Related:

• heads down: [Sun] adj. Concentrating, usually so heavily and for so long that everything outside the focus area is missed.
  See also {hack mode} and {larval stage}, although this mode is hardly confined to fledgling hackers....
• oglodyte mode: [Rice University] n. Programming with the lights turned off
  unglasses on, and the terminal inverted (black on white) because you've been up for so many days straight that your eyes hurt (see {raster burn})....
• burn-in period: n. 1. A factory test designed to catch systems with {marginal} components before they get out the doo
  he theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the steepest part of the {bathtub curve} (see {infant mortality})....
• demo mode: [Sun] n. 1. The state of being {heads down} in order to finish code in time for a {demo}, usually due yesterday.
  2. A mode in which video games sit by themselves running through a portion of the game, also known as `attract mode'....
• larval stage: n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers.
  Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour {hacking run} in a given week...
• hack mode n. 1. What one is in when hacking, of course.
  2. More specifically, a Zen-like state of total focus on The Problem that may be achieved when one is hacking (this is why every good hacker is part mystic)....
• are mode: [UNIX] adj. CBREAK mode (character-by-character with interrupts enabled).
  Distinguished from {raw mode} and {cooked mode}...
• maximum Maytag mode: What a {washing machine} or, by extension, any hard disk is in when it's being used so heavily that it's shaking like an old Maytag with an unbalanced load.
  If prolonged for any length of time, can lead to disks becoming {walking drives}....
• priority interrupt: [from the hardware term] n. Describes any stimulus compelling enough to yank one right out of {hack mode}.
  Classically used to describe being dragged away by an {SO} for immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane interruptions such as a fire alarm going off in the near vicinity....