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ComputerWorld had a recent article on "Aspie's in IT". They referred to it as the "dark secret". Apparently it is pretty common. Some of the brightest, most productive people in IT are "Aspies". Many of them have no social life...and don't give a rat's ass about social standing.

That fits. I'm an 'aspie' myself. I work 6 PM-4:30 AM 4 nights a week, for a decent salary and good benefits. I don't have to deal with the 9 to 5 people, nor they with me. I perform a valuable service for my boss who has to cover things 24/7/365, and she rewards me for it. Social standing? Pfft. I have my wife, my 4 wonderful children, and my family as my social life, pretty much. I do have one treasured female friend from here at work who is probably as 'aspie' as I am. The rest of my social life is online, really, with people a lot like me. I know that to some of you that sounds like an empty life, but, keep in mind that how I see a lot of people live looks pretty empty to me. If I'm happy with it, as is my family, what does it matter?

Also, I've done what I can for my kids in school. I make sure my oldest girl (she's 14) understands how it really works, and why some of the kids treat her how they do, and that the only way to deal with it is to remember that she is worth every bit as much as they are, and to do it her way, not just follow them for some ephemeral 'popularity'. She does pretty well.

Your view on life matches mine. I work from home and divide my time between work, time with my wife (meals and chores)) and whatever time remains for sleep. I turned in 121 hours of direct chargeable labor on my last two week time card period. I actually worked 10 hours beyond that after turning in the card. The project is an intense DSP task. I want to get it delivered before my other contract ramps up full bore. My wife tears me away from work to maintain a little balance. FR fills those time voids when running a long process (C++ build, MATLAB script or processing a big input file). The asynchronous nature of an FR thread fits nicely into my free moments.

My CPU has been pinned at 100% for the last 5 hours. NuMega BoundsChecker is chewing on a C++ program. It's a frustrating wait to finish.