I am a machine

A bloody good one, too. I started night shift last night. We've got the offsets hooked up and we're working up a lot of the newer dryland country so that we can put a grader board across it to fill in some melon holes and just generally smooth it out a bit. The last time we sprayed that country it nearly killed the poor old boomspray bouncing up and down; it'll make it easier on the headers, too. Because my boss is such a slave driving arsehole*, he made me work a few hours yesterday morning setting up the machine and giving the Young Bloke a few pointers on the efficient operation of same. That is, if by 'made me' you mean 'didn't argue when I volunteered'.
So I didn't put my head down until about 11a.m., then the power went off at about 2p.m., meaning the electrickery powered air coldifying device ceased operations in support of the IR reform protests. In 35° heat. I woke up. I then proceeded to not go back to sleep when the sparks started flying again at 3p.m. On top of this (no, I'm not whinging, I'm just giving you the relevant information so that you can independantly arrive at the conclusion that I am indeed a machine.) I followed my usual pre-nightshift practise the previous night and sat up drinking beer and talking shit on the telling bone until around midnight.
From the available data you should be able to deduce the precise amount of sleep I was able to sock away prior to night shift last night.
3/5 of 5/8.
For persons not familiar with the imperial system that works out to roughly fuck all in metric.
Did that slow me down?
Do I really need to answer that? I already told you that I was a machine and I'm hardly likely to write a post highlighting how piss-weak I am, now am I?
I soldiered on through the bleak and stormy night and covered heaps of ground. More than heaps. Big mobs of acres. Even stuck to the Thruster Code of Ethics and left the machine in better condition than I found it, adjusting a few things here and there. I do feel a tad weary at the present moment in time, going forwards in a proactive manner.
Never let it be said that sleep is impossible on nightshift. Once you've managed to convince your body that the new routine is going to be a routine, sleep comes just as naturally twelve hours later. Indeedy, I prefer nightshift to dayshift in the summer. I'd much rather be crawling over a broken machine by torchlight in the cool of the night than slogging it out in 40° heat with 2,349,725,845,711,047 flies in the middle of the day.
As an aside, one brief nightshift story:
Several years ago, when I had not been working in the cotton industry all that long, I got work on a corporate farm Like a lot of cotton farms, it started life as a sheep station and still had the old shearers quarters. It was a bloody good setup, but most of the other blokes there were kids and therefore, by definition, pigs. I don't like living in my own mess, let alone anyone else's, so I bought a caravan and set it up next to the quarters so I could use the shower and toilet. Like a lot of farms out this way, it had a gravel pit on it and, like most corporate farms, a lot of time and money was spent on maintaining the network of roads on the farm. I was working nightshift on irrigation when a couple scrapers turned up with a laser bucket to put a couple of new roads in and do some maintenance on the existing ones. I had no idea where they were going to put the new roads. I found out where at least one of them was going when I got up to get ready for work.
When I went to bed, my caravan was on the side of an empty grass paddock. When I woke up, there was a completely finished gravel road through the paddock which passed within twenty-five metres of my van, complete with a driveway for me.
I slept through the whole thing.

*No, he isn't. That's known as ironic satire - or 'bullshit'.