What do you do or think about on the way to work?

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item What do you do or think about on the way to work?

  • Nowadays I only work 5 km from work and it takes me no more than 10 minutes to get to work. Being a person who battles with depression, I need to constantly work on staying positive so I try to have positive thoughts on my way to work or whenever I travel. I used to spend at least 2 hours per day driving to and from work and then I had lots of time to think. Sometimes I think about complex coding that I am battling with and would come up with the solution on the way to work. I also like to pray (talk to the Lord) while I drive.

    Let me share a funny experience I had on my way home one afternoon. I like driving with my window open since I am not very partial to air conditioners. My radio was on and there was this guy talking on the radio about how good laughter is for a person. He says even if you do not feel like laughing then fake it and eventually you will actually laugh. So, with my window wide open I started fake laughing. Next moment a car come past me and everybody look at me and laugh. At first I felt embarrassed but then I started laughing as well and actually felt good that I also got someone else laughing. Very good for depression and all the stress of the day gone, I got home in a good mood!!! :w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t::w00t:

    Manie Verster
    Developer
    Johannesburg
    South Africa

    I am happy because I choose to be happy.
    I just love my job!!!

  • Hi Ben good question

    When I took a packed commuter train to work I did speak to the people around me. Slowly, over a period of around two to three years, I worked out what to do. I would get talking to the closest person to me. And it is easy to see who does not want to talk as they are the ones with headphones in. Then, in a variety of ways, like in conversation or up front, one on one, one to many I would ask 'Are you a Christian?' and field the responses. I did not get into any arguments I just listened. An argument was never a goal. I built a SQL Server database and tracked the results. I would not record things when speaking with people I recalled it all later. I used an XML file format to transmit, and delete, the data from my Mac to the SQL Server database. Keeping my Mac free from being a data security risk. All responses were anonymous. I gathered around 3000+ responses. I was rewarded for my effort with a good dataset. And some really funny answers. I tried to keep it all lighthearted and, if people said 'nice to speak with you' when we got to town I would track that as well. One response that showed people were thinking was 'By what criteria?' The funniest answers to my question 'Are you a Christian?' 1) No I am an anesthetist. 2) Not since this morning. 3) Not since I was baptized. (!?!) And heaps of other answers. The results to the question were around 40% yes, around 50% no and around 10% no idea whatsoever. After doing this survey I now understand 'How the locals like it.' That is I found a way to ask my question without upsetting their mornings. When I ask someone my question 'Are you a Christian?' now days I have an understanding of how their response fits into the normal distribution curve I have. In my survey only twice in over 3000 times did anyone raise their voice at me. So that says a more about them than me and my methods.

    I enjoyed doing my survey. Data is everywhere. It suited my DBA skills. My results told me a lot about the people I met. I can also tell you what nationality of people came into our town over those three years but, in the end, it did not matter. It just helped me recall data when doing the data input later in the day.

    With CTE_Wisely ( Select * from community)

    Graham Okely

  • On the way in to work I'm planning the day ahead, listening to BBC Radio4 and when that gets irritating I put on the CD/MP3.

    On the way back I'm doubting the parentage of the driver in front, calculating the probability of one of my teenagers having done just one of the jobs that need doing around the house, swearing at Radio4.

    In the days when I could cycle to work my route to work was 6 miles, my route back was 20 and on a sunny evening 30+. I don't recall being tense after the first couple of miles. If you can, cycle to work

  • My commute is about 45-50mins each way on public transport.

    On the way in, it's generally email time, checking to see if I'm going to be walking into any disasters, sending out any follow-ups, etc...

    On the way home, it's detox time and I play a few games on the laptop.

    --------------------
    Colt 45 - the original point and click interface

  • I have a 45-minutes commute by bicycle from a town through the countryside into the industrial outer reaches of a small city.

    I think about many things.

    Sometimes I dream and think about the framework & storylines for screenplays that I will never write (I haven't yet) but would nonetheless like to see.

    Othertimes, I think through the stages of the project that I am currently then involved in, for example, building a report based on a cube. What exactly to do I need in my datamart? How many dimensions do I want and really need? What data needs to be cleaned? How ambitious will I be with the SSRS report? Is it worth spending time now finding and learning about .shape files or should I only do that after the report, cube and automatic updates are working?

    And othertimes again, I think about my old Macintoshes and draw up, for example, the pros and cons of fibre channel on 26 year old machines. I recently got an old NuBus card (remember those?) with 100baseFT connectors for my Macintosh IIfx. The card was used by a high-end scanner at the time. I have an ATTO FC3300 for my B&W G3. That and LAN design.

  • I cycle to work, so I'm mainly thinking about what other car, lorry and bus-based road users are about to do!

  • I leave very early to 'beat the traffic', so my 25km commute takes about 20 minutes, mostly on the freeway.

    I do sometimes think that people must have terrible bosses since they are so scared to be late for work (hence the fact that they speed so much)!

    My mind tends to drift to work-related topics when I shave, so my morning routine normally takes much longer than I would like!

  • Whatever the podcast or lecture that I'm listening to is about.

    I listen to Dot Net Rocks, RunAs Radio, Writing Excuses and, when I run out of podcasts, university lectures via iTunesU (currently listening to a Quantum Physics course from MIT)

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass
  • David.Poole (10/10/2016)


    On the way in to work I'm planning the day ahead, listening to BBC Radio4 and when that gets irritating I put on the CD/MP3.

    On the way back I'm doubting the parentage of the driver in front, calculating the probability of one of my teenagers having done just one of the jobs that need doing around the house, swearing at Radio4...

    That is my current car commute to a T.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • 1hr public transport.

    Activity used to be reading my book but lately I spend my journey visiting as many Pokestops as possible as I'm in a competition with the guys at work.

  • I managed to do 90% of my Masters degree commuting on trains. It was a break from the actual work yet had me ready to go as soon as I arrived there.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • When I'm riding my bicycle to work I'm enjoying nature and hoping not to get run over by a car. :w00t: When I'm driving my car I'm wishing I was on my bicycle.

  • I have to say that over time I have met a good number of people that commute a really short distance by car stating that they need to drive in order to have enough time for the local gym they go to. This is madness to me. Particularly when they tell you that they use the cycle and running machines most of all!!! :crazy:

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • My commute is driving down, then back up, a mountain. Half an hour and 4,500'. Mainly I listen to a variety of podcasts, sometimes I'm just listening to music and possibly singing to it. My vocal cords took a lot of damage a few years ago, and I find singing helps improve my speaking voice.

    It is frequently kind of weird thinking of why the other drivers drive the way they do. There are two passing zones until you get almost all the way out of the mountains. I've had people blast past me and then sit in front of me the rest of the way down, that seems to be a somewhat frequent occurrence. I guess some people don't like to have cars in front of them, and they don't like it enough to risk a high-speed collision. Today was a mildly interesting one: two miles before the end of the highway and the first traffic light is a stop sign for cross-traffic on a major side street. I'm zipping down the mountain after the curves and now in to nothing but straights at 55 MPH, and a pickup turns from the stop in front of me -- doing 40. Never accelerates above 45 in a 55 zone. A delay of just a handful of seconds would have had me past him, but apparently he was in a hurry. Not in enough of a hurry to do the speed limit, but in a hurry nonetheless.

    I gave up on getting angry at drivers a long time ago -- unless they're doing something aggressively stupid. And that will frequently earn a call to the police.

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]

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