, so I grab Valerian Root (1.5x my normal dose) and fall asleep sometime later... and wake up just before 6AM.
Now there are suitcases under the bags under my eyes. I'm grouchy. I need sleep.