Re: 365x24x7
> Variable scheduling of staff is often deemed more fair, but I think it makes > things less stable. People are constantly having to change their life. Rotating shifts between daytime and nighttime is a horrible thing to do to your workers, both for their health and their attention span. Full-time night work isn't great, but rotating work is even worse. Apes are generally diurnal, not nocturnal or crepuscular. Shuffling who has to work which days is annoying enough. Thanks; Bill Note that this isn't my regular email account - It's still experimental so far. And Google probably logs and indexes everything you send it.
Re: 365x24x7
Bill Stewart wrote: Rotating shifts between daytime and nighttime is a horrible thing to do to your workers, both for their health and their attention span. Full-time night work isn't great, but rotating work is even worse. Apes are generally diurnal, not nocturnal or crepuscular. Shuffling who has to work which days is annoying enough. I spent several months working in a place with rotating shifts. One week 10pm to 7am, then the next week 2pm to 10pm then the week after 7am to 2pm and then repeat. I never understood why they were different lengths either. It was pretty grim and I'd much prefer to have had shifts change ever few months. Some people claimed they'd have preferred it if we'd changed to the _following_ shift rater than the preceding shift each week but never having tried that I don't know how it would be.
Re: 365x24x7
> Rotating shifts between daytime and nighttime is a horrible thing to > do to your workers, both for their health and their attention span. One of the places I worked had the following pattern. It was horrible 2 days/shifts of 6am till 6pm 2 days/shifts of 6pm till 6am 4 days off Wayne
Re: 365x24x7
I was offered a similar role… but more painful (Imho) 4 days 8am till 8pm 4 days off 4 days 8pm till 8am 4 days off Rinse and repeat. ...Skeeve -- Skeeve Stevens, CEO - eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists ske...@eintellego.net ; www.eintellego.net Phone: 1300 753 383 ; Fax: (+612) 8572 9954 Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; skype://skeeve facebook.com/eintellego or eintell...@facebook.com twitter.com/networkceoau ; www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve PO Box 7726, Baulkham Hills, NSW 1755 Australia -- eintellego - The Experts that the Experts call - Juniper - HP Networking - Cisco - Brocade - Arista - Allied Telesis On 17/04/11 9:34 PM, "Wayne Lee" mailto:linkconn...@googlemail.com>> wrote: Rotating shifts between daytime and nighttime is a horrible thing to do to your workers, both for their health and their attention span. One of the places I worked had the following pattern. It was horrible 2 days/shifts of 6am till 6pm 2 days/shifts of 6pm till 6am 4 days off Wayne
Re: NANOG Digest, Vol 39, Issue 52
> >> Rotating shifts between daytime and nighttime is a horrible thing to >> do to your workers, both for their health and their attention span. > I wonder how well something like the following would work (seen in paid fire/EMS circles): 24 on, 48 off. But staff those 24 shifts with maybe 20% more than actually needed to provide minimum coverage. Of course, that all assumes that you can trust your guys to work out the dynamics of "hey, you watch for the next 30 while I take a break". -c
Re: NANOG Digest, Vol 39, Issue 52
On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:24:40 -, Coy Hile said: > I wonder how well something like the following would work (seen in > paid fire/EMS circles): > > 24 on, 48 off. Note that for much of those 24 on, the people are actually on downtime on site in case the buzzer goes off. Heck, the station even has enough beds in it for half the crew to be asleep. ;) So probably *not* applicable to NOC scheduling. pgpqCDjYxbNTj.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: 365x24x7
> If I were going to provide a 365x24x7 NOC, how many teams of personnel > do I need to fully cover operations? I assume minimally you need 3 teams to > cover the required 24 hr coverage, but there is off time and schedule > rotation? > > thoughts, experience? It depends a lot on how you structure your shifts; the problem is getting everyone 40 hours without unnecessary overlap. The TV master control facility in which I'm working presently does it by doing overlapping 10 hour shifts; it takes 10 people to have 2 on-shift at all times. You work 6 hours with one person, and 4 with the other. Your 3 teams estimate is, I suspect, derived from dividing 24 hrs/day by 8/hrs shift... but that doesn't take weekends into account, and you don't necessarily want to have 3 more teams who only work 2 days a week. I don't think there's *any* way to do it that guarantees you'll always have the same people working together; fortunately, I also don't think that's all that necessary in that environment. Cheers, -- jra
Re: 365x24x7
