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Ask Slashdot: Best Tools To Aid When "On Call"?

Posted by samzenpus on from the hi-tech-wake-up-call dept.

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, ..."

8 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Significant Other? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clearly the Poster is not in IT.

    1. Re:Significant Other? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm in IT and I'm married, but we hate each other and she sleeps in a different room. So there ya go.

  2. Normally I'd recommend a BFH by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny

    .. to settle down that monitoring system call. But, yeah, the smashing to bits of a phone might wake a light sleeper. So I see your point.

    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
  3. Re:For Android phones by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    That would be pretty sweet...

    Text includes words 'emergency' 'urgent' 'system' 'down' -> (Zzzz)

    Text includes words 'down' 'hours' 'hardware' 'failure' -> (Zzzz)

    Text includes words 'panic' 'weeping' 'wailing' 'praying' -> (Zzzz)

    Text includes words 'payroll' 'not' 'running' -> (WAKEY! WAKEY!)

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Wire your toes to the phone line. by blair1q · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  5. Re:Deaf alarms. by similar_name · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's basically a big vibrator you put under your side of the bed.

    Like the one on her side?

  6. Re:For Android phones by sqldr · · Score: 4, Funny

    funny you should say that. At one place I worked, they only paid us if we got called out. So we wrote a perl script called "cha-ching.pl" which created a fault then fixed it. We got paid.

    --
    I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
  7. Light sleeper by gnugnugnu · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wait until you have children. You'll get much better at sleeping.