I agree, this is primarily why I'm leaving my current position for a company with realistic expectations. I've had months without a single day off working 60 - 90 hour weeks every week because they refuse to compromise with deadlines or adding additional developers. I'm planning on taking a few weeks between jobs to just unwind so I'm not frazzled for the next position.
I agree. I view SO in a similar manner as you. Several times I've been able to find explanations of bizarre behavior from different frameworks that weren't listed in the official documentation.
I have to agree with your statement. I've also used SO to ask esoteric questions about niches in technologies I work with every day. Most of the time those questions don't get answers quickly. However, after a period of time I can see they've helped others by the views and awards that come in sometimes a year or more after posting. I view SO more as a way to display example use cases of strange behavior or puzzling functionality that I discover as I'm working through issues. Especially for things that official documentation explains poorly or not at all.
Exactly, when I started looking into doing a few side projects for some extra scratch I went to my employer and had them draft up a letter explicitly releasing me to do side projects as long as it doesn't affect my work or their customers.