It is almost 5am as I am writing this. For some reason, I just can't fall asleep tonight. Although it has been quite some time since I had what I would consider a restful night sleep, I generally fall asleep fairly easily but just can't seem to benefit from it.

So here I am, catching up on emails and writing to my blog in the middle of the night.

I have to admit, the past few weeks have been really rough on me. My stomach problems have hit me fairly hard over the past three weeks. Nothing new except that I generally get a 2-3 day attack every 2-3 weeks. Not 2-3 weeks of almost daily attacks. I wonder if it either related to somethin bad I may have eaten, or it may also be related to stress. Although I wonder since my wife has also had her share of digestive problems over the past few weeks. It is always hard to tell as when one of us gets sick, the other tends to follow right behind. Which always makes me wonder whether the other is really sick or it is just some form of sympathy pains. But now, I am out of sick days and vacation days so I cannot really allow myself to be sick and take time off from work, at least not unless I want to take unpaid leave.

Stress has been fairly bad over the past month or so. Beyond the usual financial issues, work has been as busy as ever. I have been working on three overlapping sub-projects at the same time, each with its own set of deadlines. All of the projects are getting close to an end and have been in bug fixing mode. One advantage is that progress is generally easier to see as your bug count goes down. However, every time I manage to kill 5-6 bugs, another 4-5 are added. So the net progress is not great, and can be quite demotivating. This is also leaving some older lower priorty bugs dangling, which is not great either. On the brighter side, now at least I can see the end of he tunnel in regards to these projects and now know I will soon be working on some new and exciting challenges. Just hope I can get a breather from the deadline-craze!

As for the "help me out contest", I am not sure if it's even worth mentioning... So far 6 people have helped (a huge thanks to them). But obviously it is quite unlikely the 200 target will be met with only 194 to go in three weeks. I had mixed hopes from the beginning and figured it would not hurt. At least the earnings should be enogh to cover my web hosting costs for a few months.

Besides that, I've been wanting to start developping some small iPhone apps for fun (and possibly income). I have all I need to do so except for one key element. The mental energy to do it! I remember when I was in California and could work 10-12h at my day job and then spend another 4-6h at home working on my projects without any issues. I will admit tha I think the big reason is the weather and lack of sunshine in the Seattle area. I do miss California now and I would gladly trade the natury feel from here for the concree jungle with frequent sun light. Plus, my wife really misses the proximity to her friends and family. Too bad there isn't much in terms of Microsoft employment for which I would quilify in the SF Bay Area.

Enough blabbing for now. Time to go debate whether I should just get up and go or give sleep another try.