> For what it's worth, was part of a datacenter operations department > that > had a 24x7 team. 4 shifts, 4 staff on each shift (1 was supervisor who > did same work as the rest, 1 'point of contact' who stayed in the > office). > 4 days on, 4 days off, 12 hour shifts, 8-8. Shift teams would > alternate > between day and night (so 4 day, 4 off, 4 night, 4 off, repeat ad > infinitum). During the day that was bolstered by 6 day-staff, Monday > to > Friday, who would have a staggered start through the day (IIRC 2 start > at 8, 2 at 9, 2 at 11) And also for what it's worth, my understanding of body circadian rhythm research suggests that "every 8 days" is *WAY* too short a period to be flipping people's shifts from day to night; every 6 months is more reasonable. Cheers, -- jra
Re: NANOG Digest, Vol 39, Issue 52
> From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi@nanog.org Sun Apr 17 08:25:23 > 2011 > Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:24:40 + > Subject: Re: NANOG Digest, Vol 39, Issue 52 > From: Coy Hile > To: nanog@nanog.org > > > > >> Rotating shifts between daytime and nighttime is a horrible thing to > >> do to your workers, both for their health and their attention span. > > > > I wonder how well something like the following would work (seen in > paid fire/EMS circles): > > 24 on, 48 off. > > But staff those 24 shifts with maybe 20% more than actually needed to > provide minimum coverage. That kind of schedule works well *ONLY* where the primary activity is 'sit and wait for something to happen'. Where it is OK to sleep on the job, as long as you come fully awake when the alarm goes off.
Re: 365x24x7
- Original Message - > From: "Dave CROCKER" > There were 3-5 of us covering things for that added time. But, then, > the major operations were purely daytime, during the week. Graveyard shift was > quiet enough that we surreptitiously bought a cot... You didn't work for the FAA, Dave, did you? Cheers, -- jra
Re: 365x24x7 (sleep patterns)
- Original Message - > From: "Mark Foster" > Local emergency services[1] operate '2 days, 2 nights, 4 off'. > > Dayshifts are 10 hour 8am-6pm. Nightshift is 6pm until 8am. This > creates > a 4-watch rotation. I dunno from Ambulance -- they're load driven... by my understanding is that around here, the fire people are 3 days on, and 4 days off, or something similar to that. Since they sleep in, they're effectively on-call at all times, and they've got enough people on a shift that they can do internal rotations as to who goes, unless it's a big enough call that they all need to roll, which is a small enough percentage of calls to make it work. Cheers, - jra
Re: 365x24x7
>Some people claimed they'd have preferred it if we'd changed to the >_following_ shift rater than the preceding shift each week but never >having tried that I don't know how it would be. I've read stuff that confirms that changing to a later shift is much easier than changing to an earlier one. It certainly matches my experience that the jet lag flying to Europe, where I have to get up six hours earlier, is much worse than flying back. It also makes the obvious point that fewer shift changes are easier on the employees than more. R's, John
Re: 365x24x7
Having done this for quite a few years my advice is that once you get past the basic arithmetic of people-hour-equivalents etc what you need is a middle manager who is a good "horse trader" because it quickly becomes a market of "I can do grave shift Tuesday if you'll take my Saturday AM, I've got a wedding I have to be at, XXX says he'll take your Friday night if you take the Saturday but if you still want Sunday off you're going to have to find someone to cover that and Monday morning unless..." And that manager has to be responsible so such shuffling really ends up with necessary coverage because people make mistakes, often in their favor (OOPS!), and that can get complicated. Regular-hours life goes on despite peoples' shifts and they're forever having to be at jury duty, doctor's appointments, social engagements, govt offices, religion, dog kennels, kids' school meetings, etc etc etc which are fixed in the assumption that people work roughly 9AM-5PM M-F. Yeah some of that is actually easier for people who work odd hours and even the attraction of odd hour work but a lot of it isn't and comes up only once in a while per employee which means, for the manager, once or twice a week. Another practicality is policies about people "hanging out" during non-work hours because you'll find overnight people are night people even on their days off and often have nothing better to do than come in and use your higher bandwidth etc, or just get out of the house, they'll become friendly with overnight co-workers, which might be fine by itself until someone brings in a couple of six-packs because hey they're not working and there won't be a boss around after 1AM and...again, maybe not a problem until they decide to share their fun a little too much with people on duty who are nearby... The other problem is food, overnight people get hungry and depending on location and facilities for bringing and preparing food opportunities for a 3AM lunch can be limited in many locations and if you don't solve it somewhat employees may come up with suboptimal solutions like deciding it's only fair that