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Workplace Monotony?
bcorrigan78 asks: "I love programming, however I work in a network operations center with very few co-workers where the air conditioners can just about put you to sleep. Besides music, what do all of you programmers do to avoid workplace monotony?"
I get more reading done during work than any other time of the day.
And you can get them from your local public library.
I recomend this cd player
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
1) Listen to DVDs...I find it's more interesting than music and not more intrusive. I minimize them and just listen to the sound, flipping over for the good parts.
2) Write code. Ever wanted to learn a graphics library? New language? Check out SDL, neat little cross platform graphics library. Write a PacMan clone to learn it.
3) Read news. I read a lot of news during the slow times.
4) Gameboy. The SP is pretty small, would probably go unnoticed or be mistaken for a PDA.
--trb
I currently have the same problem as you. I VNC into my box at home and do stuff. Browse torrent sites, etc... I also run a radio station for everyone in the department (Computing Services for my university) and people making requests and such make things interesting (don't have that one... hmmm, lemme find it and throw it on the playlist) AIM keeps things interesting, as does sites like MySpace, Orkut, and even LiveJournal. Slashdot, fark, and others keep me sane. an occasional game of solitaire, stepping outside for a cigerette (a vanilla clove is excellent for killing stress, I have to say), Other projects you have more interest in: I'm currently in the process of learning PHP so I may make my own dynamic site for my photography... that and working on a short story that gets less and less "short" by the week... Online photoshop contests are fun too :)
Viva La Revolucion! Buy a Mac!
1) I know you mentioned "besides music", but that really is one of the best ways. One thing I've noticed is that, being a programmer, *really* hard industrial really helps me get into "the zone" while coding, and trance just makes the hours fly by. Apoptygma Berserk, VNV Nation, Oakenfold, etc.
2) Get a laptop, watch DVDs or music videos on it while working. I did this for years in my younger years. Helps boredom, but not the greatest for productivity.
3) Someone brought this up before, and it's an awesome time-suck. Learn a new language/technology.. expand your knowledgebase. Employers generally encourage this (in my experience).
4) If all else fails, and the job is just insanely boring, the company won't let you listen to music, watch DVDs, research new fields, read news, whatnot.. find yourself another job. I had this happen once a few years back with a job they sold me as a dev position, and turned out to be configuration management. After 3 months of total boredom, I moved to another job.
Hope that helps!
-- Jinsaku
-- Jinsaku
I work on my juggling for a few minutes here and there. It means I have to stand up and move around which has to be a good thing.
:)
My five ball cascade is improving too
Cheers,
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?
Employment can be a subsidized education. Take advantage of the free time.
Of course, barring that, find a bunch of smaller message boards and alternately check them. You can even be a rabid republican on one and a bleeding heart democrat on another.
I always carry around my pick set and a masterlock. When things get slow at the office, and when I am sitting on the train to and from work I practice the fine art of bypassing locks.
A few years back, the hype surrounding Extreme Programming got me curious, so I tried the style of development known as Test-Driven Development. It makes development less frustrating and more fun, so I'm a lot less likely to wander off to places like Slashdot.
Basically, the way it works is you sit down, figure out what you're going to do next, and write a few line of test code that don't pass yet. You write a little code to make the test pass. Then you expand the test a little, and make that pass. And so on. There are two main rules: don't write production code without a broken test, and try to keep the time between cycles pretty short, say under 10 minutes.
The short cycles and alternating viewpoints make it feel something like playing chess against yourself. Since everything you write is tested, bug rates are very low, and using the debugger becomes very rare. And although I thought my code was pretty good before, I think it's better now. By starting out thinking how it looks on the outside, the APIs are cleaner and easier to use.