Brutal reality. I remember a moment many years ago when I looked over at the bookshelf behind my desk and my eyes landed on a book titled "Doing Hard Time" (it

Brutal reality. I remember a moment many years ago when I looked over at the bookshelf behind my desk and my eyes landed on a book titled "Doing Hard Time" (it's about real time embedded systems). It was somewhere around 3:00AM. I had been in that room, coding, since 8 or 9 in the morning of the prior day. I had been doing 18 hour days, seven days a week, for the last year and a half. If I was awake I was in this little 10 x 20 ft room coding away. For some reason I saw that book and my first thought was that I now knew what being imprisoned might feel like. Sad realization. The story got much better after that low point as the product was completed and schedules became sane (but never 9 to 5). I have to say I would not change any part of that experience. The highs and the lows were amazing. Learning, pushing yourself to the limit and back. Finding out what you are made of. Remarkable. That said, had it not ended well the story might have been very different.