they get an extra 20 minutes travel each way for an hour lunch, or cooking mess, etc. And of course who to call when something goes very wrong at 4AM or they'll call you every time, for some value of "you", or worse they'll call the police (for example) when you prefer they hadn't (or the police or other LEO will call them)...you need some procedures and training to anticipate such things, power problems, building management calling at 5AM that they need whoever is on to let some people in to knock down all the walls, they're waiting outside... Finally, a weird thing? If there's overnight telephone support people (some of whom are customers!) will find it, sometimes lonely people who want to hear a human voice at 4AM and sometimes completely crazy people who, well, want to hear a human voice at 4AM, some of them are very good at manipulating whoever will answer the phone, "our little secret please don't hang up please don't hang up really please!", you need policies and training if that's a possibility. Gak, I could tell stories... -- -Barry Shein The World | b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: 365x24x7
John Levine wrote: I've read stuff that confirms that changing to a later shift is much easier than changing to an earlier one. It certainly matches my experience that the jet lag flying to Europe, where I have to get up six hours earlier, is much worse than flying back. Last time I went to the US I stayed on something pretty close to my usual timetable while there. So I went to bed at about 6pm US time and got up in the very early morning US time. Fortunately, this was fine for the 4-day event I was attending. I think I will do this in future if I can. It also makes the obvious point that fewer shift changes are easier on the employees than more. One of my sisters-in-law is a nurse and her shifts seem to be all over the place from day to day. I don't understand how she copes.
Re: 365x24x7
On 4/17/2011 8:19 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote: - Original Message - From: "Dave CROCKER" There were 3-5 of us covering things for that added time. But, then, the major operations were purely daytime, during the week. Graveyard shift was quiet enough that we surreptitiously bought a cot... You didn't work for the FAA, Dave, did you? No, or we would have gotten more sleep. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: 365x24x7
Having run 24/7 NOC, customer care and tier 3 engineering/dev support, for 20 years, my two cents are: 1) You need to rotate shifts and have overlap between shifts for training and communication purposes 2) Always rotate forward, due sleep cycles 3) If you want to retain staff and not burn them out, do not rotate more than one a month, I've tried from 2 week to 12 week rotations. Longer rotations mean more staff, when you try various shift schedules you will see why, but they work best. You make your cost on the extra staff by lowering turnover which is expensive to deal with. 4) Take your staff opinions in on schedule but you make the call, someone will always dislike the schedule no matter how hard you try,... 5) make sure you support shift swapping within reason, so people can deal with personal schedule conflicts Good luck! Michael Young M:647-289-1220 On 2011-04-17, at 12:18, "John Levine" wrote: >> Some people claimed they'd have preferred it if we'd changed to the >> _following_ shift rater than the preceding shift each week but never >> having tried that I don't know how it would be. > > I've read stuff that confirms that changing to a later shift is much > easier than changing to an earlier one. It certainly matches my > experience that the jet lag flying to Europe, where I have to get up > six hours earlier, is much worse than flying back. > > It also makes the obvious point that fewer shift changes are easier on > the employees than more. > > R's, > John > > > >
mail admin contacts within gc.ca ?
anyone have a method of determining who to contact about DNS/email issues within gc.ca? i tried emailing postmas...@pco.gc.ca, but got a bounce back saying i was not on the 'approved list'. (pco.gc.ca being the group i need to contact) -- Jim Mercerj...@reptiles.org+1 416 410-5633 You are more likely to be arrested as a terrorist than you are to be blown up by one. -- Dianora
Re: mail admin contacts within gc.ca ?
In article <20110417184900.gf66...@reptiles.org> you write: > >anyone have a method of determining who to contact about DNS/email issues >within gc.ca? > >i tried emailing postmas...@pco.gc.ca, but got a bounce back saying i was >not on the 'approved list'. (pco.gc.ca being the group i need to contact) A little poking around on their web site found their electronic directory, which found this list of their IT security people. Give them a call on Monday: http://sage-geds.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/cgi-bin/direct500/eng/XEou%3dITS-STI%2cou%3dITSD-DIST%2cou%3dCORPSERV-SERVMIN%2cou%3dPCO-BCP%2co%3dGC%2cc%3dCA Regards, John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Re: Barracuda Networks is at it again: Any Suggestions as to an Alternative?
