Plan for Chris Labombard

#1 I often have dreams about my code =/

#2 I don't sleep, so when i do sleep, i sleep and not dream :p.

#3 Oh ya... My girlfriend told me I was uttering code one time to... I was working on a major Player overhaul.

Aparently I said: "for c equals... 0... less then ... no ... tell him... tornado... computer got broken..."

There has never been a tornado where I live.

#4 I knew about a programmer who started dreaming of his work because he was working 80+ hours a week on it and he started having a kinds of physical problems like hypertension and shit. He had to back off from working so hard. Funny thing was... after he slowed down... he started making better progress with his work. He had been working so hard that he was actually slowing down his productivity. Apparently brain work isn't like labor work where you can just keep pushing yourself. Your brain starts shutting down. And we've all heard of the programmers that have over-worked themselves into a mental breakdown. I think that is the reason that there are labor laws in this country. Because 40 hours a week is just about the right amount of work before productivity starts to slow down. And before people's lives start shutting down. I can see working 80+ when your carreer is temp on the line, but, on a regular basis, it's just too much for people to handle. Of course... learning that lesson before you have a break down is what seperates those with balance and those with something to prove.

#5 Did someone say something ? Nope... I didn't hear someone telling me I was going to crash and burn... Back to work!!!

Honestly though... Maybe you are right Anton. Perhaps I should slow down.

#6 Some of the developers on Tribes 2 worked so hard that they went temporarily blind. Scary stuff. Trust me, you'd MUCH rather have 30 hours of high quality work a week, than 80 hours of crap you have to constantly rip up and redo.

I might be at the office more than 40 hours a week, but the office copy of Burnout 3 also has 250+ hours on it... ;)

#7 Today is my day off and I am trying to talk myself into not working on anything. It's REALLY hard. I keep thinking of things to do for fun and they are ALL work! What up with that?! It's crazy but I am a driven person and it's really difficult to stop. I just keep thinking of all of the stuff that I could be getting done and how every thing I do now will bring me closer to my goals. Damn.

It's hard to slow down and take a break because the truth is that I am just taking my best guess about what I need to do to make it someday in this industry and it's impossible to know when I can slow down because I don't really know how far I have to go in the first place so I just keep going and going and going. It's like trying to get to Mount Doom. Like Gandalf says "there never was much hope. only a fools hope." But I keep on trying, cause, I only live once, and if one person can do it, so can I. I just hope that I am not consumed before I finally get where I am going. :)

#8

Quote: I often have dreams about my code =/

Yeah I hate that. It's usually trying to debug something that I can't figure out and I wake up and cannot sleep after that atleast not well.

#9 @Ben - Burnout 3 is the only game I play... and I don't play it much...

mmm... 40 takedowns in 3 minutes... :)

the more I think about it, the more I don't see why I should slow down... I mean, I enjoy it more then any other activities (with a few exceptions he he). It is basically entertainment for me. So why would I stop or slow down.

EDIT: You can't get addicted to game dev can you ?

#10 I had a Torque dream that involved a hot chick once, but you'll have to search the forums if you want to find out about it. :)

@Ben: I know someone who went temporarily blind from programming stress too. It's scary to hear about, man. Maybe GID should have a health disclaimer!

@Anton: it's hard NOT to do something? dude, crack a sixer and rent some games, that'll get you not doing something in a hurry!

#11 I find myself thinking about my code and what-not while trying to go to sleep, it's so bad I can't sleep.

I've gotten myself into the habit of watching 30 minutes or so of TV after I leave my computer, to slow the brain down so I can sleep. I also try to get one night of heavy partying in a weekend, which puts a good one night and a day that I'm out of commission. Good stress relief and a break for me.

I can't say I've went blind from working for so long before, but I have awaken many a times with qwerty imprinted into my forehead and my currently opened file gigantically large and the sound of "ding, ding, ding, ding, ding" ringing in my ears.

#12 Ya... I sleep about 5 hours a night most nights. I just can't pry myself away from the code. If I go play XBox or watch a movie I start getting anxious until I just give in and go code more.

@Michael - I don't have TV... and I only bought an XBox for the girlfriend. I code at work then I come home and code until bed... get up rinse repeat.

#13 @Joshua - Chronicles of Riddick for PC to the rescue! Damn this game kicks ass! Better looking than Doom3 and WAY better play! I hope Vin Diesel keeps making Riddick games instead of movies. He's gonna be Hitman in the movie... cool... but I would have rather had the dude from Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and the Transporter play Hitman. Diesel will make his cool though. As long as they don't make a new Hitman game that looks like Diesel... that would be weird.

#14 @Ben - my eyes started going bad a couple of years ago while programming. I was doing the all day and night for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time. I think it was the white background or something. It went away when I took a break for a few months. Kinda scared me though. My brother used to look in his telescope so much when he was a kid that the eye he used to look with went out of focus once and he had to get corrective glasses. I figured that something like that was what was happening to me so I didn't totally freak out.

#15 I fix code in my sleep, but its not a concious thing. I did an experiment during a GID once ... I would work til I was tired, then I'd sleep for 4 hours, then get up and work again til I was tired and repeated that all weekend. It turned out i was sleeping 4 hours to every 5 or 6 hours i worked ... it actually turned out pretty good. I forget which GID it was now, though.

@Joshua,

If GID had a health warning, nobody would read it. As it is, nobody reads the f'ing topic, in which the next GID date is always mentioned, yet still people ask when it is. Grumble. Maybe I'll add one anyway in the next site update for a laugh ...

T.

#16 I used to have dreams about work, sadly not developing games, it was when I worked in a factory.... and the dreams werent anything strange really... once I dreamt my boss told me to work on sunday... or at least I think it was a dream.. I was working VERY long hours, and it was getting hard to tell... I had dreams about that job fairly often as it was about all I did at the time. :S

#17 The worst part about dreams where you're at work is that you don't get paid. I think if you do anything for a good deal of time, you'll start dreaming about it.