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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, ..."
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
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.
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
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!
Give her some nyquil?
Honestly, after a few weeks you won't even need that. I can be called with a loud ringtone, have a discussion with the helpdesk about the problem, stumble out of the room to go work on it, stumble back into bed a few hours later, and my partner doesn't even realise I was called the next day. Now that she's on call as well the same thing happens to me - if you wake up and you're tired, and your subconscious knows you don't have to get up and work, you can fall back to sleep as soon as your head relaxes back into the pillow.
I remember watching a recent Bond movie (I think it was Quantum of Solace) where Bond calls M in the middle of the night and she logs onto a workstation built into the bedside, if you look you can notice she has a partner in bed that doesn't budge an inch :)
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
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.
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.
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.
Those will generally wake everyone currently occupying the bed.. and will wake up everyone in a nearby bedroom.
The OP could try one of the travel alarms though, as they don't have as large of a vibrator unit. I don't know of one offhand that has a telephone input though. My alarm clock has a standard RJ11 plug that I can connect and when the phone rings the shaker will go activate...
Sure.
http://www.amazon.com/Sonic-Alert-SBT425ss-Vibrating-Telephone/dp/B000EX5HXS
not sure why the analog one came up, but I have one of these units.
It's actually pretty common. A person might be on call 24/7, but if that means more than a few calls a year at night then something isn't right. Being on call shouldn't mean that you're being regularly woken up at night.
It's basically a big vibrator you put under your side of the bed.
Like the one on her side?
You're doing it wrong.
...and we're done, Goodnight everyone, Be sure to tip your waitress and try the chicken!
I've noticed that Bond films seem to tell the story of my life pretty realistically.
I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a hotel and found an exoctic women waiting for me.
Usually a housekeeper leaving a mint on the pillow.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
Well, to be clear, it means you shouldn't get drunk when you're on call. Sure is entertaining though...
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.
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.
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.
You're missing a major point here: Rotating on-call.
I'm on call right now, 24/7. I'm required to be available and functional (i.e. in town, sober), and must answer the pager within ten minutes.
For one week out of six.
That means that for about nine weeks a year, I'm a slave to the company. That also means that in a telecom company with >>2million customers, I can completely shut off my mind to work at 17:00 for the rest of the year.
And yes, I get paid well during those nine weeks.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I think if you look closer you will notice I did include the unemployed. ;)
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?