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Ask Slashdot - Careers In Computer Science That Keep You Physically Active?
First time accepted submitter ozzyoli writes "I love computer science (IT not so much) but I despise the thought of being stuck behind a desk for the rest of my life. Are there any career paths that would suit a computer scientist who likes to be physically active and on his feet a lot?"
I keep my computer running 24 hours a day.
Work for the geek squad and instead of the vw bug jog to the clients house :)
Work for Microsoft and advance up to CEO position. Then throwing chairs will be one of your more important job responsibilities.
Bicycle commuting to work can burn 400-700 kcal/day.
I have a colleague that refuses to schedule a meeting between 11a-noon and he runs a 10k and showers during that time.
After work hobbies can be useful too, you may even meet other people also.
You don't need to be "on your feet" at work ... just at some point during the day.
run around a lot. often carrying things. sometimes heavy things. every now and again you may even have to lift a large MFP
otherwise robotics? tinkerer? mad scientist? most would probably require a large personal fortune and would financially drain you. unless you are very talented and can get the military or academia to pay you to play. otherwise support tech it is
or perhaps you are actually a jock and should study physio like the other jocks. remember geeks will not beat the crap out of you like jocks do rather they will do things like steal your electronic identity or convince your girlfriend to become a lesbian dominatrix
OP asking /. about physical fitness. next he will ask be asking about things like sunlight and girls
You want to stay on your feet? Use a standing desk. I've had one for the past year and a half and it is awesome.
You end up climbing/crawling into some weird-ass places with backpacks.
Oh, my bad. Comp-sci, the wimpy nerds. Sorry, you have to be a real engineer to do this sorta things.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I woke up this morning, did 80 press-ups and 80 situps (the first time I've done this in years and years) and later I will go for a 5k run. Don't change career, just make a little time for exercise. You may be surprised how energetic and awake you feel in the morning after some light exercise. Keep your body healthy and the mind will follow!
Write and then test the software (or hardware) for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics
While positions like these are not common, there are several fields out there that require "field" engineers that I can think of:
Power - For seven years I fielded calls for the Power Industry where 60% of my time was spent on the road or in the air traveling to remote locales around the world to fix the problems the "Homer Simpsons" of the power industry had created. Without internet I used just my know-how of various hardware types, operating systems such as AIX, Solaris & Windows and troubleshooting experience to solve problems. It was fun to travel and a daily challenge to solve what ever issue it might be, but I ultimately gave it up to have a family and be closer to home. The only thing that really sucked however is the remaining 30% of time I had in an office was usually spent in front of a desk writing ANSI, ISO, NEMA and OSHA compliant documentation about my journey's.
Networking Specialist - These people design, install, maintain and troubleshoot computer networks for all whom will employ them to do such. Some companies specialize in contracting guys with CCIE's etc out to companies who do not want to pay to have one full time. They generally travel on short notice and are prone to 60% or greater travel time.
Deployment Specialist - These people are usually certified in some specific product within the company they work for and make a job out of traveling around to "deploy" said product. Everyone from A to Z in Software and OEM Hardware employs these people to do the dirty work of installing and troubleshooting a product on a customer's site after it has been sold. Expect lots of long hours and a lot of travel to go along with these kinds of jobs.
Sales Engineer - Otherwise known as Systems Integrators in some companies, these people help potential (pre-sales) customers understand, compare, and contrast the solutions that are available for buying from the company they are employed for. Companies such as NetApp, EMC, Dell, HP and others use SE's to accompany sales guys to meetings about a potential sale. These people are generally hardware techs who moved their way up in the ranks from within the company or moved from another company doing something similar. As such, it would be best to start as a deployment engineer or similar first if this sounds interesting.
Technical Trainer - Just about every Tech company employs these guys to travel and host various classes, lectures and seminars. It's not overly "brainy" work, but the job does travel... A LOT.
While I am sure there are more, this was an "off the hip" list that I could come up with. Perhaps others can add to it. Good luck in your ventures... It will not be easy and there is no avoiding at least some "office based desk work".
You walk up and down fields carrying a machine that goes beep. It keeps you very fit, and you can get your nerd on processing the data at the end of the day.
