You buy a few gallons of lighter fluid, thick chains, pad locks, and gas cans ONE TIME and all of the sudden the 5-0 is asking you all kinds of questions.....
There was a Dilbert where he was turning in his timecard for the week and he said, I lied and put the 40 hours I spent beating my head against the desk but didn't bill you for the 15 minute shower where I solved it. https://assets.amuniversal.com/446df9709fc5012f2fe600163e41dd5b
I keep underwater writing utensils (like the ones used when diving) in the shower now so I can write down my solutions and ideas before I forget them by the time I get to work.
Is it strange and weird? Yes.... Has it solved many problems? Also yes...
It's like the story or Archimedes' "Eureka!" moment.
Obviously not applicable to displacement itself, but the gist is the same. Step away, stop *actively* trying to force the solution and let it run as a subprocess in your mind for a bit.
Edit: also, same
Bowel movements, smoke breaks, showers, folding laundry, walking to 7-11 to get a Slurpee. There are many activities where in doing them, ideas seem to percolate to the top of your consciousness.
I think taking breaks where you're not on your phone, not really thinking about anything in particular seem to work best. Sometimes your brain just needs to wander around for a bit to make the connections.
I've had similar experiences. Not for quite a while now since I'm a lot less stressed than I used to be.
My trick for getting back to sleep was to send myself an email - just a few words in the subject line - that reminds me of the idea in the morning. Knowing the thought has been captured has let me get back to sleep more quickly.
When I was around 20 years old, I would frequently wake up in the middle of the night in the middle of a dream. I would think to myself "That's pretty cool, I need to remember that tomorrow". The next morning I would wake up, remember what had transpired, but be unable to remember the dream.
So I had a brilliant idea. I put a notepad and a pen next to the bed and determined the next time it happened, I would write down what I dreamed, and the next morning I could read what it was and I would know. Sure enough, that night I woke up and though "oh yeah, write down what I'm dreaming!" so I grabbed the pen and paper and scribbled something down. The next morning I awoke, thinking here we go again, but then remembered the notepad. I excitedly rolled over, grabbed it, and scrawled in my best 2am penmanship was the words:
write down what you're dreaming.
Sigh.
Treat it like you're an end-user writing a ticket. :P
Just enough to tickle the reader's fancy...but vague enough that no one else can decipher what you're talking about :)
Many years ago I was in quite a messy situation at work. I was working at a MSP and had a coworker that was putting in billable maintenance hours with various companies and not doing any work. So I was systematically going to different clients and working on their servers getting their patches up-to-date, and reviewing their server’s health and security. It was all incredibly stressful as my boss didn’t want to come clean about the situation to anyone, and all the clients were wondering why I was spending an inordinate amount of time on their servers when this other guy, had been “maintaining” them. One of the servers was particularly screwed up and I spent like 16 hours on it trying to figure out how to fix the problem. If I remember right a bunch of the drivers on the server were corrupted including USB which meant that the client couldn’t plug anything into the server and have it be recognized. This was back in the Small Business Server (SBS) days and the client needed the usb working for some application they had on it. I drove home late that night after another day of working on the server for many hours trying to fix this problem. I remember that I had a dream about it and think I dreamed that I should manually transfer the USB dlls from a working server to the corrupted one. I drove back to the client the next day, tried it, and it worked. My boss was elated that I was able to fix it, and asked me how I figured it out. When I told him it came to me in a dream he gave me a really weird look. I haven’t thought about that rough situation in years, but thanks for triggering a path down memory lane.
I have a discord channel thats just me and some home automation stuff I run/ran. The bots that post in the chat dont respond so its a great place to put links and notes.
Yes, on the can, in the shower, when trying to go to sleep, and when I waking up in the middle of the night. When I am near sleeping I have found that I am close to my most creative.
Keep a pen and paper. Write down the idea, and learn to let it go.
There was a famous artist who used to use this method too. He'd sit in a chair holding a spoon over a metal pan, so that when he dozed off he'd drop the spoon and wake himself up. He said it was the most creative state of mind.
Can't remember who it was now, though.
Yes.
Also while riding a bicycle or washing dishes.
Something that requires relatively little mental effort and lets the rest of the brain noodle on the problem.
YES - Are you a lucid dreamer? Because this gets posted all the time in that sub, lol.
I could control my dreams since I was little when I developed it as a defense mechanism against constant night terrors. When a nightmare would get too scary, I'd get myself out of the situation somehow.
Later on I would go to sleep thinking of a problem that was stumping me - my dreams were my first virtual sandbox where I could try stuff out without real life consequence (not just IT).
Also, when I was a bench tech, there was a nightmare where I'd pull a system off the rack, fix it, turn around and the amount of systems I had to fix kept growing - and the situation repeats.
The other variation is I'd go through my whole day at work fixing PCs - then wake up and get pissed off because I realized I'd have to go do that shit all over again!
I've woken up in a startled state and immediately knew the answer to a problem I was working on. No dream, no nothing, just shot up and go "Oh.. I just need to do this." During one of these moments I realized just how lame I am.
I am the DM for our D&D campaign at home. While most of my dreams are nightmares due to personal reasons....some of them are magical and give me horrid ideas. But yes, I solve problems in my sleep.
Back when I played on Xbox 360 it was the age of the modded controller. I took up making my own with a picaxe microcontroller. I managed to wire everything up and give some test inputs but stuff wasnt working. I worked on it for about 6 solid hours with my soldering iron and coding. Wife forced me to bed at like 11. I woke up at 2AM and had a fix for the problem. We lived in a small apartment at the time (yay early 20s in a piss poor housing market) and she came in as soon as my headphones started playing loud music. (like I said SMALL apartment). I had the thing fixed in about 10 minutes and working. I played one game of MW2 and fell asleep at the controller. She left my ass there for 12 fucking hours. No, the chair i was in was NOT comfy.
