Ask Slashdot: Best Tools To Aid When "On Call"? 249
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, ..."
Significant Other? (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly the Poster is not in IT.
Re:Significant Other? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
"Hush now, I'll be there soon."
Normally I'd recommend a BFH (Score:5, Funny)
I used to put my phone on vibrate and put it under my pillow.
Re:Normally I'd recommend a BFH (Score:4, Funny)
I don't think that would wake me up. Especially if I moved around and the phone fell to the floor under the bed.
My on call shifts don't typically go past 10 PM (we have global staff), so I usually just stay up. But if I do go to bed I leave my phone on 'GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED' mode. My wife understands the situation, even offers to make sure I get out of bed in the event of an email or call, because she knows the on call work equals extra income, which means a portion (let's be honest, all of it) is hers. If you're not getting some kind of additional compensation for your on call, stop doing it.
I like the wrist band idea. You could also build a Lego Mindstorm contraption to drop soccer balls on your head.
Re:Normally I'd recommend a BFH (Score:5, Informative)
I'm deaf and I use the AlertMaster AL10, but it could work well for anyone oncall. I simply plug my land-phone line into my alarm clock. The alarm clock controls a vibrator and can also flash any light/appliance that can plug into a normal outlet. As long as you pick up the phone quickly, it shouldn't severely irritate your partner.
I have everything call my google voice number, which rings my home phone (connected to alarm clock) and also rings my iPhone so I can actually stop the ringing since the landline has no phone connected.
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Ok, I'm probably going to sound like an ignorant jackass but how do you go about using a phone when someone calls you? Is there some sort of software or do people just text you? I've just never had any exposure around anyone with any sort of hearing impairment.
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My on call shifts don't typically go past 10 PM (we have global staff), so I usually just stay up.
10 pm is staying up? That's about when I have dinner.
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You got reimbursed for on-call? I get nothing and I'm full salary pulling 80 hour weeks for a company with 120K employees ....
Well you're a fucking idiot then.
For Android phones (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:For Android phones (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!)
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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!)
For differentiating between "personal" and "oncall" pages, I use handcent... then set the "on call" pages to play my Strong Bad "The System is down" ringtone.
Downside? I can't watch strongbad without my jacking up my blood pressure.
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Texts? IF they text me they will NEVER get me. they can stop being lazy and freaking CALL my cellphone.
Re:For Android phones (Score:5, 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.
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Did it round off fractions of cents from every transaction too?
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Where is my +1 Pure Evil Mod? Dogbert would be proud.
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You're obviously a techie, not a manager...
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if you have a modern smartphone system, you can build filters for incoming sms and do pretty much anything from turning vibrate to vibrate as long as you want, flash lights, send a bt notify to your bedside vibrator or whatever.
on android you can intercept them without tricks even before they hit inbox(just set your receiver priority to a high number). on symbian you could set the phone to silent and have a program running that gets notified of incoming sms and starts ringing if it's a on-call message, dunn
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if you are using text messages for critical alerts you are failing. Texts are not guaranteed to ever reach their destination or arrive in a timely manner. I already dealt with this with a customer, AT&T told them. "Texts are for entertainment and can and will get lost, do not use them for anything important."
Where's Kurzweil (Score:2)
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.
She's going to wake up anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
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King size foam or similar mattress will allow you to get up without disturbing your partner... or in my case partner and small child also sleeping on my bed. It is a case of space and motion transfer... Just don't trip on something on your way out of the room.
As for stealth notification, if your notification system can phone you instead of just texting / emailing you, there are a variety of Bluetooth watches out their that vibrate and do caller ID that I think would work.
My wife takes crazy amounts of call... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Separate beds/rooms if possible? (Score:2)
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.
Resume (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Resume (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you about not realising how much of an effect it has until you stop doing it though. When I stopped about 4 years ago it took some time to get used to being able to go out in the evenings without having to worry about getting called.
