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Ask Slashdot: Best Tools To Aid When "On Call"?
An anonymous reader writes "Since most readers of slashdot are IT'ers, I assume this is a familiar story: when working in IT, it often happens you need to be standby or 'on call' during a certain period. That may mean you can receive phone calls or text messages from a monitoring system in the middle of the night. I've been looking for a way to have those alerts wake me in the middle of the night but not my partner, who is sleeping right next to me. Are there hardware aids out there that can alert a person without troubling their close environment? I'm thinking armwrists, vibrating head pillows, ..."
Give her some nyquil?
Clearly the Poster is not in IT.
I used to put my phone on vibrate and put it under my pillow.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have no idea how you'd go about hooking it up, but something similar was posted here a while back, and the solution was using an alarm clock designed for a deaf person. It's basically a big vibrator you put under your side of the bed.
Having my phone vibrate makes enough racket to wake me but usually not my wife. However there are folks on my team who resort to sleeping in a different room when on call to avoid disturbing anyone else.
Klaxon (http://code.google.com/p/klaxon/) is a must have. It's an on-call app for text message receiving. You can separate out your on-call texts from personal ones and set separate alarms and everything. It's fantastic.
i thought you're suppose to be awake when you're "on call"
Just kidding. I'm lucky that she sleeps better than I do since we had kids, and frequently doesn't even wake when I get paged.
It's not so good when she sleeps through one of the kids waking, puking, having a shower and me changing their bed and getting them back to sleep... I usually hear the smallest thing happening in the kids room, even at the other end of the house!
But vibrate under the pillow sounds like a plan :)
Many flavors of vibrating only alarm clocks are out there, worn by folks with hearing deficits. Should work for you!
If you go to Google and look for IDK "alarm clocks for the deaf or hard of hearing" you'll find sites that have things like vibrating alarms that hook up to cell phones.
I have tried a myriad of different things. Under the pillow, strapped to my leg, it just doesn't work for me. On the nights I am on call, I sleep on the couch. I would be interested to see different approaches.
IT Professional.
I bet Ray Kurzweil has something hooked up. If he doesn't, he's a sham. I for one welcome our late-night-texting-overlords.
To me, being on call means essentially spending the weekend at work. I spent 37.5 hours at work during an on call weekend three weeks ago. It's not unheard of for our guys to just bring a cot and camp out until called upon.
The World is Yours.
Regardless of what method of notification likely you'll have to get up, which is going to wake her up.
If it's a real problem get separate beds.
I did this for about 3 years, and it's fine when you're single or sleeping in your own bed but when you're in a relationship and you share sleeping arrangements it's going to add some strain to your life (I solved it by finding other, better work).
crazy dynamite monkey
And how much stuff can wait for the next day any ways and not right now?
I learn to sleep through it. My wife is on call very nearly 24-7 and gets called multiple times every night.
Her phone vibrates, then does a loud alarm, sorta like a Hollywood submarine dive alarm. The vibrating phone on the nightstand usually wakes her, but not always. She reacts to her phone immediately, but not to other noises. If I need to wake her up for some reason it is easier to call her phone, then get her attention.
The key is you need to pick an alarm that you will respond to immediately, but your partner will tend to ignore. Then have the alarm become something that will wake the dead so your partner can kick you out of bed.
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
They do make pillow speakers. Not sure how well they work.
This may not be as high tech as a decent work controlled vibrator, but if one has a big enough place, perhaps crash on the couch, or a separate room. This way, one can deal with the on call bit and not wake the SO if something comes through. Then once the rotation changes, put up the bed and go back to the usual bed.
As a surgical resident, I spend a lot of my time on call, the last couple of years mostly at home, usually every other day. Your partner will quickly learn to disregard the nighttime calls, trust me! I just leave my pager and phone on a lowered volume, and try to get out of the room quickly when I have to actually talk to the other person...
The best tool for on-call duty is a resume. And a list of jobs to apply for.
Even if you don't normally get called while on-call, it likely prevents you from going about your life. You can't go to a movie, go out of town, etc etc. They should be paying your for those services. If you aren't getting paid well for it, don't accept a job with on-call duties.
And besides all that, a job with on-call duties is a job that has need of them. That means they either have an unstable system or they aren't staffed properly. It's a huge sign that things are not right, and that company is best avoided.