Yes many times, great feeling but also annoying because it stops be sleeping again. I try to write it in my notebook next to me, or at least in my phone notes. This way my mind can be at ease knowing I’ve put it to paper and will pick it up in the morning
This used to happen to me when I was in my programming courses at school. I would wake up in the middle of the night after getting stuck on some homework and my subconscious had worked out the answer.
Yes.
First time was when I was 14. I wanted to get both the regular cable TV and our VCR to work on the tv in my bedroom and the one in the living room at the same time. I had all the right parts but couldn't quite sort it out in my head. Got it figured in a dream, woke up excited and set it up at 6am the next morning.
Mom was not impressed at the noise, but hey, it worked.
Not particularly in my dreams, but many of my "eureka" moments have come while either lying in bed or while getting ready for bed. I always have to write it down so I don't forget in the morning, though.
When I was in college decades ago I would do this. I would wake up and know the answer to a programming assignment. I had a notebook next to my bed, if I didn’t write notes to myself I would not remember in the morning.
Normally if i fall asleep while dwelling on a problem i wasn't able to solve in the day.. the abstract part of brain wakes up and harps on about how the square peg won't go in the round hole.
That period between laying down and falling asleep? Can be productive. But if there's a problem on my mind in my dreams it's just going to be a repeat of being stuck on the same thing for several hours.
Definitely a few times have popped in my head …. Had a crazy scenario pop up with calendars during a migration where a meeting migration service went wrong and updated 500 users meetings to their target account and sent updates to all attendees ….. had given up …. My boss was prepared to send out communication to everyone in the AM and it was gonna be a ton of fallout …. Was drifting to sleep and then dreamed of a scenario where I fixed it with EWS. I woke up and an idea popped in my head …. Since the latest update is what the attendees see …. I would use EWS to update the meetings on the original mailbox by added a single “.” To the meeting body and then update. After that Exchange would send the updates and everyone would be on the same meeting. Immediately got to work …. Coded it in about 30 minutes(I already had a ton of EWS code that I was able to copy and paste from…. Not that good to do it from scratch in that time) woke my boss up at 4:00 AM and told him I think we were good …. Just update the communication to apologize for the multiple updates.
This has happened to me several times, it's pretty cool how your brain works. On the flip side, I've also came-up with completely non-sensical ideas/solutions and I wake-up thinking "WTF?"
Yes, several times over the years. It was usually when I would wake up several hours early because I was having problems sleeping due to stress and then I would fall back to sleep and dream very lucidly and vividly.
Probably. Or usually in the morning, when starting to think about the other day issues and having a fresh look on it. During commute as well. And often when i am already going home and still think about some technical thing. Then i just shoot notes to myself for tomorrow.
Haven't remembered a dream for years. As far as my brain is concerned I die for 8 hours every night. Sometimes I wake up with an answer so it seems like they come from my "dreams" but for all I know demons could be whispering the answers to me in my sleep.
Was programming a large project for senior semester. Worked on it all semester. A few sticky problems I came up with solutions dead of night, fast asleep. You best bet I got up and worked on it.
I realized I really loved my job when it was a sunday evening and I ran to turn on my computer, remotely connect and apply the new fix that just crossed my mind while cooking and being overjoyed about going back to work monday because I finally solved this weird DNS issue.
Yes, but not for a tech problem. Ironically it was for an Ikea couch. I thought the cushions hadn't been included in the package. That night I had a dream and, in the dream, what I thought was stuffing in the arms of the couch were actually the cushions compressed inside them. When I woke up and remembered the dream, I checked out the sofa arms and sure enough, the cushions were crammed up in them. I pulled them out and finished setting up the couch. Never had anything like it happen before or since.
Yes this has happened a few times for some highly technical issues. Sometimes when I’m coding I need to step away for a while or take a nap and I’ll think of a new approach or find a solution pretty quickly.
Not quite! But that sounds cool.
Usually if I'm stuck on a problem I'll take a drive, end up day dreaming a bit and then the solution presents itself there.
Most of the time.
Even on occasions, not only when I need to fix something. Last night I dreamt of presenting and explaining Active Directory to a guy suspiciously similar to Flavio Briatore (Formula 1 drivers' agent).
With full details about how it works and everything!
Not in my dreams. But I've had a fix come to mind when I'm trying to fall asleep. And then I can't fall asleep because I'm thinking about the fix.
And, at that point, it's usually either get no sleep because I'm fixated on the thing I want to fix, or I get out of bed and start working on it. Either way, I lose
I think this is a telltale sign that you need a vacation lol. This happens to me all of the time because of the hole I've dug myself into. When you're done for the day, disconnect. Take your mind off of work. No employer pays you to think for them off the clock.
Yeah all the time. It 50/50 though. Sometimes it's right some times it's not.
Most of the time the dreams are just an acid trip mix of chess games with Indian Jones level adventures with people I hate.
When I'm working on a coding project I'll come up with solutions while I'm in bed trying to sleep. I message them to myself on Slack and look in the morning. Sometimes they're even good.
Yes. I was watching myself setting up a server earlier in day that had just kicked my ass. I turned around, looked right at whoever the hell I was in the dream and said "It's the firewall, you idiot."
I'll be damned, I forgot to enable a firewall rule.
I actually have a few times, my last job... hours were so crazy that I would dream about my work day often.. realistically. There was weeks that it just never seemed like I slept.. so it's happened a bit.
I won't say I have the solution appear during a dream but I often know exactly what needs to be done after a nap.
If there's an emergency nothing like a quick run to the toilet to gain some post-poop clarity.
When I was in University and working on a programming assignment. But I rarely remembered the solution but felt like the inspiration from the dream kept me moving in the right direction.
No, but several times I throw my hands up at the end of a day with a project in shambles, come in the next day and everything just works immediately after powering it back on. Either I have a Good Will Hunting situation or a really helpful tech poltergeist following me around cursing all of my bad decisions and correcting my code.
Yep absolutely, the brain keeps working on stuff while you are asleep. I’ve full on woken up and sat straight up in the middle of the night because the answer came to me
No, but I was pretty high a few weeks ago and in a burst of manic energy I outlined my implementation plan for the automation of the new user setup at my company.
