Miles Visits and Scott Angers His Coworkers

Time: 3:48am (press return). Miles has just left my house. Around 9pm tonight (yesterday) Annie checked out a car, and we picked up Miles and Zach (and KT) at KT’s house. On the way to Gustav’s, Miles started telling a story about his housemates which he was only able to finish by the time we left Gustav’s two hours later. We dropped KT off, and Miles suggested renting The Original Kings of Comedy, which we all watched at my house, and were greatly amused by. We had a great time, and were sad to see Miles go. Zach asked if he could crash here for the night, which we agreed to, and I said he could sleep in the middle bedroom (where our computers are set up) after I checked my email.

Now Zach is sleeping in the basement, and I’m still sitting at my computer because I have work to do. I knew this might happen, since Steve and I had a demo assigned to us at a meeting today, which is due tomorrow (today) at 9am (5 hours from now). But since Miles was only in town for one day, I decided to hang out with him and run the risk of coming home to a pile of work needing to be done.

Now I’m facing the same decision I faced so many times in college: With five hours until the project is due, is it better to work now and get three hours of sleep at the end, or sleep now and get up in three hours to do the work? Or is it better to post to KillingMachines and avoid the decision altogether?

37 Hours

I was awake for 37 hours on Friday. It was pretty cool. Pulling an all-nighter on a night when you’re just goofing around is a very different experience than pulling an all-nighter desperately trying to finish a term paper in an hour that should have taken a week to write. Normally, all-nighters are such a stressful experience that the next day always feels a little off. The lighting everywhere seems strange, too bright or too dim. People all seem to be moving in slow-motion one second, and the next everyone’s in fast-forward. Everyone’s speech is very difficult to understand for some reason. And it’s always VERY hard to stay awake.

This was completely different. Friday, at work, Steve called and asked if we wanted to go to Gustav’s. Gustav’s is a German pub/restaurant in NE Portland that’s far enough away from downtown (where I live), that I’ve only been there once with Steve. But now Steve has a car! So quickly, Miles and Ang and I all agreed to meet in the tech room at 9pm (happy hour starts at 10). At 9, we all got together, plus Mark, and headed to Gustav’s. We had so much food. The bill was 50-some dollars between five guys at happy hour. Everyone ate some chicken strips and fries. We all had a large plate of sausage. We all partook of two large orders of fondue. We all had some sort of really rich chocolate dessert. The rest of the guys all had a large mug of dark beer, and I had two Cider Jacks. We all stumbled out at about 11:30, fat and happy.

On the way back downtown, Miles asked if I wanted to hang out in the tek room with him and work on Mutton Kombat (remember Mutton Kombat? from months and months ago?). I said sure, since Annie was in Tacoma for the weekend and wouldn’t care if I spent all night in the tek room geeking out.

So at about midnight, Miles and I sat down and started work. We worked really hard for awhile, then we looked up at the clock and realized it was 6AM. We paused to get breakfast from McDonald’s. Alex was supposed to show up at about Noon to talk to Miles about our other game project, Cube Fighter. Miles and I were supposed to go on shift at about 10AM. We kept working on the game through until 10, when we came on shift and did some work stuff for awhile. Alex finally showed up around 1:30, and at 2pm, I was off shift. Miles and Alex were babbling about code, so I sat down and looked for japanese fonts online. Finally, at about 4:30, we all headed for home (we all live in the same Student Housing building). At 5PM, I was sitting in my living room trying to decide if I was hungry or tired or wide awake (I wasn’t really any of them), when my Mom called and offered me dinner. She picked me up and we had a huge meal of pork chops and steak and baked potatos and salad and ice cream. it was great.

After dinner, I lay down on the couch and started reading one of my brother’s comics. 20 minutes later I woke up and realized I’d been asleep, so I got Mom to take me home to go to bed. Of course, by the time I got home, I was wide awake again, so I stayed up and watched Saturday Night Live, which was horrible. Really bad episode. Finally, at 3AM, I forced myself to go to bed, even though I still wasn’t really tired.

I had been up for 37 hours straight, going strong the whole time (except the 20min nap). It was really odd. I didn’t feel drained or out of it, or anything. A very interesting experience. Mutton Kombat is coming along well, and I hope to get some information on it posted on play.fojar.com later today.