No sleep makes me stupid.

I'll start off by saying I'm not a hypocrite. I just believe in double standards.

I consistently tell my children that sleep is vital to their health. I get upset when they don't settle into bed and begin the appeals process with the number one and number two lower courts. They may be tired but they are smart enough to know I won't make them stay in bed if they have to go. I am averse to mess as it means cleaning which means work.

I, on the other hand refuse to get enough sleep. This draws from my sincere belief that it is a rotten waste of time.

I have so much I want to do during the day. By 10pm I have done so little and I have much more slacking off to do. Retro gaming doesn't play by itself.

I received a wake up call this week after another midnight session of 'Syndicate'. I had slept in again and needed food for the day. Breakfast AND Lunch. I took what I hoped were leftovers and then grabbed a container containing a paper towel and three eggs.

I wasn't sure if they were hard boiled or raw. I remembered through the fog of my rest deprived brain that you could spin a an egg on end if it is boiled but not if it's raw.

Or was it the other way around?

I spun an egg and it rolled on it's side. I second guessed myself out of time and decided to roll with it. I put it all together with an apple and called it healthy. Before tossing it in my gym bag I put it all in the plastic produce bag that the apple had rested in just in case there was any mess.

When I arrived at work I went to retrieve my breakfast and found it a bit moist. Thankfully I had packed a second pair of workout clothes that day, again, due to being too tired to think straight. Being a weakling at the gym is even worse if you have egg white stuck to your shorts.

This is the sort of gaff that can't stay quiet. In conversation with my wife later that day:
Her: What did you take for breakfast today?
Me: Remember those three boiled eggs in the container in the fridge?
Her: They weren't boiled.
Me: I know that now.
Her: Why did you take raw eggs to work?
Me: Because I'm... stupid.

The moral of the story is pack your lunch at one in the morning after defeating the enemy Syndicate in Indonesia.

Anti-work

I love my job, especially all the parts I don't hate.

I have become proficient at my vocation in the past decade. I have moved past the reactive "Reboot" or "Why don't you remember your password" responses. I am proactive, which is to say I have disabled Caps-Lock on certain keyboards.

As a direct result of my expertise I expect I am now being diagnosed by the clients as bi-polar. This is because one of two things happens:

1. I arrive at their computer, sigh loudly, smile, press three buttons and then wander away with half of an explanation of their original problem.
2. I sit in their chair for half an hour fending off sleep.

It isn't my paternal narcolepsy that has me nearly napping at their desks, it's the the second most hated part of my job.

The status bar.

Like most geeks I am obsessed with efficiency. I pre-plan errand routes to prevent doubling back and to maximize waiting time. Within the confines of my own office it is common to see me switching between 3 or 4 different computers pretending to work.

But when the problem doesn't warrant confiscating the computer I support it at their desk. This is a waste of my time.

The problem comes in the unpredictability of the status bar. That offensive graphic which taunts me as it crawls across the screen like molasses chasing a snail.

I can't leave the computer in case a prompt asks me for my genius to apply the correct x/y co-ordinates on the interface to facilitate my endorsement of the current information and initiate the subsequent action.

That means I wait around to hit 'Next'.

For those who have never enjoyed this angle of the tech world, let me give you a play by play.

Minute 1 - Analyze problem
Minute 2 - Curse under my breath and inform client to take a leisurly walk for a coffee. Repress the urge to growl at them while they feign disappointment for the sponsored break.
Minute 3 - Log the client out, log in as all-powerful, initiate install or uninstall or the really dreaded uninstall/install combo.
Minute 4 - Click the gratuitous combination of Yes, Next, Custom, Next, Next, Yes.
Minute 5 - Watch the status bar creep across the screen. If attentive I can observe the narrowing of people due to 4th dimensional space/time relativity.
Minute 16 - Begin playing 'Breakout' on my blackberry in an attempt to stay awake.
Minute 17 - Lose the game. Reflect on what shape the other person's butt must be by sensing the form their chair has adopted.
Minute 21 - Attempt to urge the status bar forward with my mind.
Minute 27 - Begin praying.
Minute 28 - Hold my insults as the client returns and says "You're not done yet?"
Minute 32 - Complete the install with a reboot. Return to my lair and close the ticket so that any subsequent calls start the clock again giving me at least 24 hours before I need to see the status bar again.

So the part of my work I hate is that which is not work, or the anti-work. I love the rest of it.

Except rebooting.

I hope she thinks I'm pretty at least.

The olfactory value of a rose by any other name depends on marketing. For some curious reason synonyms leave different impressions on us. For example: describing breakfast as "bacon and eggs" is more palatable than "pig calves and chicken zygotes".

