What to Do on the Nightshift Besides Work?

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."

Comments

You could..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. post anonymously to slashdot all night. Works for some people. If anonyminity isn't your thing, make a damn spork account and go wild.

don't write code!

[Anonymous Coward]

be careful what you do during your free time.. the company may "own" anything you create on their equipment, and/or on their dime.

Re:What I do

[Pathwalker]

two simple reasons:

1. Legal issues - I have been told that code I write on my own time is mine, to do with as I please, as long as I do not use company time, or resources towards it in any manner whatsoever. While I could probably get away with it, I'm not going to try. They made a concession on this point for me when they hired me, and I am not going to do anything to make them reconsider.
   
2. Access - Remember, I described my employer as "Rather Paranoid". SSH to external sites is blocked, and telnet to external sites is restricted to very few people (I know of 2); additionaly it is monitored and logged. I might be able to get away with it, if I use a ssl tunnel, and make it look like a https connection, but I think the length of the connection would send up some red flags over in IP (Information Protection). Remember also, that I mentioned that I would need a pass to get my laptop out of the building. It is the same way with net access - they don't really care what comes in, but really watch what goes out.
   

--

What I do

[Pathwalker]

I am currently in a similar circumstance - I work 12 hour night shifts helping to maintain the computers for a very large, somewhat paranoid employer.

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 and Apple have lots of cool reading, not to mention Other Places.
  
• 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 and it's cool lisp based proofs made the nights just fly by this past week, and this is an old standby that has gotten me through many nights.
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Re:What I do

[chryptic]

The last time I worked a night with nothing to do was at a tech support place. We would spend most of the night prank calling each other.

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.

Re:What I do

[Zurk]

why dont you ssh into a remote machine and write code ? put your laptop on the network from home and ssh into it.

Re:What I do

[Zurk]

uuh..how would they know he was writing code ?
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.

Re:What I do

[DaveHowe]

Hmm. do you have a lockable desk drawer?
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

[lizrd]

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.

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.

________________________

Re:What I do

[cybermage]

Automate things - write scripts to make life easier for everyone, and give yourself even more free time to worry about!

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.

--

Re:What I do

[spectrum-]

You could always write code and print out the source (erasing the soft copy) and bring that
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.

Re:What I do

[grammar nazi]

Hi Pathwalker.

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 &nbsp&nbsp ;-)

Re:What I do

[_ph1ux_]

the reason is that - since it is the largest NFS installation out there - they want to keep that fact very very top secret... so his employer has good reason to be very paranoid - so as to ensure that nothing leaks out of the redmond campus.

Re:What I do

[ConsumedByTV]

Unless he is sshing into the past his company owns the code.
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:

Re:What I do

[global33]

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

Circle K, bubble races, bourbon, and videos

[jbgreer]

1) Go to the local Circle K/generic convenience store, if possible. Very interesting folks hang out at the local convenience store at night. 2) Blow bubbles and try to blow then down stairwells. Hey, it's harder than it sounds, especially after about 4 flights of stairs. 3) Drink. Drink heavily. 4) All the Monty Python episodes are out on VHS an DVD. Practice the Cheese Shop sketch til perfect. 5) Write official sounding memos and leave them on folks desks.

How to code without a laptop and not on their mach

[Polaris]

Get a Unix shell account and ssh to it- no proof that you're writing stuff on the other computer. ('course, if they're paranoid, the ssh port through the firewall will be closed...)

Now THAT is a reading list.

[Unknown Poltroon]

god damnit man, thats scary.

MUCKs

[Snowfox]

This is what MUCKs are for.

Telnet on over and start an unhealthy obsession.

"Ask Slashdot" to pass the time.

[harlan]

Well, you might want to try posting silly questinons to "Ask Slashdot" to kill time ;-)

Clearly the answer is code.

[selectspec]

Option 1. Think about it. You've got a killer pipe of bandwith at your finger tips, probably a shell on some halfway decent box and a *nix workstation. Time to crank up emacs and gcc (or java, perl, python, lisp, fourth for all I care). No ideas. Well look around at some of the crappy solutions that they have you doing. First, write some scripts to automate your job, if you haven't already. You definitely don't want to be distracted by work. Second, look at some of the software they are using (burn cds for your home collection) and then look for weaknesses. Try and tackle something small with minimal UI or minimal backend.

Option 2. Run a brothel.

what to do

[EarTrumpet]

play frontier

telnet frontier.mudservices.com 7680

Systems maintainance?