Replace you chair with a gym ball - advantage: no moment your muscles will totally relax (even back and core muscles), no blood stagnating because of standing for long times.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
High Frequency Trading - our pub crawls go for hours!
(yeah, I know, I know... reusable code and design pertain rather to software engineering than to computer science, but anyway)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
My approach is to dump the chair, built a mini-table out of wood (or you can buy something fancy...) which i put on my desk at work, and run laptop & monitors etc off that. Work the whole stay standing, still able to do computer research & development with some increased physical activity. Love it. The other option is get a job that needs you to visit many computers across a very large space i.e. a large university, but not too large a space that you're always driving.
Or indeed, get any office job in a building, get out of the lift 4 floors too short and walk up the stairs for the last four floors. Do that a few times a day and you'll easily burn the same.
It's not difficult to find ways to keep fit. It's a state of mind not a job limitation.
What about the military, or something connected with it? Plenty of IT and similar equipment in the modern armed forces, all of which needs setting up, maintaining, and decomissioning just like any it does everywhere else, and that will often entail getting the out into the field. Even if you are stuck behind a desk for much of the time, you'll still need to do some physical activity as part of the daily routine since the military wants all of their staff to be physically fit for obvious reasons. If the prospect of potentially having to go on the front line doesn't appeal, then there are plenty of similar roles with defence contractors providing specialist support to the military, often on (much) higher pay - especially if you are prepared to go into places that might get a little heated.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I think most of the responses that say "just exercise or have hobbies outside of work" are missing the point of the request. The poster does not want to spend 8+ hours a day motionless staring at a computer screen. I feel the same way. As one person mentioned above, if you want to keep doing coding, systems management, and day-to-day operations, embedded systems is a good way to go. If you're managing networking and/or control systems for industrial machinery, transportation infrastructure, or anything else that exists outside an office building, then you go where it goes, though this might be IT-heavy. Personally, I spent the last few years sitting in front of a computer doing design and troubleshooting work and it was driving me nuts. I wanted to move around again and actually interact with other human beings so I made a big career change and moved into engineering policy. I still spend a lot of time sitting at the computer but I also get to travel, meet new colleagues/clients every week, and rarely experience the same workday twice in a row. If you wanted to do something similar but stay in computer science and software development, move toward the customer end of the production process. Salesmen, management, HR people who not only sell the product but also understand how it actually works are always in demand.
get into something that overlaps cs and building things.
sales etc will be drinking and spending a lot of time sitting and writing.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I bet those guys are getting a good work out while they're on the run from the religious police for letting stuxnet have a encore!
...start writing the next "Dance, Dance, Revolution" in your off hours, but if that doesn't float your boat practice keyboarding standing up. C'mon, give it try! Get up out your chair and start typing "Shake it to the left, shake it to the right, come on baby you know what I like!"
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
... where your office is at one end, and your lab at the other.
Working in industry is great for that. In my previous job, I used to work on industrial tightening systems, and I was sent abroad to a client based on the fact that I was one who could actually lift and install the system (50kg). When testing the system, you have to lift it, use it, install it, abuse it, etc. Getting back to the desk actually feels good! Right now I'm doing geoexploration systems, I'm a little less active, but when the systems are deployed onto 20km x 30km sites, you have to have a minimal test site to imitate what the end client will do, so I get to walk a lot between the different systems and test beds. All of this being a C/ASM developer.
The urgent is done, the impossible is on the way, for miracles expect a small delay.
I've worked out a balance where I work (self employed) in software engineering most of the year and then take of 6-8 weeks during the summer to work on the UK festival circuit (doing allsorts but generally stage-management and production). This is great as you actually get to do something totally different and re-focus for a bit. Not to mention that it's actually *sociable* - yes, I'm a bit socially retarded but I do actually like interacting with other people! Plus there's lots of music. I still try to do some exercise the rest of the year on a regular basis but taking out chunks of time to be outdoors doing something totally different is definitely good for the soul...
~Pev
Windows Admin. ;-)
But I believe they do have remote admin tools today, too. :-P
I like my spaghetti with source.