And so to sound less draconian I describe punishing my children as discipline. In truth I recognize the significant difference between the two activities. Punishment is dealing pain in return for a transgression. Discipline is nagging your kids until they ignore you.

We are in the cycle of returning our children to normal bed times. This serves two purposes:
-> They are healthier when they have enough sleep.
-> We can stand them when they aren't tired.

The trick is getting them to STAY in bed and not read, play, or kick the walls in order to have the warden visit. I like to try to reason with them on this. Reasoning with an overtired 5 year old can be described as trying to win the jackpot betting on race that has just finished. You know the outcome, you predict it, but you can not cash in on it.

As a result I have to implement artificial consequences, as the natural ones of falling asleep in their cereal and driving their mother batty are not working. Being ever logical I let them pick their doom.

Me: "Honey, what do you need to fall asleep?"
Her: "My music and my Sunny."
Me: "Ok, then if you keep coming downstairs I will take it that they aren't working for you. I will first turn off your music. If that doesn't help you sleep I will take Sunny for a while."

Traditionally this level of warning works well, meaning I turn off the music and take the toy once before they realize I'm serious. The other night the child came down (after multiple tucking in and warnings) and said:

"I came down to see Mommy again. I already turned off my music."

I was honestly pretty proud of her. She understood the results and took them in her own hands.

Then not even 10 minutes later I hear a cacophony from her sister's room which sounds just like the younger one causing a grave disturbance in the force. Upon investigation the little miscreant runs to her bed and dives under the covers.

Me: "I'm sorry honey, but you made your choice. Where is Sunny?"
Her: "I don't have her."

It took a minute of interrogation to derive the location of the toy. It was hidden. Under the bed. Wrapped in a bag.

It is not a good sign that she thinks that she can outwit me this easily. Her opinion of her Fathers cranial capabilities is humbling. I hope she thinks I'm pretty at least.

So now my routine of "Reason, Warning then Discipline" I need to append "Establish credibility". Anyone want to be a reference for me?

Calvin-Bowl

I swear I used to be rational. I used to have a reason for my actions, a plan to accomplish my intents. Then I had kids.

One of the most significant changes in your life after having children is meal times.

In the beginning it is fairly minor of a change. The kid either downs a bottle or distracts the husband while they eat.

Once the small person moves to mush you now have to wait to eat while giving them their supper. This involves putting 1/8 tsp amounts of mush into the mouth of someone who is enjoying the tactile excitement in discovering their tongue.

This continues until you can slap a cup of 'Cheerios' on the little table and they begin to feed themselves. And the cat.

My kids are now old enough to manage well on their own. They have the dexterity to both feed themselves and avoid stabbing mishaps with the others at the table. It is because of this that I expect the unreasonable.

I expect them to eat their meals.

The younger one gets tired of the table fairly easily. She is bored of sitting there by the time my wife sits for dinner. Every meal I repeat the mantra "Be quiet and eat. Stop moving and eat."

It might seem cruel to disallow discussion over the dinner table but what comes out of her mouth isn't discussion, it's like hooking up a voice synthesizer to a wireshark feed.

So as she staves off the boredom from a half hour of consuming life giving food I invent new rules for table manners in a way that would make 'Calvinball' appear rather linear.

The rules for our meal times include:
-> No toys at the table.
-> Wear clothes when eating.
-> No kicking.
-> No punching.
-> No yelling.
-> No rubbing food on the table.
-> No stabbing the plate.
-> Eat with your mouth closed.
-> Not too much ranch sauce on your potatoes.
-> No talking if you're the slowest eater at the table.
-> No having a second drink of milk.

This week's addition: No interpretive dance at the table.

You can thank the younger one for that. She had been forbidden from speaking but figured that full body sign language was still allowed.

The older one isn't so much an inspiration to create rules as she is an influence to pursue a child psychology degree.

One of her favourite foods is ribs. This is neat, as ribs taste good. Last night she saved her ribs for last, eating all other food on her plate. Then she picked up a rib, looked at it as Hamlet would a skull, and began to speak to it in soothing tones.

"Mmmmm, dead pig grease."

My wife and I responded with a worried look at each other. The child continued uninterrupted as her sister had exceeded her talk to food ratio for the meal already.

"This must have been a skinny pig. Skinny little pig. They must have hit parts off with a crowbar."

I must say that is the first time I have ever heard the word crowbar used in a conversation with one's dinner. My wife and I were now choking on our mouthfuls so she endured:

"I think the pig died from bone loss."

So that may explain the irrational regulations that are held to our board. It also explains several of my nightmares since.