Sleep Deprivation

Apparently, I'm sleep deprived. I should have, of course, known this for some time, but my theory was officially confirmed on Monday.

My father-in-law was in town for a conference on hypno-therapy and listened to another doctor discussing his new theories on sleep. Here's how to tell if you're getting enough: How long does it take you to fall asleep after you get in bed? If you fall asleep in about 20 minutes, then you're likely getting the right amount of sleep. If you fall asleep immediately, then you're likely sleep deprived. (I'm the latter. Nearly every night, I collapse into bed and fall asleep, sometimes even before I get my glasses off.)

According to this doctor's research, everyone needs just about the same amount of sleep, around 8:15 hr. I average in around 6:30 hr. Of course, Sarahlynn probably averages around 4:30 - 5:00 hr. And she seems to do alright.

What are the consequences of not getting enough sleep: irritableness, lack of patience, and low-grade depression. If you want to know where I sit on those side effects, talk to Sarahlynn.

Better, anecdotal evidence that I'm sleep deprived comes when Ellie decides to wake up in the middle of the night. She's been sick lately, so that tends to happen more frequently. When she's up in the middle of the night and I'm working on rocking her back to sleep and she's just laid back staring at me with wide-open blue eyes, here's what the voice is typically saying in my head... (remember that I'm a computer geek for both vocation and avocation)

• Now is this happening in the development or production environment?
• This has got to be in production, there's no development Ellie. That'd be silly.
• Clearly the Ellie process isn't working correctly. She should be asleep, or at least not need to be monitored at night.
  
• How do I find out what PID is keeping her awake?
• If I knew what process was running, I could "kill" it and she could go back to sleep.
• None of that makes sense.
• We need a better development methodology, so we can clean up these production processes.
• The production Ellie should be able to run through the night without any intervention or monitoring.
• Someone needs to debug this.
• ...
  

You think I'm joking. Apparently I'm mildly sleep deprived and think too much about work.

Then sometimes, the voice in my head breaks out into song, courtesy of Bare Naked Ladies...

• Who needs sleep? Well you're never gonna get it!
• Who needs sleep? Tell me what's that for!
• Who needs sleep? Be happy with what you're getting!
  
• There's a guy's been awake since the Second World War!