October 2, 2004

Jeremy sat up slowly. He had fallen asleep at his desk, and the office was deserted with the exception of the cleaning crew. They must have been especially noisy tonight as they awakened him when they came in the front security door. His coworkers had called him crazy when he mentioned that he would be working this weekend, saying that he had lost his mind and should be out somewhere trying to have some fun. But they apparently just didn t understand. To Jeremy, this was fun. He hadn t spent so many years in college studying networking and learning advanced programming techniques just to ignore the opportunity to expand his skill set. In fact, one of the managers who had interviewed Jeremy inadvertently had admitted to him that one of the primary reasons he was given an interview was because he had included a senior course project that had impressed one of the senior technical folks in the department.

Jeremy leaned back in his chair, aching. His neck was sore from having been stretched at such an odd angle. He raised his arms above his head, stretching his back muscles and letting the blood return to his limbs. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was already 9:13 p.m. It had been hours since everyone else in the office had left for the day. Neil had stopped by Jeremy s desk to see how his research was coming along, but he had been overwhelmed and couldn t...