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I get paid 0.25x my normal rate while on-call and OT if called in with a 2 hour minimum pay (even if I'm there for 5 min to hit a reset button). I'm good with that.
-nB
Re:Resume (Score:5, Insightful)
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Depends on how it's handled, as others have pointed out.
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.
Or else they have a fairly stable system with high uptime requirements. Stable enough that it doesn't make sense to staff a full-time person around the clock, because that person would be idle most of the time, but with SLAs that demand quick response to problems. Even with fault-tolerant systems which automatically fail over when something goes down, it's often important to quickly diagnose and fix the root problem, because barring a simple hardware
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Having on call is fairly standard and should be ok as long as there are shifts for it and you are paid for the standby hours and for taking the calls.
Regarding the problems with the significant other - either find a job he/she accepts or perahps a new partner; if your partner can't accept the fact that you have to do it to keep a job, your relationship probably has other issues.
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Good luck with that... I doubt you'll ever find an IT job without a stipulation that you need to be reachable. Yes, some companies abuse the privilege, but even in the best case, if you're any good, there are going to be things you're able to do that somebody on the night
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Yeah, it's not for everyone. I wouldn't do it, not with a commute and a wife and kid, but it'd be less bad if I were single and lived nearby.
Majority of /. Iters? (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Good for you.
I've been doing programming for 11 years- HATE IT... absolutely dread work every day- and it's not my company- I keep changing looking for greener pastures- it is the programming I find mind-numbingly dull.
Hopefully I can find a job to transition to myself. Unfortunately reluctant to take a pay cut due to being sole provider for the family and already being stretched.
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I work in social services with persons with disabilities, the only thing in my job that is tech related is the fact that I'm on the "Tech Committee". And I'm on that because everyone knows I'm an amateur computer nerd. In other words, I run Linux, personally, but I'm not a sysadmin, and I can't program my way out of a paper bag.
On call (Score:2)
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 a
Ignore it... (Score:2)
Wire your toes to the phone line. (Score:5, 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.
heard it on TV... (Score:2)
...Red Bull and cocaine!
I'm a developer not IT (Score:2)
Not according to management. (Score:3)
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.
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1) Oh, really? Sez who?
2) Coders are in IT too. You may not carry a pager, but it's the same damned field.
Thank you (Score:2)
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
Stats? (Score:2)
"Since most readers of slashdot are IT'ers..."
Is this true?
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My current employment is:
IT grunt
Development
Management
Office work
Menial
I am unemployed you insensitive clod
I work for Cowboy Neil
Re: (Score:2)
I'd add 'digital artists' to the mix.
Re:Stats? (Score:4, Funny)
I think if you look closer you will notice I did include the unemployed. ;)
Should Work... (Score:2)
Earbuds. (Score:2)
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.
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2 of them (Score:2)
Was only a problem until we had kids (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Flint (Score:2)
Our Man Flint had a nice watch with a little T-shaped arm that telescoped out and tapped his wrist [flickr.com].
Easy.. (Score:2)
Read Ted Dziuba (Score:2)
I strongly recommend you read Ted Dziuba's article "Monitoring Theory" [teddziuba.com]. A little preventative medicine will do wonders.
How about this? (Score:2)
slightly different problem (Score:2)
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?
One noise is all you need (Score:2)
I find it very hard to sleep through http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P5qbcRAXVk [youtube.com]
Though sometimes I panic and hide under a cardboard box instead of opening the laptop.
I'm doing on call right now actually (Score:2)
* 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, no
Play this wav file (Score:2)
The sound of a beer bottle being popped open...it puts all senses in overdrive, anywhere in the house.
Lark (Score:2)
Maybe you can reconfigure/hack Lark (http://www.lark.com/) in some way?
Logic (Score:2)
Just get rid of your partner. Duh.
You have a different problem... (Score:2)
Move Yourself (Score:2)
Vibrating Bracelet (Score:2)
You could try this vibrating bracelet [amazon.com] 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.
Re: (Score:2)
Many flavors of vibrating only alarm clocks are out there, worn by folks with hearing deficits. Should work for you!
