Making Your Bedroom a Sanctum from Technology? 148
"The lucky few of us who've managed to not remain single can have one recalcitrant database or webserver strain a relationship to the extreme when it misbehaves multiple nights in a row. I personally have developed severe sleep disorders over the past half decade due to the little issues that always seem to happen just after that much needed REM sleep kicks in. I certainly can't fathom the patience my signifigant other has for sharing the disturbances.
I woke a few months back with a laptop near the pillow, flat screen still powered on the tv tray and an equal distribution of cats and wireless devices at my feet. I had a headache from various system fans, drives spinning, and the 'dings' of incoming mail. Enough was enough. I decided I wanted to make the bedroom as much of a sanctum as possible. The other 85% of the house can have wires, TiVos in various states, and homemade networked kitchen appliances; the place of rest should be geared to that purpose if I'm to be an efficient geek."
stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I find beeps and flashing lights relaxing (Score:4, Insightful)
I, my friend, would strongly advise you to follow this thread very, very carefully. It may help you to avoid some serious problems in the future.
I am not joking.
whine, whine, whine (Score:4, Insightful)
nearly all technology shares a common feature. an off switch. learn how that works and quit whining.
what a ridiculous story.
This thread sucks... (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't that hard to make the decision to leave a computer out of your friggin bedroom, unless you live in a dorm room, an efficiency or studio apartment, or something along those lines.
I don't understand what makes this question at all interesting.
You don't like computers in your bedroom?
Neither do we.
So we didn't put any in there.
Hope that helps.
Re:stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are having DB or other problems "multiple nigths in a row" you are doing something wrong. Learn to do your job.
What if the problem is upstream? What if the problem is flaky hardware that is just about to barf?
Just Turn It Off (Score:4, Insightful)
The wrong direction (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are my recommendations:
- Get rid of all the technology in the room that doesn't contribute to your life. Take out the laptops, the terminals, the cellphones. (Find a place nearby your door to charge the cellphones and PDAs and whatever. Not the bedroom door, the door to the Big Blue Room.)
- Take out all the phones in the bedroom. Unless you are on-call, you don't need a phone there.
- Get good, heavy drapes for the windows. Block out light and sound for a good night's sleep. If you work a night shift, upgrade all the way to blackout curtains.
- Keep it quiet. You probably have music available all the rest of the day. Make this room different from the others.
- Change the lighting. You need a good lamp for reading, which should be directional enough that you don't disturb your bed partner. (Get a separate lamp for said partner.) Make your general light adjustable, so that you can turn it up to full illumination for cleaning, and down to a soft glow for other activities. Nothing should blink, nothing should be fluorescent. (Exception: the compact-fluorescent spiral bulbs can be bought with solar color temperatures. These make excellent reading lights with a proper shade.)
- Get more exercise. Nothing will do as much for a good night's sleep as regular exercise -- you won't need as much sleep, either. Don't exercise right before going to sleep, though -- you'll wake up sore.
- Learn what your body wants. I, for example, have a real problem if I eat within two hours of going to bed. So I don't. Maybe you need more water before sleep, maybe you need less. Experiment and find out what works.
Re:stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
I develop software - so yeah, I get my share of calls - but why am I called when a raid drive fails? I don't even have access to the server room, or admin rights to the server
The problem is, it stops "My app" from working, so they call me
We just had a rash of network problems - we had to change the server. We tell the LAN services group "all you hae to to is copy X directory, make this ONE change to the INI file, and push the INI file change" (all the stuff to push the INI file is supposidly in place an maintained by another group)
Guess what? They have not been keeping up to date on their INI push software, so have the end users don't get the new INI file. We spend 11 hours yesterday fixing a problem that isn't even the responsibility of our group, but we get the blame!
Re:stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
My living room is filled with a $10,000 home entertainment system, walls of DVDs and CDs and books. There's a futon mattress on the floor (it's punk to go without a bed frame).
But it's decidely not punk to have 10k in entertainment equipment and 4k invested in a chair.
Hot sweaty sex is the thing you are lacking. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you aren't getting regular sex, that's the problem. If you are, you aren't paying enough attention to doing it right.
You'll know you are doing it right when you find yourself incapable of coherent thought for at least 15 minutes after you're done.
Re:The best bedroom... (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, for a lot of people falling asleep isn't the problem. Waking up is. Having the lights slowly come up and the stereo come on quietly and get louder can be a lot easier on the body than having an alarm clock start blaring out a buzzer.
And on weekends, waking up and reading lazily in bed is one of life's great pleasures.
The #1 way to deal with insomnia is to get more excercise (not right before bed, but earlier that day/evening). #2 is to take a hot shower about a half hour before bedtime.
Sumner
None at all (Score:3, Insightful)
So I definitely need to separate the technology (now a laptop computer on the desk in the spare bedroom) from my bedroom.
Re:uhhh, dude... (Score:3, Insightful)
Google's customer services are searches. Their application is relatively static and simple. (They have 1 application). Google's business is their webservers.
In other businesses there may be 100's of externally facing applications, and even more internal applications. Code is constantly changing, and there is always activity somewhere. I bet Google doesn't have 3 backup internal mail servers. However, if the mail stops working, the mail admin is getting up at 3 am to fix it.