Still jetlagged...I came back from a European vacation 6 days ago, and I'm still severely affected by jetlag. I was very well rested when I came back, which ended up being both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing, because it allowed me to stay up to speed even without getting sustainably enough sleep. It's been a curse as well, because it didn't force me to get adjusted quickly. I've been waking up pretty consistenly between 2 and 4am every night.
After many short nights, I started to feel really tired yesterday afternoon, got back home early, and I was in bed at 3:15pm for a deep nap. This time however I didn't make the mistake I had made a few days ago, and I put an alarm clock. When it rang at 5:45pm, I was sleeping very deeply, and I had a hard time waking up (in fact I had to snooze the alarm, and when it rang a second time I wasn't able to get up immediately).
The next few days are going to be interesting, with a few parties. I might end up having to sleep before some of those if I want to be able to stay up through them and get enough sleep. And if I'm still deeply lagged after the Olympics, I'll probably pop in a bit of melatonin to make myself sleep through the night.
Olympic medal countEach time I watch the Olympics in the US, I have the same thought (and I guess I probably blog about it each time): if you want to keep a per-country medal tally, you can't possibly just add up the number of medals, because there's no way a bronze medal is worth as much as a gold.
Let me make an analogy with something that's a common subject of friendly jokes here in the US: if silvers were are good as gold, France would be considered the greatest military in the world, given the number of time we've finished second.
Yeah, that means that the USA's 79 medals (26 golds) aren't nearly as good as China's 78 medals (45 golds). Or that France's 30 medals (4 golds) aren't nearly as good as Germany's 28 medals (11 golds).
A winning streak, at lastSometimes life is just like gambling. You might have a losing streak that's statistically expected but still makes you feel really bad, and you might have a losing streak that's just as expected but makes you feel really good.
After 3 failed attempts to submit our taxes electronically (probably because Eugenia's tax ID number was replaced by a real social security number last year), we decided to file a paper return, and that one went through and we finally got our refund (and since I had paid double social security for a while last year because I changed jobs, that was a significant refund that I didn't want to let go, and it's a relief to see the money come back to us).
After a regular day yesterday where I didn't collapse asleep in the middle of the afternoon, I had a good night where I actually slept a full night. As a result, I wasn't sleepy or grumpy today, which was a welcome change.
Work's been going good. I've been on top of my objectives on a fairly consistent basis, and this afternoon I've been able to catch and diagnose a bug which I suspected to exist based on an old report, but that I wasn't able to spot in my code. With a bit of perseverance, I was able to get a hint of what was going on, which eventually allowed me to reproduce the issue and reach a conclusion. I will have a fix for it tomorrow.
Today, for the first time in a long long while, I had a real coke made with real sugar (i.e. imported from Mexico, since US coke is make with corn syrup). And to top it off tonight Eugenia and I drank a bottle of Italian soda, also made with real sugar. Damn, real sugar is actually better than corn syrup. Corn is good for tortilla chips, or to feed to ducks to make foie gras, or to turn into ethanol to fuel my car, but not to sweeten my drinks.
BiometeredAt last something happened better than expected! It felt like I had been having week after week of stuff that didn't go quite right.
Earlier this week, we got our appointment notices for immigration fingerprinting (a.k.a. biometrics), and the appointment date was at a very inconvenient date. My lawyer recommended trying to go early, and this morning we were able to get fingerprinted ahead of our appointment, with no questions asked, in a way that was unexpectedly fast and eventless.
In other news, I'm managing my workload better. Even when trying to work less, I feel that I'm still doing better than average in terms of meeting goals and commitments.
Finally, for the first time in quite a while I've managed to sleep reasonably well at night and to not collapse into sleep in the middle of the afternoon.
In response to Pete...Pete's blog: "Google employees only work four days a week anyways"
JBQ: Yeah, but our weeks are 5 days long.