Sleep Management

Disclaimer: I know that I actually have a pretty sweet life. I have enough income to live in moderately comfortable conditions. I eat regularly, enjoy pretty good health, and never have to worry about being attacked by cobras, hippopotami, or giant squids. (I do occasionally have nightmares about zombies and/or animated skeletons with swords, but recognize that those threats are remote...at least as long as I stay out of the Carribean and whatever ocean Greece is in.) I have a son who tolerates and humors me, a swim team that delights me, and various other loved ones who provide a network of support and encouragement. I have no right to complain. I do understand that.

So, please spare me the lectures about why I shouldn't whine about the few minor challenges that occasionally crop up. But I firmly believe that it's healthy to vent every once in a while. It's sometimes good to rant about life's minor injustices, and get all that frustration out of your system. And that's what I'm planning to do today. So if you're not in the mood to listen to unjustified griping about minor annoyances, you are free to go. Thanks for dropping by.

Those of you who are sticking around may find that you and I have some lamentations in common. (Especially if you work in the business development field, or if you frequently find yourself trapped in a room listening to comb-over engineers with laser pointers.)

As many of you know, the greatest impediment to my writing (and other creative endeavors, not to mention my fitness, love life, and ability to enjoy good movies) is when my boss assigns me to work on a proposal. As proposal lead, I am expected to coordinate and/or perform all the graphics, editing, and desktop publishing chores for any documents to be submitted to the customer. If I could write it as well, then the situations wouldn't get so ugly --I could get the job done on time, but it doesn't work that way. I am completely at the mercy of the engineers and scientists who develop the content.

These guys know amazing amounts of math and have prodigious stores of astrophysical knowledge and technological expertise. They routinely design stuff that pushes the boundaries of human accomplishment, and are responsible for the kinds of things that make us normal humans drop our jaws and say "Wow!" But as a group, they have a very poor understanding of the meaning of the word "deadline".

My latest proposal was a bid to study advanced "multi-qubit" computing techniques using microscopic lasers to read the state of ionized molecules, allowing information to be processed at much higher rates than are currently possible. Very cool stuff—it will probably be the foundation for the computer processors you use in another decade or so. But I didn't get the document until Friday, even though it was due on Monday. And when I did get it, it was almost twice the length allowed by the solicitation requirements! We had to edit, manipulate graphics, cut out a boatload of text, and do the final destop publishing layup, all over the weekend.

And the Rockies were in the playoffs...and my brother was going to try to get me some tickets. How the heck was I supposed to squeeze all this in?

The answer, of course, is... long hours, intense effort, and gallons of caffeinated beverages.

I'll spare you the bloody details -- perhaps they would provide a good topic for a Halloween blog. But despite the fact the authors were supposed to be finished when I first looked at the document, we ended up having multiple complete rewrites, massive graphical and layup challenges, and even some (say it isn't so!) problems with various Microsoft products. Over those three days, my avereage bedtime was about 6 hours later than usual, I was forced to skip my usual restorative exercise, and my eyes became frighteningly unfocused and bloodshot. I essentially became one of those zombies from my own nightmares.

I was planning to go to the Rockies game on Saturday night, but it was probably a good thing it got cancelled because of the cold and snow. I'd have never finished the proposal if I'd have gone downtown that night. I'd have had more fun, certainly, but I'd have probably been fired.

The good news is that my brother was able to get me a ticket for Monday night's playoff game. The bad news is that the Rocks could not get the final out in the bottom of the ninth, and ended up letting it get away. I'm certainly glad I was there in the bottom of the eighth to experience the incredible happiness and energy that accompanied the Rockies' come-from-behind surge. But I probably could've done without the ninth inning collapse that took the crowd from feeling their Colorado Mile-high exuberance and left them feeling lower than dirt, as if they were mere Kansans or something.

And of course once it was all over, without the adrenaline from first being motivated by a proposal deadline, and then being electrified by playoff fever...I pretty much collapsed. And to make it worse, the next two webcasts I was assigned to cover were all about calculus and software architecture. While I recognize the importance of these disciplines and admire the practitioners therein, such classes do not exactly peg my thrill-O-meter. So here I am, nearly catatonic from sleep deprivation (and cursing the ghost of Ben Franklin for bringing baseball to Philadelphia)...and I have to remain alert at the recording control panel while some pocket-protector egghead drones on and on about Fourier tranform equations or 100 Hz wait-table processing delays. Yawn. And yawn again.

Bottom line: I need a vacation. Hopefully one that contains lots of time allocated for sleeping. Let me know if you have any ideas. In the meantime, get plenty of rest, fire up for next year's baseball season, and have a great day!