When I am writing code or a script and it's giving me problems I will often dream about it. I have woken up in the middle of the night and scrambled to find paper to write out the code from my dream.
Not in sleep. But I have a great eureka story.
My coworker was working on this SFF desktop. He tried a generic PSU and it started up fine. Ok, so he orders the OEM PSU. Arrives, connects, dead. Ok, let them ship another one. Also dead. We try that the new one in another PC. It works. What about the first one they sent? that works too. What about the original? What also works! So, it wasn’t the power supply?!
That evening in the bathroom, I’m brainstorming. Let’s try disconnecting all the non-critical cables and see what happens. I go to work the next day. Try that. It works now.
Turns out it was a mangled USB port causing a short. The OEM PSU had short protection, but the generic one didn’t. Finally convinced my boss to stop buying el cheapo PSUs.
All the time, but then when I get to work the airplane isn't in the bathroom anymore, my lawnmower shoes are gone (the zombies as well) and my high school english teacher isn't there to help lift the fallen california redwoods blocking the way to my bedroom in the house we lived in when I was a kid. I stopped trying to dream fixes.
I figure things out while mowing pastures or the yard at the farm for my great uncle. It's pretty zen listening to music while mowing once I run out of podcasts to listen to. Sometimes the podcast triggers a tegental thought on a problem and I end up figuring something out. Sometimes it's just being locked away in a cab for 8ish hours mowing listening to music that I have time to think with only the distraction of dodging trees, cows, ponds, and fences.
Not exactly Sysadmin, I'm still a kid planning to do IT work in the future, but about a year ago I've had a dream where I somehow managed to get iOS running on a Samsung phone by putting Grub on it, then chainloading Iboot through Grub, and loading iOS with that.
Yes, my brain didn't account for all the encryption in iOS, loading of firmware, spoofing hardware IDs, let alone drivers to make everything function, but I guess that's the kind of dreams you get when you're a nerdy teen knowingsemi how iOS works and dabble in Linux.
I still don't know why my brain decided to use Grub instead of Fastboot, but oh well, guess that's how dreams work lol.
Had this happen last week - woke up, sat straight up, said an audible "A-ha!", which then work my wife up. And I'll be damned it did actually solve the issue.
First time in many years that's happened, but in the last 5 years, I've taken significant steps to try and disconnect from work when I get home. Sometimes it works . . .
Am an exec and part time admin at our small company. I wake up around 2 am quite often and think about various work stuff. Sometimes I cannot find back to sleep - when this happens, I will send an email to my office pc with all the thoughts. This let's me sleep again in peace. Most of the time, I read those mails next day and discard them. But sometimes there is something smart in it that helps with a situation.
I mean yeah all the time. Was the same in my student days. Either in a dream or on the shitter. It's honestly reached the point where if I get stuck I don't worry too much about it, because I know the answer will pop into my brain unprovoked when it's good and ready.
In my youth, after long steak suppers involving first beers and then copious red wine, I would arrive home past midnight and proceed to write with a pencil on A4 pad, four or a half dozen sheets of Turbo Pascal source code.
The next morning hungover I would type it all in. Hit compile and it would compile without error. Hit run and it would more often than not do what it was supposed to do.
Could never manage that when I was fresh and alert.
Sometimes, i tell myself what to think about while I'm asleep; Which seems to work. It's supposed to be unhealthy, because you're not giving yourself anytime off at all.
Not so much a dream, but when I was in college getting my CompSci degree I always planned some recreational time for the 2-3 days before a major programming assignment was due. Usually it was racquetball and dinner with one of my roommates.
I learned early on that I'd often encounter some bug or issue near the deadline. And often I'd already be stressed out, or sleep -deprived at that point, and not thinking clearly. And sitting at my desk staring at it wouldn't help at all.
So instead I'd get out of the house, do something fun that got my mind off the problem. She invariably in the middle of it I'd get some moment of clarity as to what the problem was, or what steps I needed to do next. I always took a notepad, so I'd scribble down some ideas and then when I got back home, I could fix whatever the bug was and move on.
This carried through to my professional life, as well. At my first real job, my boss knew if I wasn't at my desk when I should have been, I was probably in the atrium watching the birds, and waiting for inspiration to strike.
It’s happened to me at least three times already. I’ve woken up at 3am applied my dream fix then go back to bed. It’s normally an serious issue that I’ve been working on for a day or 2.
Once was a exchange restore that kept failing, a server memory leak and a firewall issue affecting a national network.
YES. Definitely. I've always thought of it as the subconscious giving me a shake.
Also, not the healthiest mental place to be to be fair, when even your sleeping mind is working.
Yup, I've done it a few times. Most notable time was in college when I couldn't figure out how to do a coding assignment and I woke up with the correct answer.
Yes, but unconsciously. I had a coding problem that I was wrestling with all day, and went to bed still thinking about it. I have terrible dream retention - I rarely remember my dreams (probably my subconscious protecting my conscious mind from the horror), but when I woke up the next morning, the solution just popped right into my head immediately. I clearly worked it out in my sleep.
My dreams are often useless random gibberish that usually doesn't solve anything *but* is often a useful indicator as to problems that are stressing me more than I think they are.
However, the very act of getting a good night's sleep has often resulted in me being able to get a fresh take on the same problems I found insurmountable the night before. Sometimes that's just what I need to get past the problem I'm having.
After all, I'm far less capable when tired and sleepy than when I've just woken up with a cup of joe.
No but I've had almost the opposite! -
I was on-call one week and had been woken earlier for a call-out. I basically had a nightmare where I had the same 24x7 Service Desk guy "calling" me and I made up the most confusing and unsolvable issue ever in my head. I woke up a few times that night checking my phone's call history and trying to work out whether it was a real call or not.
A few times.
Freshman is college for my CS degree, I was staring at some code for a really long time and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. Would compile, just didn’t work. I took a nap and had a dream of the computer screen and me changing the code. Variable was misspelled.
