Books to the ceiling,/ Books to the sky,/ My pile of books is a mile high./ How I love them! How I need them!/ I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them. – Arnold Lobel

I’ve been recently inspired to catch up on a lot of my programming fundamentals, digging up old notes and textbooks from my parent’s house.  It’s amazing how much slips your mind in those years… and I think my brain is rebelling from a lack of sleep.  Work has been killing me these last few weeks.

The stack of books on my nightstand has been tempting me every evening, books I’ve recently bought or borrowed, a few I’ve pulled from my shelves: Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Bob Woodward’s State of Denial… I even cracked open Homer’s Odyssey.  But every time I take a moment, no matter the time of day, I always end up falling asleep within ten pages or so.

It’s because I’ve had a lot of late nights… a lot of code to write and review.  You’d think I’d be in a better mood: I finally was given the time to implement what I call “preview panes,” or hovering blocks of detail that appear when hovering over an object.  I also got the time to design semi-opaque module-level dialogs.  They’re awesome looking, and the users are going to love them.  But apparently I’m officially ”booked” for the rest of the year, (and then some), on a whole set of projects.

I’m a busy, busy bee.  And there’s so much I want to learn… things I want my brain to recall, apply, relate.  It’s just been frustrating.  And you know me… my mind is incredibly multi-threaded.  Between family, friends, work, study and my random ponderings… I guess it’s doing the best it can.

But some good news:  I think I’m going to launch a couple of new sites soon… A Google Maps mash-up and that Everybody Calm Down commentary I mentioned once in a blue moon ago.

I’ve just gotta find the time.  Anybody got some lying around?  *sigh*