I was talking to Dave today. He just hired someone from his old job to work part-time and after one week he's a bit disappointed. The thing is that people sometimes change when they move jobs. It's tough to tell why someone works hard and excels in a particular position. Take them from one job and give them more money, and sometimes that doesn't work. It's like you're justifying their self- worth so they get cocky and complacent. You want them hungry and a little bit insecure so they'll work hard. Or maybe that's just how I operate.

I think I mentioned I just got an off-cycle raise starting this month. I just feel like I'm not doing enough to justify my salary. And maybe it's just the project that I'm currently working on, which has been a six-month long mess of planning and lost opportunities. And a lot of it is my fault. I haven't gotten the hang of how I operate in a long project. I really have to pick a path and do it, and not second guess the implementation. If it's wrong I can fix it later, but if I have doubts while I'm coding I spin around in circles and get nothing done. Get a working implementation and then I can fix all the wrong design choices one at a time.

The hardest part about working under a friend is that you don't want to let them down. I don't know, I'm just second-guessing myself too much. I keep thinking that Pick really knows what a f*ck-up I really am and he hides it well. Every time he compliments me and tells me I'm doing a good job it's like this knife twisting into my soul. Well, that's in the times when I'm feeling incompetent. When I'm getting things done I take praise well. When I don't feel like I'm making progress praise is a rather bitter pill to take. You know you're letting them down, they just don't know it yet. And more's the shame when they do find out.

Weekends, and I've mentioned this before, is when I stay up really late catching up on things. During the weekdays no matter how late I stay up I'll still get eight or nine hours of sleep and get to work late. That doesn't matter much to me since I'll still work a full day. In the weekends I do have to get up earlier since I have to go to Berkeley to check my PO box on Saturday, although I've cut it back to only checking it every other Saturday. On Sunday I now have to wake up to go to gaming at about noon, or whenever Dave can get away from his wife.

So on Saturday I'm still ok. I can do a lot of things, except think really well. Enough to check the mail, get groceries, see a movie, watch my tapes and do a few other random things. Sunday I'm more tired. And usually I take a nap during gaming, especially if my character is not doing anything so I'm idle. And it's not just a Sunday phenomenom since I've been sleeping at gaming on and off for years now.

Contrast this with Dave, who doesn't get enough sleep on weekdays. He works a lot and tries to still come in at his appointed time. Weekends are when he gets to catch up on his sleep. Unless he comes by like tonight and watches tv with me until 05:00. Dave can stay up through willpower, whereas I stay awake because my mind is still active and I'm still doing things. I'm more used to staying up late than getting up early. It's hard to believe that I could wake up early in high school and college.

Somehow I never get much work done when I plan to do it on a weekend. There's all these other things that I want to do, and I put off doing work all Saturday and then it's Sunday. It's not a good idea to schedule your work such as you have to work on the weekends. I never learn. I have done work on Saturday and/or Sunday, but that's like once every couple of months.