I'm sure it quite normal to do all nighters, but I just haven't had a whole lot of experience doing them. Until recently. At Portland we're doing After Effects, animation, and compositing for a series of TV spots for St. Francis Hospital in Greenville, SC. Each time a deadline has come for each commercial in the series (now finished the 4th one), I ended up working from about 9 am one day until about the same time or later the next day. The feeling of the sun coming up in the morning after you saw it set and never left your desk since then is a weird feeling. Somehow I get in the zone where it's like I'm running a race straight to the sleep in front of me. All I can see is that when the work is done, I get rest. So I actually rarely take a break once I get going. Seems to just break the flow and focus of getting the work done. Nothing makes you realize that you're sleep deprived more than a 10 minute nap. I'd rather fool myself into thinking I'm coherent. To sum it up, in the last 40 hours, I've had 3 1/2 hours of sleep. I would honestly do an all nighter once a month if I needed to--considering that a night like that provides a large part of what I need for a month of living expenses. Life as a "semi-freelancer"---many ups and downs. But never uninteresting.
I picked up a copy of Tiger--Mac OS 10.4. Very nice! I'm finding the Widgets to be highly useful. I'm using my middle scroll wheel on my mouse to pull them up. Wikit has replaced my Stickies. In fact, there's a Widget that I'll soon be able to use to post to this blog directly! Other than that, the most helpful part of Tiger is Spotlight. Quick sorting of files for someone like me changes everything. A highly recommended upgrade. BIG BEEF: Now I have to repurchase Quicktime Pro for QT 7. And for that I am actually angry. One bad move is forgivable, Apple. But I'm annoyed. Like I would be with my best friend.