Desk jobs make it harder to stay active but not impossible. There are the little things such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator and getting up to walk to a cow-orker instead of using IM or ringing her extension.
But when it comes down to it, we need to make time to stay active outside of work. Six days a week, I either run for 5+ miles or visit the gym to use the weight machines and go for a shorter run to cool off. It amazes me that a subculture that spends hours configuring, tweaking, and improving their technical kit largely doesn't take the same time to keep their bodies in shape.
We spend all day commuting between meetings with different companies, standing up on trains, sprinting for others, running between car rental lots, walking around offices swearing at developers, weight lifting a loaded out ThinkPad. It also teaches you zen-like patience and self control that no martial art can (to resist the temptation to go postal during a PowerPoint).
...but the work is not very good and you wouldn't want to do it all your life. Personally I ride a bike to work. I let that requirement guide my choice of where to live and where to work.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
If you enjoy working with other people and don't have a problem explaining the same thing over and over again (hopefully not to the same person), then teaching at college/university is great. I easily spend 6h per day walking back and forth between students in the computer labs. And unlike tech support and similar, the questions you tend to get are actually intelligent and well though out :)
I build scientific instruments, actually I write the software for them, but since I end up being the only one who knows how to use them (unless they RTFM), I often go on the field to install them. I worked for 15 years in atmospheric science and spent 3 years running around Antarctica setting up and running various instruments. Now I do cosmology and nuclear physics, but it's the same and I end up installing cosminc ray or neutrino detectors on some nice mountains.
But like others have already suggested, the best way to stay active is probably to bike to work. I have my own tricks for that...: live high, work low, ride dirt in the morning and, err, take the bus back home in the evening...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/705/
The reason I don't suggest running or biking is that some would rather not arrive at work a need to shower. If that doesn't bother you, then biking would be a good thing (could also save money, too!). You could also go for a run at lunch times, twice a week or so, and grab a sandwich or a bring a packed lunch to eat afterwards.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Work in something that brings Computer Science and tech to a sport you love. You'll end up having to test your own code by yourself. I worked a while on Push Snowboarding (www.pushsnowboarding.com) and got a lot of snowboarding together with it. Now I'm working on another project that also makes me be active to test my own stuff.
Yes, I love my job.
...a not so serious one: delivering rack solutions without the aid of a forklift. ...and a slightly more serious one: if you're tied to a desk, switch out your chair for an exercise ball. Trust me, it's uber comfy and you get to exercise your calves and thighs as well as keeping your back balanced. I'm using one now.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
My associate and me started our company back in 2007, and the first product we developed was a hybrid DVR/NVR. During the dev process, we had to run around for the cameras testing our motion detection algorithms, and some other more complex stuff such as direction detection, object tracking, etc.
The real fun started when we started selling a few as a kind of public beta, and realized that a) we didn't have any kind of infrastructure to handle major installs b) companies that did this sucked at it, so our attempt at outsourcing the task ended fairly quickly. We went quicker than you can say 75-ohm-impedance from developers to running around town, installing cameras 10 meters above our heads, running hundreds of meters of cable a day, and crawling through service floors.
Sure, the startup quickly grew into a profitable company, the product matured, we hired technicians, got a distribution network, and started working on other products. But even now, 5 years later, I train new technicians myself, and supervise myself any major installation (and I can't just stand there while others work, so every time I go out with the techs, I work just like one of them)
Also, you are required in the company, everywhere, at the same fucking time, so you go from your office, to the lab, to the coder's room, then out to the bank, then to visit customers, then to oversee some installation, then back to the office ...
And that's not taking into account our basketball-brakes (we've got a small court at the company's backyard).
Overall, I do more exercise than I ever did before.
The result: I'm still fucking fat, because that's more related to what you eat than how much you exercise. The amount of workout you would need in order to offset eating like a fucking whale would be gargantuan.
But, hey, at least I'm not sitting at the desk all the time, and I have a lot of fun!
Talking about that, time to walk the dog and go to the office ...
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Use a sneakernet.
Ever seen those minecraft ALU's and other computing devices? Build a real life version of one of those!
Forget about a job that works you out but is a classic desk-it-job at the same time.