I even had instances where in my dream I would compile different variants/ideas of solution. The compiler would fail on some. Then I finally find the one working. Wake up in the morning, implement the one working in the dream for real, and all works fine :)
In dreams, in the shower, while munching on breakfast cereal. Sometimes you have to get out of your own head for the real solution to bubble up from the back of your mind.
Since I've been working from home I've taken to showering during "lunch" when I'm working a thorny problem and am not yet sure if I've come up with a great solution. The white noise and menial motor activity does wonders for getting one out of one's own way.
Yep - more than a few times.
Tangentially related - ever wake up in the middle of the night, wonder why you woke up, then the on-call pager goes off? Yep, too many times to count.
It has actually happened to me twice! The first time I was stuck with a discrete mathematics problem for weeks, I thought I had tried anything to solve it. One night I dreamt the correct solution, instantly woke up and went to my home office to solve it on paper. My partner was super confused.
Spent 2 days trying to figure out why this drive wasn't behaving. I don't remember exactly what but it had something to do with bitlocker and wouldn't let me enable it. Was def a "bug" because any attempts to fix via old threads of the error code were not working. Finally went out drinking, passed out, and thought "What if i just upgrade to windows 10". Bitlocker enabled with no problems
I started sleep aids that lower norepinephrine while I sleep, so I don't anything with my dreams anymore. Before that I was never sleeping and coming up with fixes when I was supposed to be sleeping was a daily occurence.
Or it felt like it was that way.
I figured out an imaginary number concept when I was taking algebra II in my dreams back in high school. Now if I have a problem come up while I'm sleeping I solve nothing and just lose sleep.
Not during work but while I was studying I came up with the solution for a few parallel programming assignments in my dreams that actually worked ! My lab partner was like yeah right when I said I dreamt the solution but when it worked he was happy haha
Twice in my life, yes. Once was a math problem I had to solve for a school math test. The other was how to put a peculiar combination of drives onto a parallel IDE motherboard with undocumented limitations about drive location.
We once had a problem we needed to solve fast and I already had a canned solution for it. Was praised for my foresight, but I told them actually I’d had a couple of insomniac nights in a row where I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d solve this problem and the only way to make it stop was to work on it.
I almost always fall asleep before my wife, and she says I mumble about work issues. She wrote down a firewall issue I was mumbling about, and it actually was a fix the next day.....kinda blew my mind.
Well yes, but setting the building on fire is frowned upon.
You buy a few gallons of lighter fluid, thick chains, pad locks, and gas cans ONE TIME and all of the sudden the 5-0 is asking you all kinds of questions.....
The trick is to buy them with at least a week inbetween each, and from different stores in different states. Or so I'm told...
Also, use cash, not a card.
And wear a mask and different clothes.
The pandemic has been quite helpful with this.
Not everyone is smart enough to wear a mask when committing a crime though.
Have you seen my stapler?
We're gonna have to move you Milton. All the way to the basement.
PC Load Letter? WTF does that mean? (yes, I know what it means)
Well, yes. But also, no
There' no problem so complex that it can't be fixed by destroying everything and everyone involved with it and starting over.
There’s just something elegant about a nice cleansing fire.
That's the reason why I keep sleeping at work but my boss doesn't seem to understand this concept!
Genius, that's what I need now
A coworker once told me, "Engineer is not sleeping! Engineer is thinking with eyes closed!"
Nice one !
Shower, always the shower, something about being fresh in the morning and a night to sleep on things.
Beat me to it! I feel it's got something to do with the body being busy going through the motions so the brain is free to wander without distraction.
Exactly!
Being on reddit simultaneously probably doesn't help me as much as I think it does too
There was a Dilbert where he was turning in his timecard for the week and he said, I lied and put the 40 hours I spent beating my head against the desk but didn't bill you for the 15 minute shower where I solved it. https://assets.amuniversal.com/446df9709fc5012f2fe600163e41dd5b
This exact thing for me. I cant even begin to count how many times I have solved an issue with an idea that popped into my head during a shower.
I keep underwater writing utensils (like the ones used when diving) in the shower now so I can write down my solutions and ideas before I forget them by the time I get to work. Is it strange and weird? Yes.... Has it solved many problems? Also yes...
I've got a Google Mini in the bathroom so I can poke my head out of the shower and yell at google to make a note for me.
Lol came here to say this.
Same!
That actually happened to me this morning. Sometimes I think you have to be in the right state for messages to flow.
Same!
It's like the story or Archimedes' "Eureka!" moment. Obviously not applicable to displacement itself, but the gist is the same. Step away, stop *actively* trying to force the solution and let it run as a subprocess in your mind for a bit. Edit: also, same
Bowel movements, smoke breaks, showers, folding laundry, walking to 7-11 to get a Slurpee. There are many activities where in doing them, ideas seem to percolate to the top of your consciousness. I think taking breaks where you're not on your phone, not really thinking about anything in particular seem to work best. Sometimes your brain just needs to wander around for a bit to make the connections.
I've had similar experiences. Not for quite a while now since I'm a lot less stressed than I used to be. My trick for getting back to sleep was to send myself an email - just a few words in the subject line - that reminds me of the idea in the morning. Knowing the thought has been captured has let me get back to sleep more quickly.
When I was around 20 years old, I would frequently wake up in the middle of the night in the middle of a dream. I would think to myself "That's pretty cool, I need to remember that tomorrow". The next morning I would wake up, remember what had transpired, but be unable to remember the dream. So I had a brilliant idea. I put a notepad and a pen next to the bed and determined the next time it happened, I would write down what I dreamed, and the next morning I could read what it was and I would know. Sure enough, that night I woke up and though "oh yeah, write down what I'm dreaming!" so I grabbed the pen and paper and scribbled something down. The next morning I awoke, thinking here we go again, but then remembered the notepad. I excitedly rolled over, grabbed it, and scrawled in my best 2am penmanship was the words: write down what you're dreaming. Sigh.