I didn't realize all that until I got a job that didn't involve it. I kept making excuses for the company, and for myself. I'm so glad I'm not there any more.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The blow up variety do not mind getting woken up in the middle of the night.
Try looking into vibration alarm clocks for the Deaf. I believe that Krown makes a telephone sensor for their unit.
I think we found a new poll.
For the record, I do home improvement work. Mostly hardwood floors. I spent a decade being very successful in IT but I never really liked it and finally couldn't stand "IT" anymore.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I'm a pretty deep sleeper but my brain has been trained to wake up to two different sounds, my name or my phone vibrating. I can't explain how that works but the sound of my phone vibrating (after 2-3 calls) will wake me up or someone calling out my name. I also notice that in normal settings my brain picks out the sound of my name in situations where I normally wouldn't be able to hear that person.
So train your brain to wake up to a vibrating pillow or some other quiet sound. This is similar to professional boxers that are still standing and punching while they are unconscious. It is not the same thing, but you can train your brain to do things when you are not fully conscious.
Got me thinking: even getting up from bed disturbs a person sleeping next to you, in varying degrees. So an 'on-call' incident for one employer, lowers productivity for a different employer.
For a cheap, reliable option, strap a smartphone on an armband, and write a program to poll your alerting system. Its better to poll than to wait for events - that way, at least your app knows whether it can reach the alerting system or not. Who knows, perhaps there's already "an app for that"? But be sure to have the app switch your cellular radio off (and leave Wifi on) -- the WHO classifies them as possible carcinogens.
In all honesty, I set the on-call phone to vibrate and goto bed. Problems can wait till 7 AM. Does this work for everybody? No.
I will say a good pair of earplugs.....
I haven't personally tried it, but this might work - http://jawbone.com/up/product
I bought this one for my wife who can't hear her cellphone very well when it's inside her purse (she has a slight hearing problem) and works quite well.
Wire your big toes to either side of the phone line, and disconnect the phone's bell.
That sucker pumps 90 volts AC to ring your handset.
To stop the on-hook 48 VDC from giving you the crawlies, put a small capacitor in series with each lead.
Put your phone in your pillowcase before you go to sleep, that's what I do. The vibration (both sound and motion) travel through the pillow to your ear/face, while leaving your partner reasonably unmolested. For insurance, put together a ringtone with 4 or 5 seconds of silence at the beginning (so you can discreetly shut off alarm when you wake up) followed by something really annoying (in case you're really out cold), and set the phone to blaring.
both hubby and I are on call 24x7 .... we've simply learned to ignore each others pagers/cells
overnight. THe only time this sisn't work is when the job change = different pager/cells
You could try a really bright led with a very small beam angle aimed at you. With enough power it should be visible through your eyelids. (I don't think you'd need that much power, maybe 1 watt). If it flashed or just did something annoying it would probably wake you up. To further cut down the stray light it could be mounted in a tube that shields everywhere else from the light except your area of the bed.
...Red Bull and cocaine!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I have more trouble getting back to sleep after I've been paged and got out of bed for an hour or so. I have to switch on and my brain can't turn off again straight away when I get back into bed.
Most /. are developers not IT.
For reminding me about another great thing about being out of IT. That gut wrenching feeling when you get a call at 5am with someone shrieking the site has been hacked and there's an investor meeting that morning, hair on fire blah, blah, blah. Followed by the subtle insinuations that it was something to do with your code. The developers pointing fingers at the networking people, the networking people acting like the passive-aggressive beat dogs and biting back.
Changing careers was the best move I ever made, next to going independent. What a relief.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"Since most readers of slashdot are IT'ers..."
Is this true?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Pager on silent/vibrate, under my pillow, tends to work well.
Only so much you can do about the noise of the vibration unit, though.
Have done this with my phone before also.
-.-. --.-
Adrenochrome injecting flechette, launched by solenoid-triggered miniature crossbow bypass-wired to speaker circuit of pager.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Hook up your phone to a set of earbuds. But also set an alarm that goes off ~5 minutes after your earbuds are set to go off, in case they fall out of your ear. In most cases they wont, but it's good to have the security if they do so you don't wind up missing the alarm.
