What to Do on the Nightshift Besides Work? 42
jchawk asks: "I currently work the over night shift for an ISP. After mid-night we receive about two calls, and they are usually from friends or people who cannot get their email. I was wondering what others who have been in this situation do to entertain themselves on this long and boring shift, because stealing candy out of the vending machine has gotten old."
You could.. (Score:1)
don't write code! (Score:1)
Re:What I do (Score:2)
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What I do (Score:5)
A good portion of the time I am there, I have lots to do (changes happen at night, and it is the world's largest NFS installation (or so I've heard)), but for a lot of the nights, I just have to watch patrol/logfiles and keep an eye on the systems.
I can't write code for my own projects, as they own everything I write when I am at work.
I can't bring in my laptop, as I don't have a pass to get it back out of the building.(so, no games except the ones on my visor, and in xemacs)
What do I do?
- Get to know the night staff - I eat my lunch at about the time
the janitors finish, so I usually sit around with them and talk for a
while. I've heard some amazing stories
- Read manuals - check the tops of racks of equipment that outside
people (like EMC) maintain. Sometimes they'll leave the manuals there.
- Read documentation - SGI [sgi.com] and
Apple [apple.com] have lots of cool reading,
not to mention Other [unc.edu]
Places [area.com].
- Write throwaway code - They may own it, so just try things out.
See how fast you can get a parallel matrix multiply to go when
you spread it over all 16 or so of the processors of a nice beefy box.
- Automate things - write scripts to make life easier for everyone,
and give yourself even more free time to worry about!
- Read good books - I've been catching up on my reading backlog.
- Check HR's web page to double check your benefits - I found a nice
discount on books from fatbrain that I had missed.
- See if the zone where managers sit has better toilet paper in the
bathrooms.
And remember - if all else fails, you can always turn to math. The Unknowable [maine.edu] and it's cool lisp based proofs made the nights just fly by this past week, and this [fatbrain.com] is an old standby that has gotten me through many nights.--
Circle K, bubble races, bourbon, and videos (Score:1)
How to code without a laptop and not on their mach (Score:1)
Re:What I do (Score:1)
There wasn't really any other night staff to talk to but some of the best customer to talk to called late at night. I learned a lot about everything (like traffic light systems) just chatting with customers.
Now THAT is a reading list. (Score:1)
MUCKs (Score:2)
Telnet on over and start an unhealthy obsession.
Re:What I do (Score:1)
Re:What I do (Score:1)
he could be web browsing remotely or reading usenet/email..
if they dont know youre writing code, the code is yours unless they can prove it.
"Ask Slashdot" to pass the time. (Score:3)
Re:What I do (Score:2)
in which case take in a laptop anyhow - and leave it there. if you don't take it home every night, you don't need a pass....
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Re:What I do (Score:3)
I'll have to second this. Janitors are often interesting people to talk to (they have a boring, lonely job and appreciate anyone who will talk to them).
To put a rather Machiavellian twist on things, janitors (and security gaurds and so forth) also have lots of keys. Upper management may get to make lots of decisions about how money gets spent and things like that, but they don't have anywhere near as many keys as the janitors and we all know that real power comes with keys. Always make friends with people who have lots of keys you never know when you might need to to call in a favor from them.
________________________
Clearly the answer is code. (Score:2)
Option 2. Run a brothel.
what to do (Score:1)
telnet frontier.mudservices.com 7680
Systems maintainance? (Score:3)
Ideally, it should be the day shift which is long and boring, because that's when you shouldn't be touching anything which could possibly cause downtime.
Re:Why not (Score:1)
Re:What I do (Score:3)
One word of caution about this bullet point: Don't knock yourself out scoring points on this with management. If there is a fixed amount of things to do, and you find a way to automate a significant percentage, you could automate someone out of a job. Reducing the work of three to a workload managable by two, could very well cost someone their job.
Best swear your co-workers to secrecy if you manage to automate quite a bit of your work.
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Here's what I found since posting the question. (Score:2)
Re:Oh please (Score:1)
If you had a tech theme to your radio show you could have all the support calls come in and answer them on the air. Well if you have nothing better to do you may consider this.
What to do late at night (Score:1)
Re:What I do (Score:1)
with you. Floppy/zip disks are easy enough to carry around too. Encrypt the data of course, lest it fall into the wrong hands.
Have you considered changing jobs? I dont think I could work in a place so restrictive. Larger companies tend to get like this as they grow. Paranoia is usually proportional to size.
Find something to learn. (Score:2)
I was on a contract quite a while back where there were quite a few days where I had to find something to keep busy.
I learned perl. I had been hearing lots and lots of good things about perl and just hadn't had the time to learn it. I went out and got the O'Reilly book Learning Perl which I went through in about 3 days. Has been worth it's weight in gold ever since then. In fact, It saved my butt several times over this past weekend when I was doing a mail server conversion. I can't tell you how many scripts I hacked together to do this conversion or that one.
Your cup of tea might not be perl, but there's lots of other things to learn. There are also online courses you can take. Why not let your employer pay you for the time you spend getting a better education?
Of course, in my example, it was doubly sweet - it was a certain 3 letter government agency which was paying me $50/hour to sit there :).
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Things to do... (Score:5)
There's quite a lot of things you could do:
If you can't find a book you like, you could try some of the following, which I have read, or am planning on reading:
Thats my advice, anyway.
Oh please (Score:3)
Order a pizza [papajohns.com] and run a freeciv [freeciv.org] server. That never gets old for me.
Another great idea for boring nightshifts is to hold a make-believe radio show. Seriously, this can get entertaining, especially if you invite new and interesting guests to your "show".