Yeah, but can you hook them up to a phone of any sort? I think that's the trick.
Re:Shakeawake (Score:4, Informative)
Sure.
http://www.amazon.com/Sonic-Alert-SBT425ss-Vibrating-Telephone/dp/B000EX5HXS [amazon.com]
not sure why the analog one came up, but I have one of these units.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 :)
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This is actually very true. My wife originally woke up with my on-call phone, but now she just keeps sleeping. I've had to support stuff in the middle of the night and like grantek's situation, had no clue I had even gotten up.
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Same here. When our small child calls in the night my wife wakes up and sleep through :)
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So whatever is in a Bond movie is reality?
I thought so, at least that it was based on the personal experience of at least one person who was involved with writing or setting up the scene. I assume they have advisers from intelligence or law enforcement with their own inane but amusing anecdotes, but yeah, everyone's different.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Light sleeper (Score:5, Funny)
Wait until you have children. You'll get much better at sleeping.
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Wait until you have children. You'll get much better at sleeping.
Not necessarily. I have a 1 year old and a 3 year old. If I get up for the children, I can't go back to sleep. So my wife does it. Call me slack or whatever else you like but while I'm the only one earning the money our family can't afford for me to be comatose at work.
Everyone here is making the same mistake. They are generalising what works for them and their partner to everyone else. People are very different when it comes to sleep.
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Everyone here is making the same mistake. They are generalising
LOL
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Niles, are you back with Maris?
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1/2 a bottle of sherry just before bed will solve that.
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1/2 a bottle of sherry just before bed will solve that.
I thought you were responding to the poster with a 1 and 3 year old kid there, and I was just about to comment that you're presumably not American.
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Agreed. In fact, just last weekend this happened to me, though I wasn't on-call... The multi-rack APC UPS that covers our entire DC had a fault that managed to trip several breakers, fry 83 of 114 batteries, and take everything off-line...at 12:30 AM on Saturday. Apparently my boss and coworkers were trying to call me from about 3:30 AM on, with a director even driving to my house, ringing the doorbell, and pounding on the door. I slept through it all, waking up around 12:30-1:00 PM on Saturday. The amazing
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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...
Re:Deaf alarms. (Score:5, Funny)
It's basically a big vibrator you put under your side of the bed.
Like the one on her side?
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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.
At least, that's what your wife told you: "sure, this big vibrating rubber cock is, er, an alarm clock for deaf people."
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Re:sleep? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Jobs like that typically come with what's essentially a golden handcuff, if you're not getting enough money to justify it then find another job or don't take it. Personally, I never get drunk and only a poorly run company allows for the bus factor to drop that low.
Re:sleep? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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"That means that for about nine weeks a year, I'm a slave to the company."
you negotiated wrong. My on call in my contract states. IF after hours, every time my phone rings for an on call emergency, I get a $200.00 bonus added to my paycheck.
They liked it so much they added it to all the other guys. IT stopped the morons from Marketing from working all night, deleting something and calling on call to get it restored if it cost their department $200.00 every time they called us.
Plus I have no problem ge
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hmmm... yeah, I foresee a minor problem with that.
You'd wake up with burned retinas.
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sorry, I read "LED" and "1 Watt" and my brain said "1 Watt LED laser".
Which is doable with a stock LED. You just have to get a pulse generator set at the right voltage to force the LED to lase, which is right on the threshold of burning the diode out - hence the need to pulse modulate the forward current to prevent just that from happening. This is how high power LEDs for car running lights and tactical flashlights (think Luxeon and Cree) work.
I've learned a lot about the subject but it's cost me a fortune
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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.
Crystal Meth?
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and I wake up with it stuck in my nostril. No thanks.
Breathe right strips that are glued to your nose end up on my forehead by morning...
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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...
In the third year of my wife's residency, I have yet to learn to disregard that damn pager. I'm just a much lighter sleeper than she is. So she sleeps in the call room for night call.
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