Get a hobby, do sports. Meet other people there (you know... people that you do not see at your workday all the time).
This gets you two separated social circles and if you hang out with friends, it's not all the work-guys all the time.
If your (desk) job does not allow you to get such a hobby, get a new one which does (and if you are not allowed a hobby by your job, chances are pretty high other stuff comes short in your life as well).
And play golf
Have you considered work as a traveling salesman?
I just got a job with a social network that promotes active lifestyles. As a result, they want us to be active as employees. Although it's a very small office, they had a shower installed so employees could take a break to go work out, come back, and clean up. If we work out 6 times a month, we get paid an extra $40 at the end of the month (enough to pay for most gym memberships here). While the actual job has unavoidable periods of sitting, at least the company encourages us to get moving when we're able.
You didn't dodge well enough... oh, you wrote "to", not "with".
1. Hi-tech Attrition Enhancement specialist, ala George Clooney in "Up in the Air". Hope you know martial arts & can run fast. 2. Auctioning off assets of failed technology companies. Lots of moving-stuff-around there. 3. Factory job at Foxcon. 4. One of Larry Ellisons sherpas.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
The simple answer to your question is yes, there are IT jobs that keep you active. That's probably not going to be much use to you, though, since you won't find an entry-level IT job that keeps you on the move and has any real career progression.
The reason is skill development. Keeping moving is almost completely antithetical to developing solid IT skills. Becoming good at anything involving computers or IT involves spending years working with them and developing for them, and that inevitably means remaining still for long periods of time.
As a result, except perhaps in very rare cases, jobs in IT that keep you moving must, necessarily, be at the end of the relevant 'career ladder', since they afford relatively little opportunity to enhance your skills.
As other posters have pointed out, you can stay active outside your job. If that's not enough for you then my personal feeling would be that you need to look outside IT.
The campus of my company literally abuts Acadia National Park. I can be out my office door and hiking or running on park trails in 10 minutes. There are plenty of cities with awesome outdoor recreation opportunities. Your job might not keep you active, but that doesn't mean you have to sit on the couch and play video games when you get home either.
Did this for 11 years: you walk decades of miles every day over broken terrain during show-setup. Then, during teardown, you're hustling (almost a jog) over somewhat shorter distances, to gather up gear. Remember, you'll be carrying tools through all this. 2 laptops, in rare occasions, but never less than about 10lbs of "insurance." (Stuff you don't want to have to walk back for.) Add a hotel or two, and a day with only 5 miles walked is a nap.
The above applies when you work "for the house" either on staff or as a permanent contractor to the facility. I think the folks who come "with the show" have a different experience: they probably stress more, and walk a teensy bit less. I could be wrong on that, I've never done the travelling-net-geek thing for trade shows.
Still, it's a new shiny thing every 2 weeks, a lot of exercise, and I got to work with the best telecom people in the world.
I love computer science (IT not so much) but I despise the thought of being stuck behind a desk for the rest of my life.
Why would you have to be stuck behind a desk for the rest of your life? Can't you, like, I dunno, put a timer that makes you get up off your desk every 30 minutes, to stretch your hips or take a walk? Go to the gym during lunch (specially if there is one on or near your work premises)?
At my desk I keep a tennis ball, rubber bands and two CoC grippers #1 and #2 for grip training, and several resistance bands, including for a variety of exercises, which I do throughout my work day. I had a co-worker who kept a pair of dumbbells under his desk for lunges, standing up presses and stuff like that. Myself, every other day I drive to the gym in the middle of lunch, and when I don't have time to go to the gym, I simply walk up and down the stairs (6 floors in total), or take a 15 minute walk. There is nothing in a professional career (not just CS) that requires you to be stuck on a chair.
Life choices man, life choices. You are making this too complicated, a badly thought of solution looking for a non-existing problem.
Are there any career paths that would suit a computer scientist who likes to be physically active and on his feet a lot?"
Physical labor. You can be a computer scientist by education who chooses a physical labor career path instead.
If your concern is about physical activities while working as a computer scientist, all you have to do is plan your work day, and your work week so that it integrates physical activity of some kind (possibly in addition to an after-hours physically active lifestyle). This is not rocket science.
