One day last week, as I was juggling my mental list of Things That Absolutely Have To Be Done Today, I started jotting down some notes on a paper pad I keep nearby. These notes involved going through a network management application distributed across 8 Sun servers. Halfway through making my notes, I realized that I had done something like this:

foreach proxy server {
    foreach TL1 process {
        update configuration files
        stop the process
        run it manually
        debug it
        when it's good, start the process again
    }
}

[download]

Note: TL1 (Transaction Language 1) is a text format used by telco equipment. See http://www.tl1.com for more information.

Has anyone else experienced this? The point when you're so wrapped up in work that you start thinking more like a computer than a human being? Where you find it normal to write this kind of pseudo-code to manage your work and your life?

And do any of you start thinking that this isn't necessarily a bad thing?

I'm interested in anything else that coders and techies might use as a warning that they need a break, a vacation, to "get a life." The Programmer's Frustration node a few weeks ago discussed what people do when they need a break, but I'm interested in how you know you need that break in the first place.

Chumley

In reply to I need a vacation by chumley

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