If things at your job are getting old, then maybe it's time for a new job. :)
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Re:What I do (Score:4)
Your post reminded me of what my friend and I used to do late at night in college. We would each work on a master's degree thesis until 4-5 am every morning. We would leave sometimes leave our offices and do the following:
Find the roof. Every building has a roof and 90% of them have some method to get onto the roof that isn't a locked. When you've been frustrated for the past 4 hours, and then you and a friend sit on the roof on a summer night drinking soda, that is the best feeling in the world.
Find the utility rooms. Utility rooms can be nearly as fun as the rooftops. For example, in one of the utility rooms at my university, there was a huge square pit that dropped at least 5 floors with large ventalation tubing going down it. We promptly nicknamed it the 'Luke Skywalker Pit', since, it looked like the one that he lost his arm in. Basements and tunnels can also lead to cool things, too!
Denny's. Although a work setting may not allow for trips to Denny's at 4 am, I can assure you that Denny's is nice and peaceful after the bar crowd leaves (~3:30am) and before the senior citizens arrives (~5:30am).
Hallway Bowling!
The Iopener craze hit at the height of our thesis work. Basically, we wouldn't do anything on our theses then. We spent about 2 weeks straight spending the nights making HD cables, compiling kernels, etc.
I highly recommend getting to know the night staff. At our college we would always talk and hang out with the night staff. They would invite us down for dinners and they were all really cool people.
With all of these fun things to do, it's amazing that I ever finished my thesis...wait ... I didn't finish my thesis! Oh well    ;-)
If your employer "owns" the code you write (Score:1)
Re:What I usually do. (Score:1)
Re:What I do (Score:1)
Create a "Virtual Tour" of your office... (Score:2)
The new tour is driven by a Perl script and a standard database... if you get bored and want source code, just ask.
MadCow.
Re:What I do (Score:2)
The only problem is that they wouldnt know what code was theirs if they wanted to own it, and they could (Not too sure but even this isnt that far fetched now) fight him in court for all of it
The Lottery:
Take up the best hobby possible: (Score:2)
Never stop learning. Who cares if your company owns the code you wrote to learn perl, python, c, c++, etc.
To learn something is a great thing, dont put it to waste.
The Lottery:
Lots of things (Score:2)
You could try working on some programs. Pick an open-source project that you're interested in - sourceforge.net always has plenty of help-wanted listings - and give back to the community. =)
Or start reading, if you want. There are lots and lots of electronic books on the Net, and gutenberg's not the only place you can grab the full-text of books from. =)
There's also keeping up to date by reading through documentation and perhaps playing with a small development unit you have there. Remember, we have a weird industry - if you don't keep learning, you're going to get left behind. The graveyard shift's a perfect time to sit down and experiment with new stuff, although be careful - if you're sleepy and careless, you might screw things up. =)
Of course, there's always showing up on IRC, newsgroups and web-forums and helping out people for free.. <laugh>
What a gift (Score:5)
Use the time! You're getting paid to sit in front of a computer.
Write a book. Write some software. Learn something. Do something.
Most people count the hours until they're away from the workplace, so they can finally have some time to themselves to get their own thing done. And here it's being handed to you on a silver platter, with a paycheck to boot!
Reminds me of the kids who'd get bored two days into summer vacation. A whole world out there and nothing to do. Sheesh.
war story (Score:1)
When he got tired of sleeping, he played games. And tunneled from one part of the data center to the other part. Which was _really_ funny 'cause the other part of the data center belonged to a different company.
Oddly, he didn't get fired for that. I heard he left of his own accord, several jobs later, and is wandering the web space of North Texas in his big ass truck, fixing radio towers and enjoying life.
How are things, Jay?
Hate to say it... (Score:3)
Sorry
Oh yeah. Bow bow.
Re:What I do (Score:1)
I feel compelled to point out the wisdom of your first bullet point... most of us, as high-technology professionals, are in a state of relative fiscal solvency (broadly speaking). Talking with the night staff offers the opportunity to interact with those who have a different perspective on life, and who I find to have perhaps better perspective on life. With all that many of us have, we often get preocuppied with things a few conversations with those less fortunate would prove to be truly trifling.
michael
What I usually do. (Score:2)
Play Games, (Mame even runs on the crappy PCs we have here).
Write Bad code in BASIC.
I will often spend a couple of days focused on learning about a particular subject. (Arcade Game Cabinets, BeOS applications, and Gnumeric are subjects I have tackled recently).
Surf Slashdot and everything2.
Now if I bring in one of my own computers, (which I often do), I have a whole world of other possibilities.
Work on my Quake 2 levels, Legend of Zelda for Nes redone Quake 2 style, {I have been working on this on and off for years, I keep starting over as I keep getting better which makes me see how much my older levels suck).
I like to about once a week try and learn a new Linux/Unix command or program, (text mode), sadly the last one I learned was Pico.
Sell things on Ebay. I was making a nice extra salary selling Nes games and CDs that I would pick up in pawnshops. (That is until some 16 year old kid in Canada decided he hated me and started ruining my auctions, I got 3 new names and the damn kid found me everytime).
You can always sleep. (I spend at about one night a week with my head down on my desk).
Porn is sometimes amusing.
Take advantage of Laserjet printers and print out the manuals, FAQs, etc for those programs you want to know more about.
All in all I have no problem staying busy. Which is kind of a problem. I find myself with no motivation to earn more than the $20,000 USD that I make a year. Simply because moving to another job would mean that I might have to work, or deal with co-workers. (At my present job, I do neither).
long, lonely night (Score:3)
Look for another job (Score:1)
Stuff to do on night shift when you're bored. (Score:1)