Now, if your concern is that being a computer scientist will deprive you from enjoying the outside world, dude, you are on the wrong career path. At the end of the day, being in career like computer science requires dedication to tackle problems that, many times, require undivided attention. When you do work, when you get paid to do work, that's what you do, and if that means that sometimes you'll be sitting on a desk, solving problems that you are getting paid to solve, then, that's what you do.
You inter-mix (sp?) physical activity during your work day, and after hours, but you do not expect your CS career to keep you physically active. You should expect yourself to do that, not your CS career. If you want your career to keep you physically active then you need to look at a different career.
As a lot of big research universities are incorporating high performance computing into pretty well every scientific discipline imaginable, the CSci depts are working pretty hard to keep staff that can meet and consult with people from these other departments. You'll be walking - and thinking - on your feet quite a bit but its a lot more interesting than just some desk IT job.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Data cabling can burn a lot of calories and keep you very active running in new links, if you can tie that in with some basic network admin it's an ideal entry level position that will keep you fit until you're promoted enough to afford golf course membership.
You should enlist in the Armed Services, preferably in the infantry. I promise you all of the exercise you could ever want there.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Develop kinek games. You've got to tweak them a lot before shipping them to QA.
.. but, here it is.
Work in IT or at a NOC position for a small to medium size company doing a lot of cutting edge stuff. I work for a small independent cable company in their NOC, and while (after 20+ years in the field) it's a little underutilizing my skills, I'm often doing a lot of physical activity. Yeah, I spend about 60% of my time sitting at a desk, but the remaining 40% keeps me moving.
You'll be running around constantly to the offices of people screaming "I've been pressing the Help key for half an hour and nobody showed up!!!" You'll also be crawling under people's desks to make sure the computers are plugged in. You'll be moving computers from one cubicle to another. You may even be crawling through duct work to run cabling.
you can run when your getting me coffee, getting me lunch , or run when your getting me a water. You can lift these heavy servers for me , or install all the hard drives in this SAN. How about minimum wage, will that work for you?
The name is 'Yawn-y'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Get into something involving large datacenters: building them out, hosting/colo, cloud, companies like Google/Apple/Akimai. Those guys often spend much of their time out on the floor, doing physical things, and there's flat out a lot of walking done in a million square foot DC.
When computers move around, it's called robotics. Plenty of programming to be done.
Keep in mind that any type of install/deployment jobs that will keep you active and on your feet all day will also require a lot of travel. The problem with this is that once you start eating three meals a day in restaurants, there's no way that you wont get fat. Make time for exercise outside of work. Exercise should be a stress reliever.
Work for a company that does software that controls mechanical systems. Often requires a lot of time working with prototypes of the actual hardware your software will be controling. (and lots of walking between your desk and the lab)
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
Close but that's more IT than CS. A CS equivalent would be developing and testing kinematics or positioning systems, or linking said systems with spectrum survey software, like a WiFi survey tool for example.
Google currently has an interior building-mapping project; essentially streetview for inside buildings. Stuff like that requires a good amount of math and development, alongside a good amount of real-world data gathering.
Someone had to do it.
Develop neuromuscular electrical stimulation products maybe? Or assist in R&D of whole body vibration training products?
Someone had to do it.
Been working at a desk for 16 years now. For the first while, your body can handle it. After a while, you need to cut down on the snacks and stuff. After another while, even that doesn't cut it, and you need to start thinking about exercise. I don't nearly do enough exercise.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
What is this 'QA' you speak of?
... i pace in front of a whiteboard during work hours. not to mention all the walking across campus. in my case this required a master's degree.
And since you ask, feel like helping me rack nine 2U servers in a room with a temp of 63, and the wind from the vents at about 15 knots?
mark "then there are the sleds from the rackmount UPSes, at about 40-45 lbs apiece"
--
1.8x10^12: not just a good idea, it's the law
Obvious choices, join the DoD: Airforce, Navy, Marine Corps, Army, NSA is hiring a lot of computer scientists right now.