[cperciva]

I don't know about you, but it seems to me that the middle of the night, when nobody is around, is the perfect time to run systems maintainance tasks. Quite apart from the tasks which would result in downtime (upgrading servers/network/etc.) the middle of the night is the ideal time to run tasks which might result in decreased performacen -- network backups, checking your server logs for any security issues, etc.

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

[Omega996]

yeah, but not all employers will help you out - i griped a month ago at the lack of stuff i have to do, and specifically asked for additional work; still haven't heard anything from my dipshit "manager", whilst i've done just about everything productive i can think of. i thought they had wanted to get their money's worth for the contractor's rate i get paid, but i guess they don't mind pissing that money away.

Here's what I found since posting the question.

[jchawk]

When I decided to ask slashdot what the hell I should do at night I about 1 1/2 weeks of night turn under my belt. Not that too much time has passed, however I have found some interesting things to do with my time. First I took the advise of many and bought a C++ book so I could brush up on my coding. It really is nice to now have the time to program, and I'm glad you guys and girls reminded me of that. In case anyone cares the book is called "C++ How to Program 3rd Edition" writtern by Deitel & Deitel. It has proved to be most useful as a refresher. I think it would be a great book for anyone looking to dive into C++ . In my case I skimed the first few chapters until I got to classes (where I needed to pay more attention). Secondly I have found that I have been able to greatly improve my hacky-sacking skills... Hacky-sacking in the office proves to be most entertaining. Third LOTS OF LOUD MUSIC!!! It's nice to be able to crank music at 4am in the morning. I just make sure to turn the phone volume up all the way. I'm only on night-turn for until the end of the summer and I already know that I will miss it. However I am certain that by the end of the summer I will actually be able to consider myself a programmer in C++, which will be most helpful for my programming classes in the fall (when I go back to school). Two finally things I found to do... 1 is dumpster diving... I have already mananged to pull a 10/100 8-port network switch, which the company in another building discarded because they apparently upgraded to gigabit ethernet. I plugged it in and it works just fine. The second thing is feeding/running away from the massive monster of a racoon that guards the dumpsters. I think I'm going to give him some candy from the vending machine as a peace offering. Thanks to everyone for all the great ideas, and thanks for kicking me in the ass and reminding me to program!!!

Re:Oh please

[mini me]

Actaully your radio show idea is a good one! Since he works for an ISP he has a nice fat pipe making streaming out the radio show a snap. Pick a topic you are interested in and stream away. You could have people who are in the know about certain topics call in a be a part of the broadcast (you said no one was calling anyway right?) Find yourself some advertisers for the program and you can even make some more money!

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

[afrazer]

Three ideas - 1) Take up a hobby you can learn over the web, such as cooking, video editing, writing, etc. 2) Meet people from other countries where it is not the middle of the night. I'm sure you can meet all kinds of interesting people. 3) Get a part time job in some country where it is not the middle of the night, and you can make a little $ on the side.

Find something to learn.

[fwc]

I know it sounds boring, but It's worth it:).

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 :).

---

Things to do...

[Mike1024]

There's quite a lot of things you could do:

• Read through the entire userfriendly.org past cartoon archive.
• Make a web page, seeing how many haikus you can write in one shift.
• Give your online help system a section for 'I can't retrieve my e-mail' with the answers to common questions
• Try to become a MVP or something similar.
• Re-code websites to be complient with new standards, like XHTML and CSS. Start a site listing all the fully standards-compliant sites you have modified.
• Fit an extra-loud ringer to the telephone, and take in a camp bed and get some sleep.
• Hear over to Everything2 and read / write some nodes.
• Play an MP3 at full blast, and sing along. Then record yourself singing, and compare the waveforms. With a bit of practice, you can pick up quite good impersonations.
• Find a user/pass combo for somewhere like this, and go through the excercises every evening.
• Redirect the calls to your mobile phone, and start going for strength-building nightly runs, either in the building or outside.
• Find a flight of steps and see how many you can hop up, without stopping or touching the hand rails. Do this every night, until you can get right up the building on either foot.
• Teach yourself to juggle.
• Scatter copies of 'Soldier of Fortune' magazine around your office. Or someone else's.
• Take in a laptop and play Baldur's Gate 2, Diablo 2 and games like that.
• F1rst P0st! Need I say more?
• Learn a high-tech-sounding internet standard like WML, and design things your company doesn't need, but that will look good, i.e. a WML e-mail access client, so your users can tap your address into thier phones, and see thier e-mail. Don't step on anyone's toes, though.
• Download Linux ISOs to your proxy's cache, during the slow period so if anyone gets them in the day, it will be faster for everyone.
• Work on a university theesis or something.
• Browse some Pr0n
• Bring in a TV and watch that.
• Pull DivXed DVDs down off the internet and watch them.
• Go through slashdotters' webpages and start your own web page, listing pages that contain interesting information.
• Learn NASM
• Read a book