BlueQ or a modificated version of WakeMate may be the answer to this need. http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/21/wakemate-review/ http://gizmodo.com/261758/hands+on-with-blueq-bluetooth-wristbands-verdict-they-work-as-advertised Cool, right?
twitter.com/ismetozozturk
so......sleep on the couch and set a ringtone that's quiet and pleasant.
Doesn't have to be loud, and better if it DOES NOT wake you up.
Also doesn't have to be your normal sleep-time....could be an afternoon nap.
have a friend call and then after the call, wake you up in a more startling manner.
repeat several times.
your unconscious/subconscious mind, like pavlov's dog, will come to associate that ringtone with "wake up"
eventually, you will awaken to the song despite it being soft and pleasant....by association and classical conditioning.
Having lived with being oncall for most of my career, there are two things that will help your partner sleep through the night:
1. Divorce.
2. Fix the chatty monitoring.
3. Career change.
The first one is easier, but it can be costly.
The second one means taking a hard look at how you work, and changing everything which involves you putting hands on a keyboard. If you have to do it three times to fix a problem, it should be automated. The ONLY stuff you should be getting a notification for is something that cannot be dealt with procedurally. If that is coming up more than once or twice a month, then refactor your work. Most monitoring systems have a scriptable API. Doing this for a year or two under a moderate to heavy workload should get you back most of that sleep you've been missing out on.
The third makes sense if you can't get the buy-in on the second. I'd either change jobs, or find something else entirely different to do that requires you to be onsite to work, because that is the only way your partner is going to get a good night's sleep.
a brain and a mobile phone.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I just slept in the guest room when I was on an on call rotation...I went on call every 4 weeks for 7 nights. Now that I don't get called (off a rotation...I just get called on certain issues) I just keep the volume low. Wakes me but barely wakes the missus.
I once knew a deaf girl in college who had an alarm clock about the size of a pack of cards - it was made out of rubber and had a clip (just like a nametag or security badge clip) which attached to her pillow or sheets so that it would stay put overnight. In the morning it would vibrate in certain patterns to help her wake up effectively.
Seems like us IT'ers could hack something together from one of those and a usb cable/bluetooth from a smartphone.
Anyone else know what I'm talking about?
Everyone else has good tech suggestions... but also have a talk with your SO regularly to solve the problem without just throwing tech at it. If she's a light sleeper, the tech might be needed. If she's able to adapt, the problem may solve itself or take some minor shift like telling her 'kick me when you hear a work pager' (i.e., she becomes part of your alarm mechanism -- there's no fooling the spouse-as-snoozebar)
Wife used to notice stuff like this. Then the first baby came along and we started divvying out the labor: I feed the last bottle, she does the wee hours stuff and I do the early dawn stuff. This has evolved into kids, old cats gackking up hairballs, txts or calls about server issues, weather-related sounds (storm: close the windows), my insomnia and god knows how many other minor overnight interrupts.
Oh, and we got a kingsize bed (just that few inches more separation disturbs her less when I get out of bed) and I got rid of the boss who skimped on everything, then thought they owned me 24x7 to compensate.
Nowadays, we'll *RARELY* just be affected by these things. When that happens, we mention the problem and quickly adjust. But most triggers get ignored without even waking up. OTOH, if I need my wife awake, I can play her ringtone on my phone or speak her name loudly or make a sound like a cat hurking up dinner and *PRESTO*. (I know better than to ever abuse that knowledge -- I think my wife'd turn into the angry spawn of Shiva and Cthulu if I did it as a prank. I choose life.)
Most importantly, try to rein in the late night calls: they shouldn't be a habit unless you get compensated incredibly well for also doing off-hours support. Don't let employers abuse you. Rule of thumb: If the calls seem lame or about preventable issues, and if the company won't pay extra for prevention, you're being abused.
Cut the toe off a cotton sock, pull it onto your arm, put your phone on vibrate, and slide it in. It's perfectly comfortable and completely reliable.
I'm sure you could mod one of these to do the trick...
Use a separate bedroom (for the sleeping part, at least) while on call.
Our Man Flint had a nice watch with a little T-shaped arm that telescoped out and tapped his wrist.
Wait until you have children. You'll get much better at sleeping.
Tell her those pages mean you keep your job and she can have more shoes.
Suppose it's date night. You might not be the one in the line of fire at that moment.
I'm not in "IT". I don't answer pagers, I don't know how to set up Exchange, and I don't wash windows.
