Yet another late night at work yesterday, pulling a nineteen hour day and still not accomplishing what I needed to. I intended to build a new firewall but was plagued with a myrid of hardware issues. I finally gave up for the night and went home to get some reset. Instead of making process, I find myself even farther behind on my schedule. I still have to finish building the firewall, but now I find out that I have one day to implement a new feature for the website, one that would usually occupy multiple programmers and a database administrator for several days. Of course, this is what happens when deadlines are made without the input of the technical staff. Sadly, I’ve witnessed this trend at most technology companies. I don’t have high hopes that it will correct itself, either. It is one of the biggest challenges I face.

With the late Thanksgiving this year, there are less days in the christmas shopping season. I don’t expect that to effect most men, who in my experience wait to the last minute no matter how much time in advance they had (myself included). Despite the hassle of fighting the crowds at the stores and hunting for the perfect gift, it’s still one of my favorite holidays. I love to see the looks on everyones face as they open their presents. To me, that is what Christmas is all about.

Winter’s breath arrived in a huff today, leaving a couple inches of snow in its wake. I was both dreading the snow and looking forward to it. Having grown up and lived in Illinois all my life, I’m used to the bitterly cold winters. There’s something exciting about the first snowfall of the season. The christmas tree is up. The house is decorated with lights. It’s pretty. But with the onset of winter comes seasonal affective disorder (SAD), aka the “winter blues”, aka seasonal depression. I first noticed its symptoms a few years ago, and it has returned without fail every year since. There are things that can be done to overcome this illness, such as exercise and increasing the amount of sunlight you receive. I’ll have to try adjusting my normally sedate lifestyle to include these steps. The difficulty I’ve found in getting more sunlight is subjecting myself to the cold. I’m not sure that the cure is worse than the condition.