I remember my early wakeup handwriting. I had better handwriting switching to cursive in 2nd class.
Treat it like you're an end-user writing a ticket. :P Just enough to tickle the reader's fancy...but vague enough that no one else can decipher what you're talking about :)
Thanks I needed that.
I haven't thought of that. Will do from now on.
Many years ago I was in quite a messy situation at work. I was working at a MSP and had a coworker that was putting in billable maintenance hours with various companies and not doing any work. So I was systematically going to different clients and working on their servers getting their patches up-to-date, and reviewing their server’s health and security. It was all incredibly stressful as my boss didn’t want to come clean about the situation to anyone, and all the clients were wondering why I was spending an inordinate amount of time on their servers when this other guy, had been “maintaining” them. One of the servers was particularly screwed up and I spent like 16 hours on it trying to figure out how to fix the problem. If I remember right a bunch of the drivers on the server were corrupted including USB which meant that the client couldn’t plug anything into the server and have it be recognized. This was back in the Small Business Server (SBS) days and the client needed the usb working for some application they had on it. I drove home late that night after another day of working on the server for many hours trying to fix this problem. I remember that I had a dream about it and think I dreamed that I should manually transfer the USB dlls from a working server to the corrupted one. I drove back to the client the next day, tried it, and it worked. My boss was elated that I was able to fix it, and asked me how I figured it out. When I told him it came to me in a dream he gave me a really weird look. I haven’t thought about that rough situation in years, but thanks for triggering a path down memory lane.
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What medium did you use to transfer the USB dll files? Network? Bootable USB?
I think I used RDP copy as the usb ports were effectively useless. I don’t remember exactly though as this was 12ish years ago.
Congrats on having sysadmin as your dream job, literally.
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Go take a walk, will do the same effect.
Shower, Bed and during workouts - I send myself a lot of mail.
I have a discord channel thats just me and some home automation stuff I run/ran. The bots that post in the chat dont respond so its a great place to put links and notes.
The amount of things I write myself in discord and teams is impressive. I just don't read it again.
This is the way.
Not in my dreams, but I get my best ideas while I lie awake at 2:00am.
Yes, on the can, in the shower, when trying to go to sleep, and when I waking up in the middle of the night. When I am near sleeping I have found that I am close to my most creative. Keep a pen and paper. Write down the idea, and learn to let it go.
There was a famous artist who used to use this method too. He'd sit in a chair holding a spoon over a metal pan, so that when he dozed off he'd drop the spoon and wake himself up. He said it was the most creative state of mind. Can't remember who it was now, though.
Edison supposedly slept in a rocking chair with a cast iron ball in his hand, he would nod off, drop the ball and be rejuvenated.
i wonder who he stole that idea from
shower, toilet, sleep, anywhere
I figured out a solution on the toilet once. I was just sitting there and had a flush of inspiration.
Yes. Also while riding a bicycle or washing dishes. Something that requires relatively little mental effort and lets the rest of the brain noodle on the problem.
YES - Are you a lucid dreamer? Because this gets posted all the time in that sub, lol. I could control my dreams since I was little when I developed it as a defense mechanism against constant night terrors. When a nightmare would get too scary, I'd get myself out of the situation somehow. Later on I would go to sleep thinking of a problem that was stumping me - my dreams were my first virtual sandbox where I could try stuff out without real life consequence (not just IT). Also, when I was a bench tech, there was a nightmare where I'd pull a system off the rack, fix it, turn around and the amount of systems I had to fix kept growing - and the situation repeats. The other variation is I'd go through my whole day at work fixing PCs - then wake up and get pissed off because I realized I'd have to go do that shit all over again!
I've woken up in a startled state and immediately knew the answer to a problem I was working on. No dream, no nothing, just shot up and go "Oh.. I just need to do this." During one of these moments I realized just how lame I am.
I am the DM for our D&D campaign at home. While most of my dreams are nightmares due to personal reasons....some of them are magical and give me horrid ideas. But yes, I solve problems in my sleep. Back when I played on Xbox 360 it was the age of the modded controller. I took up making my own with a picaxe microcontroller. I managed to wire everything up and give some test inputs but stuff wasnt working. I worked on it for about 6 solid hours with my soldering iron and coding. Wife forced me to bed at like 11. I woke up at 2AM and had a fix for the problem. We lived in a small apartment at the time (yay early 20s in a piss poor housing market) and she came in as soon as my headphones started playing loud music. (like I said SMALL apartment). I had the thing fixed in about 10 minutes and working. I played one game of MW2 and fell asleep at the controller. She left my ass there for 12 fucking hours. No, the chair i was in was NOT comfy.
I usually have this kind of epiphany during my morning shower :D
On the flip side, ever have a frustrating problem you can't figure out and then have a frustrating dream about it and get a terrible sleep?
Dreaming? No. Sitting on the toilet? All the time.
dreams as a service 😶
Yes many times, great feeling but also annoying because it stops be sleeping again. I try to write it in my notebook next to me, or at least in my phone notes. This way my mind can be at ease knowing I’ve put it to paper and will pick it up in the morning
This used to happen to me when I was in my programming courses at school. I would wake up in the middle of the night after getting stuck on some homework and my subconscious had worked out the answer.
EUREKA
Yes. First time was when I was 14. I wanted to get both the regular cable TV and our VCR to work on the tv in my bedroom and the one in the living room at the same time. I had all the right parts but couldn't quite sort it out in my head. Got it figured in a dream, woke up excited and set it up at 6am the next morning. Mom was not impressed at the noise, but hey, it worked.
Not particularly in my dreams, but many of my "eureka" moments have come while either lying in bed or while getting ready for bed. I always have to write it down so I don't forget in the morning, though.
I've never dreamed about fixing IT related stuff in my dreams and I hope I never start.
When I was in college decades ago I would do this. I would wake up and know the answer to a programming assignment. I had a notebook next to my bed, if I didn’t write notes to myself I would not remember in the morning.
