Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

My employee next to me is working hard. I'm in elinks in terminal on HN and on IRC, with vertical split of htop in tmux. He thinks I'm working hard too, with all those numbers, columns, scrolling output and blinking cursor.

I feel so bad right now. I'm going to go actually work.



When reading stuff like this I wonder, how do the Windows folks manage to do the same? A browser disguised as Visual Studio? doubledesktop.exe? I'm so thankful for my *nix with all these little toys.


http://codereddit.com/

Reddit that looks like source code. For opening in Visual Studio's built-in browser. I am not a Windows dev.


Wow, the load-comments-inline functionality is beautiful.

In fact, the whole thing actually looks better than some of the subreddit styles.


You have changed my life, thank you.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key

These days, the Boss Key is probably mapped to the "minimize" keyboard shortcut.

//well, at least that how they used to do such things; a new solution may be needed in the "open plan" offices that have been trendy


Yes, VS and SSMS open do help.

I keep RDCMan open on my 2nd screen, always connected to an administrative RDP server in the production domain, usually with Perfmon pulling occasional counts of IIS users and connections from our clusters. Sometimes I'll have ADUC or DNS or DFS or WSUS or SSMS up instead.

Half of my monitoring tools and error logs, and all of my ticket systems, use web interfaces. So do Sharepoint and parts of TFS and Office365. I use Chrome and keep a dozen tabs pinned, most of which are work-related. HN and Imgur are among those.

And then there's the spattering of Office applications (Outlook, Word, Excel), and Lync and other chat clients, and Notepad++ and Snip tool and Fiddler and Putty and other utilities...

It's not hard to hide anything at all.


When I was stuck in a meaningless office job with too much time, I took to learning myself a perl (that was used for some login scripting so there was an interpreter lying about) using notepad to edit, and the windows cmd.exe to execute the scripts. One other (more senior) employee did get curious and asked me what I was up to, but I did have a script that was actually useful to get part of my job done, so I just showed that off. Then I went back to teaching Perl to play scrabble!


Well there's this - http://mashable.com/2011/07/03/hardlyworkin-excel-facebook/ - that makes Twitter/Facebook look like an MS Excel sheet.

Seem to remember a more generic version of that from way-back-when but can't find it.



there was a site called readingatwork.com (I think) where classic novels were formatted as powerpoint presentations. I think that's what windows people do.


Visual Studio has a browser ;)


I work from home.


Don't worry. The network administrators know how lazy you really are.


>The network administrators know how lazy you really are.

Not always. The clients net admin can't see it (encrypted VPN) and my own companies net admin would catch hell for looking at my traffic too carefully (NDAs). Everything is logged though...so people behave.


You should actually feel bad if the two of you are working on the same thing.


We do, and I found another way to not feel bad - I started drinking.

At least I'm not pretending to work anymore! Win-win.

Thinking out of the box like a boss.


Not sure if you are just making a joke or not, but please, if you started to drink more due to a boring job (including drinking before/while on the job) either talk to someone for help (a sibling/wife/friend if you don't want to go the professional route) and try to change jobs as quickly as possible (if you feel the drinking is related to the job). I've seen some colleagues becoming borderline alcoholics (even if highly functional) by using alcohol as a coping mechanism for work.

Nothing wrong with a few drinks, or a night out where you get plastered, but if the drinking is related to the job, please ask for help/do something.


maybe he's drinking on the job? might be a good way to pass the time.


I found another way to not feel bad - I started drinking. At least I'm not pretending to work anymore! Win-win.

What do you mean?


Well, resolution to a situation where I'm pretending to work, from an ethical point of view, is to, well, stop pretending to work. I can do that by either starting to work, or stopping to pretend to work.

I now at least have a clear consciousness, if not productive output. And it is Saturday night after all. I offered him quality free beer of his choosing. He refused. I also linked him to this thread.


I'm just trying to understand, why be at work on the weekend or after hours unless you need/want to get something done? (Man, I wish HN had a private messaging system, because I usually have questions that interest me but aren't really appropriate to ask publicly. Thinking of writing one...)


Well, you do have a new unread mail now. :)


Maybe! but sometimes the net productivity win comes from letting the frantic person spin their gears down until you reach a velocity where thinking clearly is possible




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: