I have a fantastic job- I have a comfortable chair, a lightning fast internet connection for web browsing, I get paid to take classes/tests (plus sizeable bonuses when I pass), and I can come and go at my leisure. My salary is embarrassingly large for being twenty four, and it's still growing. I've got an office while most of my friends are in cubicles, at best.

Plus, I get paid to break things. Software in particular. Someone else develops something, and I try as hard as I can to make it act i a way that it shouldn't, or make it break something else, or whatever. My job isn't to verify that the developer made something that works... it's to prove that it doesn't work. After I've done everything I can think of to break it- including things that no sane customer would even think of- I will grudgingly say that it is worthy of being packaged and delivered.

But there's a reason my job sounds so awesome... it's the only way to keep people on. The reason so many aspects of the job have to be awesome is there's one aspect that completely sucks... for about a month every quarter, we're completely swamped. There are four deadlines a year that actually matter... one every three months. For the month leading up to the deadline, a sixty hour work week is considered "light." Since we're all salaried, there is no overtime pay, no real benefit... except you finish your work, and you assure your future in the company.

During that month, though, there's one week that causes all the others to look fun and easy... the last week before the deadline. Right now, it's Thursday afternoon, and counting the eight hours I did on Sunday, my time for the week just crept over seventy hours. And I'm not done for today. Thankfully, I think this will be the only day (this release) I'm at work more than twenty hours. I should be able to limp across the finish line with twelve to fourteen hour days, fueled by a dozen or so cups of coffee and half a dozen Excedrin Migraine's.