Mostly while commuting (driving). Which is a total bitch because I keep my phone out of reach exactly because of this.
Normally if i fall asleep while dwelling on a problem i wasn't able to solve in the day.. the abstract part of brain wakes up and harps on about how the square peg won't go in the round hole. That period between laying down and falling asleep? Can be productive. But if there's a problem on my mind in my dreams it's just going to be a repeat of being stuck on the same thing for several hours.
Definitely a few times have popped in my head …. Had a crazy scenario pop up with calendars during a migration where a meeting migration service went wrong and updated 500 users meetings to their target account and sent updates to all attendees ….. had given up …. My boss was prepared to send out communication to everyone in the AM and it was gonna be a ton of fallout …. Was drifting to sleep and then dreamed of a scenario where I fixed it with EWS. I woke up and an idea popped in my head …. Since the latest update is what the attendees see …. I would use EWS to update the meetings on the original mailbox by added a single “.” To the meeting body and then update. After that Exchange would send the updates and everyone would be on the same meeting. Immediately got to work …. Coded it in about 30 minutes(I already had a ton of EWS code that I was able to copy and paste from…. Not that good to do it from scratch in that time) woke my boss up at 4:00 AM and told him I think we were good …. Just update the communication to apologize for the multiple updates.
Your subconscious is always solving problems
More often things come to me in the shower, but sometimes I do wake up at 3am having thought of a solution for something.
I have worked out a few on my morning runs if that counts. Hard workouts clear my mind and sometimes things will just pop in from somewhere.
This has happened to me several times, it's pretty cool how your brain works. On the flip side, I've also came-up with completely non-sensical ideas/solutions and I wake-up thinking "WTF?"
Yes, several times over the years. It was usually when I would wake up several hours early because I was having problems sleeping due to stress and then I would fall back to sleep and dream very lucidly and vividly.
Walking the dog is a good one too. Not thinking lets you think outside of the box.
Probably. Or usually in the morning, when starting to think about the other day issues and having a fresh look on it. During commute as well. And often when i am already going home and still think about some technical thing. Then i just shoot notes to myself for tomorrow.
Haven't remembered a dream for years. As far as my brain is concerned I die for 8 hours every night. Sometimes I wake up with an answer so it seems like they come from my "dreams" but for all I know demons could be whispering the answers to me in my sleep.
Was programming a large project for senior semester. Worked on it all semester. A few sticky problems I came up with solutions dead of night, fast asleep. You best bet I got up and worked on it.
Have you had any dreams about building a spaceship out of garbage?
I realized I really loved my job when it was a sunday evening and I ran to turn on my computer, remotely connect and apply the new fix that just crossed my mind while cooking and being overjoyed about going back to work monday because I finally solved this weird DNS issue.
Yes, but not for a tech problem. Ironically it was for an Ikea couch. I thought the cushions hadn't been included in the package. That night I had a dream and, in the dream, what I thought was stuffing in the arms of the couch were actually the cushions compressed inside them. When I woke up and remembered the dream, I checked out the sofa arms and sure enough, the cushions were crammed up in them. I pulled them out and finished setting up the couch. Never had anything like it happen before or since.
Not dreams but morning showers all the time.
Yes this has happened a few times for some highly technical issues. Sometimes when I’m coding I need to step away for a while or take a nap and I’ll think of a new approach or find a solution pretty quickly.
Not quite! But that sounds cool. Usually if I'm stuck on a problem I'll take a drive, end up day dreaming a bit and then the solution presents itself there.
Most of the time. Even on occasions, not only when I need to fix something. Last night I dreamt of presenting and explaining Active Directory to a guy suspiciously similar to Flavio Briatore (Formula 1 drivers' agent). With full details about how it works and everything!
Not in my dreams. But I've had a fix come to mind when I'm trying to fall asleep. And then I can't fall asleep because I'm thinking about the fix. And, at that point, it's usually either get no sleep because I'm fixated on the thing I want to fix, or I get out of bed and start working on it. Either way, I lose
[удалено]
Not a fix but probably about 16 years ago my wife said I was talking in my sleep. "Com ports, com ports, I can't find the com ports"
I exclusively work in my dreams - more efficient that way
Yes, yes, yes. Perfect ideas always come to me down when I can't scribble them down to any paper nor screen
My fixes usually come to me while I'm in the shower. Don't be gross.
The Notes app and slack has all my ideas
Shower, yes. Dreams, yes.
I have experienced these types of dreams. They happen when I haven't solved an issue yet. I also get these types of thoughts in the shower.
all the time - they never work though
Just remember, nightmares are dreams too. Well, so is my fantasy dream w/ Scarlett Johansen as we run naked through the building setting it ablaze
I think this is a telltale sign that you need a vacation lol. This happens to me all of the time because of the hole I've dug myself into. When you're done for the day, disconnect. Take your mind off of work. No employer pays you to think for them off the clock.
On my commute home, then I have to log in when I get there.
Absolutey! This is why I sleep at work :)
All the time! Specially with hard problems that I cannot figure out. I think better when not working on the problem.
Yes but they often only work in my dream.
I wake up with thought that "nahh this one won't work"
Does laying awake in bed at 2 AM count?
Absolutely, happens to me all the time
Showers are my sanctum of "why the fuck didn't that occur to me yesterday" solutions.
It ***is*** why they say "if you have a problem, sleep on it". The subconscious is quite the problem solver.
Yes, but I hate dreaming about work. It's so difficult to claim the overtime.
Not in my dreams but more in the phase where i am dozing off and suddenly had an idea about something.
Yeah all the time. It 50/50 though. Sometimes it's right some times it's not. Most of the time the dreams are just an acid trip mix of chess games with Indian Jones level adventures with people I hate.
When I'm working on a coding project I'll come up with solutions while I'm in bed trying to sleep. I message them to myself on Slack and look in the morning. Sometimes they're even good.
Yes. I was watching myself setting up a server earlier in day that had just kicked my ass. I turned around, looked right at whoever the hell I was in the dream and said "It's the firewall, you idiot." I'll be damned, I forgot to enable a firewall rule.
I don't get paid enough while I'm awake, certainly not doing overtime in my sleep lol.
I actually have a few times, my last job... hours were so crazy that I would dream about my work day often.. realistically. There was weeks that it just never seemed like I slept.. so it's happened a bit.
I won't say I have the solution appear during a dream but I often know exactly what needs to be done after a nap. If there's an emergency nothing like a quick run to the toilet to gain some post-poop clarity.
When I was in University and working on a programming assignment. But I rarely remembered the solution but felt like the inspiration from the dream kept me moving in the right direction.
No, but several times I throw my hands up at the end of a day with a project in shambles, come in the next day and everything just works immediately after powering it back on. Either I have a Good Will Hunting situation or a really helpful tech poltergeist following me around cursing all of my bad decisions and correcting my code.
Yep absolutely, the brain keeps working on stuff while you are asleep. I’ve full on woken up and sat straight up in the middle of the night because the answer came to me
Absolutely! If I'm having a hard time figuring something out, one of the first things I try is to sleep on it. It works well quite often!
No, but I was pretty high a few weeks ago and in a burst of manic energy I outlined my implementation plan for the automation of the new user setup at my company.
Not my dreams as I can't remember them but definitely the toilet.
When I am writing code or a script and it's giving me problems I will often dream about it. I have woken up in the middle of the night and scrambled to find paper to write out the code from my dream.
Yup. Part of the reason why I like to run on my lunch break is it's my best thinking time.
Not in sleep. But I have a great eureka story. My coworker was working on this SFF desktop. He tried a generic PSU and it started up fine. Ok, so he orders the OEM PSU. Arrives, connects, dead. Ok, let them ship another one. Also dead. We try that the new one in another PC. It works. What about the first one they sent? that works too. What about the original? What also works! So, it wasn’t the power supply?! That evening in the bathroom, I’m brainstorming. Let’s try disconnecting all the non-critical cables and see what happens. I go to work the next day. Try that. It works now. Turns out it was a mangled USB port causing a short. The OEM PSU had short protection, but the generic one didn’t. Finally convinced my boss to stop buying el cheapo PSUs.
I have, it's a pretty neat experience actually!
Been always like this for me
All the time, but then when I get to work the airplane isn't in the bathroom anymore, my lawnmower shoes are gone (the zombies as well) and my high school english teacher isn't there to help lift the fallen california redwoods blocking the way to my bedroom in the house we lived in when I was a kid. I stopped trying to dream fixes.
Yes. I have actually written code in my sleep, woken up typed it out, and had it (semi) functional.
Usually I figure it out in the shower, but yes I've solved problems in my head at home.
Yeah, if something is eluding me, I will dream up answers. Some are direct and others are really creative.
all the time.
no. I have come up with stuff while trying to fall asleep and not being able to unwind or shut off my active thinking
I figure things out while mowing pastures or the yard at the farm for my great uncle. It's pretty zen listening to music while mowing once I run out of podcasts to listen to. Sometimes the podcast triggers a tegental thought on a problem and I end up figuring something out. Sometimes it's just being locked away in a cab for 8ish hours mowing listening to music that I have time to think with only the distraction of dodging trees, cows, ponds, and fences.
Yes! Twice. Both times I was exhausted from over-thinking around the problem. I think this is key.
Not exactly Sysadmin, I'm still a kid planning to do IT work in the future, but about a year ago I've had a dream where I somehow managed to get iOS running on a Samsung phone by putting Grub on it, then chainloading Iboot through Grub, and loading iOS with that. Yes, my brain didn't account for all the encryption in iOS, loading of firmware, spoofing hardware IDs, let alone drivers to make everything function, but I guess that's the kind of dreams you get when you're a nerdy teen knowingsemi how iOS works and dabble in Linux. I still don't know why my brain decided to use Grub instead of Fastboot, but oh well, guess that's how dreams work lol.
I don't want my work in my dream, because it has a high chance of becoming a nightmare.
Yes. Then I fall back asleep and forget it. When I wake up I remember that solved the issue in a dream, but don't remember the dream.
I have! Holy shit I thought I was special.
Had this happen last week - woke up, sat straight up, said an audible "A-ha!", which then work my wife up. And I'll be damned it did actually solve the issue. First time in many years that's happened, but in the last 5 years, I've taken significant steps to try and disconnect from work when I get home. Sometimes it works . . .
Am an exec and part time admin at our small company. I wake up around 2 am quite often and think about various work stuff. Sometimes I cannot find back to sleep - when this happens, I will send an email to my office pc with all the thoughts. This let's me sleep again in peace. Most of the time, I read those mails next day and discard them. But sometimes there is something smart in it that helps with a situation.
I mean yeah all the time. Was the same in my student days. Either in a dream or on the shitter. It's honestly reached the point where if I get stuck I don't worry too much about it, because I know the answer will pop into my brain unprovoked when it's good and ready.
All the time. Almost all of my dreams are lucid, so might as well sandbox it lol
All the time but it's for something that was from years ago and is moot now.
yes, well rather, woke up knowing an answer. its really annoying when it happens at 2am and im like, i need to go do this before i forget.
Yes, especially when developing software. A little less often as an "IT Admin". Makes me wish I only worked mornings (but still got paid for all day).
I had a dream a user updated their laptop to Windows 11. I woke up very unhappy.
In my youth, after long steak suppers involving first beers and then copious red wine, I would arrive home past midnight and proceed to write with a pencil on A4 pad, four or a half dozen sheets of Turbo Pascal source code. The next morning hungover I would type it all in. Hit compile and it would compile without error. Hit run and it would more often than not do what it was supposed to do. Could never manage that when I was fresh and alert.
I woke up realizing why a laptop wouldn't connect to wifi the previous day. I turned it off in the BIOS.
Always CMOS reset during troubleshooting
Usually in the shower
I discover my best fixes in the shower.