I strongly recommend you read Ted Dziuba's article "Monitoring Theory". A little preventative medicine will do wonders.
You should be able to rig something up with one of those electric-shock dog collars.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Something to do with high voltage and electrodes
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/26/lcd-bluetooth-vibrating-bracelet-is-a-watch-short-of-awesome/
I'm only on for two weeks of every six, thank God. After work until 10pm only.
I'm still trying to figure out a way to notice my phone if I want to use the pool at the gym. I usually do weights or aerobic exercise, but I have occasional foot problems which make me get my exercise from the pool. The caveat is that I actually have to pick up the phone and answer calls - it's not a matter of noticing an outage via text message. Waterproof 2.4Ghz headphone?
I find it very hard to sleep through http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P5qbcRAXVk
Though sometimes I panic and hide under a cardboard box instead of opening the laptop.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
I actually started on call tonight. While it's not an ideal thing to do, it can be managed. Our company gives on call duty to a person once a week. Here are some things that have seemed to help:
* Start on call in the middle of the week.
* We always have a secondary on call person, and we're encouraged to work things out with the secondary person in case we want to go to a movie or something.
* If we get called a lot, we're not expected to be at work the next day, which really helps out.
* One beer (one, not two or three) before sleep helps to take the anxious edge off sometimes.
* Log into the important things you need to be in and keep your computer on overnight. The likelihood of someone breaking into my house and knowing how to do anything useful/detrimental on the VPN is very slim.
* Track every call you get and review them in the on call "hand-off meeting". This seems to help reduce reoccurring issues. Keep a spreadsheet with these calls and append a sheet to it every on call session, and review it.
* The hand-off meeting should involve the previous primary and secondary and the primary and secondary people going on call, as well as someone else who sits in on all meetings to see trends.
* Compensate the person for doing on call for the specific time being on call (ie. not rolled into the the salary by default).
* Let people know if you're going to be in the next day, when you'll be in if you're going to be late, and tell them the reasoning (ie. got called 3 times last night at 2 hour intervals). This seems to help better in team situations.
* Leave work in time for you to be home before the first potential calls.
* Give the on call person one of those 3/4G wifi things in case they are at a place without Internet.
Ideally though we would have someone staffed at work 24/7 who could fix these issues. Maybe one of these days.
Also handy for hitching a ride when the planet is about to explode.
Depending on how long the "on-call" lasts for. You really don't need high-tech for this, low-tech will work.
Most /. are developers not IT.
They beleive themselves to be special unique snowflakes who need to be coddled.
Which is why management is moving coding is going to Bucharest.
Which is good for me because developers are paid out of the IT budget.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I'm the light sleeper. I head to the sofa when the wife is on call.
(Although I still get woken and have to wake her up).
The sound of a beer bottle being popped open...it puts all senses in overdrive, anywhere in the house.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
We only get $980pw on top of salary. This figure hasn't changed since I can remember. What do you get paid for doing on-call?
Oh puhleeze - if you were a true IT person, you wouldn't have a partner (that, or s/he would be on call too, so the point would be moot. :> )
Wow, a Kilgore Trout comment that's not racist trolling. Very rare outside of LGF.
Go back to blowing Charles, you clown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytc9-wGCHW0
Maybe you can reconfigure/hack Lark (http://www.lark.com/) in some way?
Just get rid of your partner. Duh.
If you are getting so many alerts that you are worried about waking up the person next to you, maybe you should fix the alerts. More than a couple a week is a sign of a shop that isn't doing enough to find the root analysis of problems and fix them instead of applying bandaids.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I am on-call round the clock from Monday 08:00 until the following Monday 08:00. My team has a rotation schedule so i'm on call every 5 weeks. We only get called up by our monitoring team when a server generates an automatic alarm. It's not people calling in to the help desk for the most part (although they can register a support call if they wish), and as such, alarms can be generated at any point in time during that week. To get called up 3 or 4 times during the middle of the night, and to then have to work 2-3 hrs, is not uncommon. Go back to bed, sleep 20 minutes then get called again: that's a soul destroyer. If we don't get a total of 6hrs sleep between a certain time frame then we are entitled to sleep compensation the following day: i.e. sleep until you're rested then come in. We also get a day off the week after we've been on-call. I think the compensation for this week is quite adequate (fixed fee+overtime if called), but I don't know what other companies give.