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:

• The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook - by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht - ISBN 0811825558
• How to disappear completely and never be found - ISBN 0806515597
• Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell : A User Friendly Guide to World Domination - ISBN 156592861X
• Code Breaking: A History and Exploration - Rudolf Kippenhahn - ISBN 1585670898
• Hypnotism Made Practical By Orton, Louis ISBN: 0879800798
• Hypnotism Made Easy : An Introductory Survey of Theory and Practice By Winn, Ralph ISBN: 087980078X
• Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as... Author: Ledeen, Michael Arthur ISBN: 0312263562
• Metaamagical Themas Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern Author: Hofstadter, Douglas R ISBN: 0140179968
• Just Like a Woman: What Makes Us Female - ISBN: 1860497810
• On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society By Dave Grossman - ISBN: 0316330116
• Knife Throwing : A Practical Guide - Harry K. McEvoy - ISBN: 0804810990
• Complete Gil Hibben Knife Throwing Guide By Gil Hibben - ISBN: 1886950024
• Dim-Mak: Death Point Striking - ISBN: 0873647181
• CQB (Close Quarters Battle) - Mark V. Lonsdale - ISBN 093923503X
• Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence - ISBN: 0747538352
• Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types Author: Keirsey, David - ISBN: 0960695400
• Travellers' Guide to Hell - ISBN: 1860119107
• Complete Guide to Lock Picking - Eddie the Wire - ISBN: 0915179067
• 1,001 Excuses: How to Get out of...and Away with...Anything By George D. Zgourides, Nancy Pickering - ISBN: 1559502088
• B and E Book: Burglary Techniques: Investigation By Burt Rapp ISBN: 1559500212
• Princess Bride - Author: Goldman, William - ISBN: 0747545189
• Anything you can find from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, especially:
  • Guards! Guards!
  • Men at Arms
  • Jingo
• Anything else you can get your hands on

Thats my advice, anyway.

Oh please

[flikx]

Order a pizza and run a freeciv 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. :)

--

If your employer "owns" the code you write

[mgflax]

Then contribute to your favorite Open Source project by attemping to find bugs in their code. The time-consuming task is finding the important or obscure bugs -- once found, you (or someone else) can fix them off your company's payroll.

Re:What I usually do.

[spectatorion]

when you say that some kid ruined your auctions, what do you mean by that? i am fascinated by the dynamics of auctions (online especially) and the economics and psychology involved. please clarify. thanks

Create a "Virtual Tour" of your office...

[MadCow42]

Like my old tour, or my new tour (still in development... database driven).

The new tour is driven by a Perl script and a standard database... if you get bored and want source code, just ask.

MadCow.

Take up the best hobby possible:

[ConsumedByTV]

Learn.

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

[sachachua]

You've probably read just about all the websites you're interested in. You won't be fighting with lots of people for bandwidth to high-traffic sites (unless they're in the wrong timezone), so this is a good time to set up a playlist of MP3s or start downloads. However, even this could get boring after a while.

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

[raju1kabir]

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

[Mr. Foogle]

rumour has it that an overnight guy that a contractor supplied at an unamed company whose initials are T. I. used to bring in his sleeping bag.

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...

[Pilferer]

pr0n

Sorry ;) But come on.. you work at night at an ISP? Alone with a nice, fat pipe? A machine with all the alt.binaries.* in the room next to you? After midnight?
Oh yeah. Bow bow.

What I usually do.

[aol]

I work the graveyard shift. I have maybe 45 minutes of work a night max. I have a T-1 and half a dozen PCs at my disposal. What I do with the rest of the time is.

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

[zoombah]

Well, usually I sleep at night time. It gets quite dark outside so there's not much to do. People need to sleep so I figure, hey, why not sleep at night.

Look for another job

[Ratbert42]

We just laid off our almost every single overnight staff person.

Stuff to do on night shift when you're bored.

[Eponah]

Online games are good for a while, if you are playing one with a certain amount turns alloted / hr, play at the start of your shift and then near the end as well to make the most of your turns. I found my company was quite happy for me to work on cross-stich (you might want to try models or something) or an activity that kept me occupied but didn't distract me too much from the systems I was supposed to moniter. This is also good if you want a break from staring at the moniter. You could also try some physical fitness. Do some situps/ pushups etc, this is also a good way to get wakeful again when the 4.00am drowsies hit.