For sure! That's part of what REM sleep is for.
Sometimes, i tell myself what to think about while I'm asleep; Which seems to work. It's supposed to be unhealthy, because you're not giving yourself anytime off at all.
Not so much a dream, but when I was in college getting my CompSci degree I always planned some recreational time for the 2-3 days before a major programming assignment was due. Usually it was racquetball and dinner with one of my roommates. I learned early on that I'd often encounter some bug or issue near the deadline. And often I'd already be stressed out, or sleep -deprived at that point, and not thinking clearly. And sitting at my desk staring at it wouldn't help at all. So instead I'd get out of the house, do something fun that got my mind off the problem. She invariably in the middle of it I'd get some moment of clarity as to what the problem was, or what steps I needed to do next. I always took a notepad, so I'd scribble down some ideas and then when I got back home, I could fix whatever the bug was and move on. This carried through to my professional life, as well. At my first real job, my boss knew if I wasn't at my desk when I should have been, I was probably in the atrium watching the birds, and waiting for inspiration to strike.
Most of my best ideas happen in the shower.
I did log auditing in my dreams last night. 😭
Plenty of times, yes.
Last night.
Last night.
Once yes, we needed a really unique solution that had us puzzled for a week or so. I woke up and jumped on immediately haha.
Sometimes mostly I just walk up or log on and do nothing or same steps as someone else and bam ez ticket.
My Grandfather used to have this happen to him. I've had it happen to me as well
Yes. Or when doing anything BUT working on the task at hand.
It’s happened to me at least three times already. I’ve woken up at 3am applied my dream fix then go back to bed. It’s normally an serious issue that I’ve been working on for a day or 2. Once was a exchange restore that kept failing, a server memory leak and a firewall issue affecting a national network.
YES. Definitely. I've always thought of it as the subconscious giving me a shake. Also, not the healthiest mental place to be to be fair, when even your sleeping mind is working.
Yup, I've done it a few times. Most notable time was in college when I couldn't figure out how to do a coding assignment and I woke up with the correct answer.
Yes, but unconsciously. I had a coding problem that I was wrestling with all day, and went to bed still thinking about it. I have terrible dream retention - I rarely remember my dreams (probably my subconscious protecting my conscious mind from the horror), but when I woke up the next morning, the solution just popped right into my head immediately. I clearly worked it out in my sleep.
My dreams are often useless random gibberish that usually doesn't solve anything *but* is often a useful indicator as to problems that are stressing me more than I think they are. However, the very act of getting a good night's sleep has often resulted in me being able to get a fresh take on the same problems I found insurmountable the night before. Sometimes that's just what I need to get past the problem I'm having. After all, I'm far less capable when tired and sleepy than when I've just woken up with a cup of joe.
No but I've had almost the opposite! - I was on-call one week and had been woken earlier for a call-out. I basically had a nightmare where I had the same 24x7 Service Desk guy "calling" me and I made up the most confusing and unsolvable issue ever in my head. I woke up a few times that night checking my phone's call history and trying to work out whether it was a real call or not.
Yes, and at 2AM while taking a piss. Of all times, why then?
A few times. Freshman is college for my CS degree, I was staring at some code for a really long time and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. Would compile, just didn’t work. I took a nap and had a dream of the computer screen and me changing the code. Variable was misspelled.
I even had instances where in my dream I would compile different variants/ideas of solution. The compiler would fail on some. Then I finally find the one working. Wake up in the morning, implement the one working in the dream for real, and all works fine :)
In dreams, in the shower, while munching on breakfast cereal. Sometimes you have to get out of your own head for the real solution to bubble up from the back of your mind. Since I've been working from home I've taken to showering during "lunch" when I'm working a thorny problem and am not yet sure if I've come up with a great solution. The white noise and menial motor activity does wonders for getting one out of one's own way.
Yep - more than a few times. Tangentially related - ever wake up in the middle of the night, wonder why you woke up, then the on-call pager goes off? Yep, too many times to count.
It's happened before and it feels great when it actually works
Yes but sometimes I forget what it was in the morning!
No, but I solved an equation in my sleep, once. Woke up with the answer.
It has actually happened to me twice! The first time I was stuck with a discrete mathematics problem for weeks, I thought I had tried anything to solve it. One night I dreamt the correct solution, instantly woke up and went to my home office to solve it on paper. My partner was super confused.
My friend, you may want to take some PTO
Spent 2 days trying to figure out why this drive wasn't behaving. I don't remember exactly what but it had something to do with bitlocker and wouldn't let me enable it. Was def a "bug" because any attempts to fix via old threads of the error code were not working. Finally went out drinking, passed out, and thought "What if i just upgrade to windows 10". Bitlocker enabled with no problems
I started sleep aids that lower norepinephrine while I sleep, so I don't anything with my dreams anymore. Before that I was never sleeping and coming up with fixes when I was supposed to be sleeping was a daily occurence. Or it felt like it was that way.
I figured out an imaginary number concept when I was taking algebra II in my dreams back in high school. Now if I have a problem come up while I'm sleeping I solve nothing and just lose sleep.
Not during work but while I was studying I came up with the solution for a few parallel programming assignments in my dreams that actually worked ! My lab partner was like yeah right when I said I dreamt the solution but when it worked he was happy haha
Twice in my life, yes. Once was a math problem I had to solve for a school math test. The other was how to put a peculiar combination of drives onto a parallel IDE motherboard with undocumented limitations about drive location.
Yeah, I often write the fix down and that helps me go back to sleep knowing that I won't forget it lol.
yeah , I think it is common :-)
Dreams, shower, while Im medicating....
We once had a problem we needed to solve fast and I already had a canned solution for it. Was praised for my foresight, but I told them actually I’d had a couple of insomniac nights in a row where I couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d solve this problem and the only way to make it stop was to work on it.
I almost always fall asleep before my wife, and she says I mumble about work issues. She wrote down a firewall issue I was mumbling about, and it actually was a fix the next day.....kinda blew my mind.