I just have my cell phone on, with a specific ring signal for the monitoring group that is very calm. I turn the volume down a bit and put it on vibrate, next to the bed on the floor. At the level it's at, it _very_ rarely wakes my wife or child, but I do wake up to it. However, i'm partially deaf in one ear and recently, whilst sleeping on the deaf side, managed to miss 3 phone calls :) So I suppose I am in need of a better solution as well!
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
I think the trick is to stabilize the monitored systems as much as possible during working hours... that way, when you'll be on-call, your chances of having a good night of sleep will be significantly increased. The way I see it, automated alerts should never happen in the middle of the night. There's almost always a way to work around them.
On those nights when you happen to be on call, try sleeping on the couch in the living room or something. Really not that difficult, and if your "partner" or yourself can't get by alone for those nights, you have codependency issues.
I'm on call 15 days in a month. I receive on average 2 calls each month mainly at night. The company i work for doesnt pay me a bit for extra hours. I would gladly change this crap for another job, but its difficult, most of the jobs in similar positions pay less that what i'm earning currently( yeah even without getting paid for extrahours) I have been considering working as a freelancer, but still it scaries me a little bit. My social life is practically non existent while being on call... Help me!!!!
Once you learn to cope with a new born - namely learning to sleep when you can for however long is available & sleeping through 3AM nursing or diaper changes - you'll find that there are no problems with coping with the on call alerts. However, unless the company you work for has pictures of you that you don't want public... go find a better job. It is cheaper to find a better job than to have a baby.
When those around you are loosing their heads while you are keeping yours, maybe you've misunderstood the situatiuation.
You could try this vibrating bracelet that will vibrate on incoming calls. I don't know if does anything for incoming emails, but it might be worth a shot for $30.
Johnkoerner.com
I'm a Net Admin at a for profit hospital which I take "call" every other week for a whole week. (Yes, leaves me with half a life) Most of our stuff is routed through an SMS based style that sends me warning when something is down or having issues. But since they pay for my phone, 1.5x pay if I come in, 2 hours minimum, and being paid just to be "on-call" ($2.50/hour). I don't mind if they wake me up. More money for me.
Who said anything about unpaid on-call?
Plenty of place I've worked have rotating on-call etc. There are first-level support tiers, but you have the guys that tend to really know the systems rotate for when the really bad/unexpected stuff happens. Whomever is on-call gets paid an on-call wage. It's not the same as the regular hours wage, but it's enough to give a visible bump to the ol' paycheque when it's your turn at rotation.
Rotated on-call is actually nice. 24/7/365 on-call sucks though.
http://www.hardwaresphere.com/2009/02/18/vibrating-bluetooth-bracelet-with-lcd-display/
Vibrates and has digital display.
I have an idea... You could train yourself to wake up to a subtle sound that you use as a simple audio alarm on your phone, for instance a slow, low frequency pulse that fluctuates in amplitude at about the rate of the ocean. It's really easy to trick the human mind into doing amazing things; just like a lot of people have impeccable biological clocks and can tell themselves, "I will wake up at exactly 6:00 am", and do just that, you could listen to a sound over and over again for a rather short time and tell yourself, "I will wake up to this sound the very moment I hear it". Some people can do it, while others might have trouble. If you do have trouble with this sort of thing, you might want to take into account any substances in your body such as sleeping medication or alcohol that might impede your ability to harness this power of the mind.
The only thing that worked for us is for me to sleep in the guest room for the weeks that I'm on call. The guest room is near my office, in an area separate from the other bedrooms, so I can easily log on when I need to, and I don't disturb wife or child.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think you should focus your time on fixing the problem before they happen then worrying about not waking your partner. I mean if it happens often enough to cause problem between you to then it's happening way to often.
1: Have kids, then it'll be natural for both of you to be up regularly, and nobody will mind the occasional night-time waking that you get paid for.
2: Your S.O. will learn to sleep through it, and you'll learn to react faster to silence the alarm.
3: Fix your systems and monitoring to wake you up only when it's more important. (eg., use a different alert threshold for non-daylight hours, use email-only alerts where you can, etc).
Some kind of vibrating anal probe, activated via bluetooth from your phone might work... Probably available on the internet somewhere