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Dreaming in code

I woke up this morning with that interrupt service routine dancing through my head. I figured out how to reduce the number of instructions by another third and make the logic easier to follow. Good for me. Or is it?

Back when I went through college the first time, I majored in Japanese. I can count on one hand the number of times that I dreamed in Japanese while in school. I was rather less intense about my studies back then, but even though I've managed to become well and truly obsessive-compulsive about engineering, I would never have expected to find myself dreaming in C, Z80, Fourier transforms, and Matlab on a regular basis. It really doesn't make for restful sleep. I wake up feeling like I've been working for hours.

Oz does the same thing. He says I can expect to get over this in about thirty years or so. Or maybe never. Does this mean that I've made a terrible career choice, or that this is what I was born for?

When I mentioned to Dr. Smith that I designed the logic for some data analysis software in my sleep, he said, "Oh. Um, I do that too."

When I mentioned to Office Extrovert that I'd figured out a way to add features to some data collection software in a dream, he laughed at me and said, "That's bad."

Engineering might be driving me crazy, albeit an employable kind of crazy. After all, whom do you want designing the processor that runs your pacemaker or controls your antilock brakes? The obsessive-compulsive perfectionist who eats, sleeps and dreams logic, that's who.

272 words | July 11, 2004 07:27 PM | Rocket science