In the private world, what I've found is if you want to constantly be moving around, etc, you need to be on some sort of research team where your presence is required somewhere. The sad thing is, just cuz you're out at a lake deploying a wireless-sensor network doesn't mean you're doing anything more than you would by sitting at an office, you're just outside, which is nice. It's a little more active but I'm not sure it will keep you in shape.
I had the same thought and came to the conclusion that the only way to stay active is to change my life-style. Get into a sport that challenges you mentally. My friends and I all do brazillian jiu-jitsu (I will recommend Gracie-Barra Pasadena). BJJ is basically the same meta-game as chess, so it challenges you mentally and of course physically. Until most people try it, they don't get what I'm saying. But you get cardio and strength training in 1 hour and you learn a sport that you can continue to do no matter your age and stay in great shape. A lot of people get turned off by the "bro" guys running around in Tap-Out shirts, but you can find a school where they're not at, just avoid studios with "blood", "massacre", "fight club", etc in the name.
I saw someone recommend riding your bike to work. That's a good option too.
Fundamentally it's hard to make programming physically active, but if your peers are in great shape and it's the social norm to be involved with sports and other physical activities you can still be a software engineer and be in great shape for your career. There's plenty of people like that where I work.
That said, if you really hate sitting (or standing) behind a desk for any length of time, software engineering likely isn't going to be the best fit.
Computer science job generally equals programming, which means sitting down at a computer all day. If that doesn't interest you, try a related field: electrical and/or computer engineering. This opens up a wide variety of jobs all the way across the physical activity spectrum. Some engineer spend all day at a desk designing/programming, but others are in field service and spend lots of time traveling and working on physical machinery.
1) Pick a job where you will be involved with writing software/firmware in the manufacturing business. Chances are you will be on your feet for a good part of the day, walking out to the production floor to debug various things.
2) During your daily breaks (most employers allow 2 or 3 of these throughout the day) go for a walk around where you work.
3) Take a "real" lunch where you physically leave the office instead of eating at your desk, reading slashdot. Walk to the eating place or bring your lunch and walk with it and eat it outside. That way you will get sunshine (Vitamin D) and some physical movement as well.
4) To reduce "chair time" further, actually get up and walk over to whomever you need to speak with vs. just dialing them up on the office phone system. Every little bit helps.
It's a joke. It means the time between release and the first "expansion pack".
Most (all I've held) sw engineering jobs are very flexible in terms of what hours you work. So with that in mind: there is no reason not to take any number of breaks in the day to go take a short walk or whatever. Just don't bill that time to the client/company. You could also try to get the company to buy you a stand-up desk.
~ Normality is merely the achievement of the mediocre...
That's industry jargon for customer. It's used because there are fewer syllables.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I used to work for a company that made technology for railroads. Some of the engineers, that didn't mind the travel, spent a lot of time flying out to customer field sites to do all sorts of various work that didn't involve standing at a desk. Collecting field data, climbing into locomotives to install new software or hardware, giving demos, or just going out into the field to test new ideas. Yes, there was certainly a fair share of sitting down involved, but that was sometimes balanced out by spending an hour or two walking around a rail yard or similar activity.
Depends on the kind of auditing. I used to do a lot of asset auditing, and it involved trekking all over a customer's environment, whether it be an office, factory, warehouse, hospital, university, whatever. But it also involved a lot of sitting at a desk pouring over spreadsheets reconciling data points. If you were doing solely financial auditing I would expect less of the trekking and more of the spreadsheets.
The biggest site(s) I ever audited was the national customs service which included airports and multiple office blocks. Saw some freaky shit during that audit.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Percussive maintenance + Toner = Toner Bomb = OH&S risk.
That said, I used to audit assets for a large print based organisation, I used to fix a lot of printers just to get the damn config page out of them.
It's over 5 years since I left that job and I still try to fix random printers I encounter. Nothing bugs me more than people who leave the lid up on copiers, then complain about the copy quality when crap gets on the glass.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
i've been using an exercise bike while working on my computer, for at least 10 years
Just remove the handlebar in order to free your hands.
Because you will probably be sitting higher on your bike, you may have to add length to your table legs (you can use anything including phonebooks).