Thanks to all for your suggestions. We've had several other problems with our Barracuda box as well including the fact that it is very under-powered and that the web interface for admin stuff seems to freeze up and only send partial http responses back after log queries. Think will probably move on to something else and abandon Barracuda Networks. I certainly would warn others away from their products based on my unpleasant experience.
Re: Implementations/suggestions for Multihoming IPv6 for DSL sites
On 4/7/11 7:04 AM, Owen DeLong wrote: > > On Apr 7, 2011, at 6:51 AM, Tomas Podermanski wrote: > >> Hi Daniel, >>all IPv6 multihoming ideas are very theoretical today. None of them >> is ready to use. Shim6 looks very good, but it requires support on both >> a client and a server side. As you can guess, there is only experimental >> support for some operating systems. Microsoft and Apple doesn't support it. >> > Well, BGP multihoming works today quite well. It's no different from IPv4 > and is a perfectly viable technology. to reiterate, if you are multihoming in ipv4, you likely have a pi assigned prefix or one that you have permission to advertise from an upstream. If you obtain a pi v6 prefix via the same channel you obtained the v4 one it is likely that you simply advertise to 1 or more upstreams and you are done. I have done this too good effect in three different organizations that I've had the privilege of working with so far. I'd go so far as to say that the experience was exactly the same. >> A one possible solution I have found is based on a network prefix >> translation (NPTv6 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-mrw-nat66-12). Using >> NPTv6 you can do multihoming that is very similar to multihoming based >> on IPv4 NAT. >> > You can also use thumb cuffs to suspend yourself from a rafter, but, I don't > recommend it unless you are into pain. > > Owen > >
RE: 365x24x7
Timely article on the FAA's involvement with sleep schedules: http://www.ajc.com/news/air-traffic-controller-scheduling-913244.html "Union spokesman Doug Church said up to now, 25 percent of the nation's air traffic controllers work what he called a "2-2-1″ schedule, working afternoon to night the first two days, followed by a mandatory minimum of eight hours for rest before starting two morning-to-afternoon shifts, another eight or more hours for sleep, then a final shift starting between 10 p.m. to midnight. "Maybe we need to work in more time for rest," Church said. "You’re forcing yourself to work at a time when the body is used to sleeping." Frank -Original Message- From: Dave CROCKER [mailto:d...@dcrocker.net] Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2011 1:15 PM To: Jay Ashworth Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: 365x24x7 On 4/17/2011 8:19 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote: > - Original Message - >> From: "Dave CROCKER" > >> There were 3-5 of us covering things for that added time. But, then, >> the major operations were purely daytime, during the week. Graveyard shift was >> quiet enough that we surreptitiously bought a cot... > > You didn't work for the FAA, Dave, did you? No, or we would have gotten more sleep. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net
Re: 365x24x7
On Apr 17, 2011, at 11:47 20PM, Frank Bulk wrote: > Timely article on the FAA's involvement with sleep schedules: > http://www.ajc.com/news/air-traffic-controller-scheduling-913244.html > "Union spokesman Doug Church said up to now, 25 percent of > the nation's air traffic controllers work what he called a > "2-2-1″ schedule, working afternoon to night the first two > days, followed by a mandatory minimum of eight hours for > rest before starting two morning-to-afternoon shifts, > another eight or more hours for sleep, then a final shift > starting between 10 p.m. to midnight. > > "Maybe we need to work in more time for rest," Church said. > "You’re forcing yourself to work at a time when the body is > used to sleeping." Also see http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hstTegGafIYTakRavF4WEEPblz-Q?docId=f174db27ddb44dadbcad8419dfe138a7 "People who change shifts every few days are going to have all kinds of problems related to memory and learning, Fishbein said. This kind of schedule especially affects what he called relational memories, which involve the ability to understand how one thing is related to another. ... "Controllers are often scheduled for a week of midnight shifts followed by a week of morning shifts and then a week on swing shifts. This pattern, sleep scientists say, interrupts the body's natural sleep cycles." --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
Re: Implementations/suggestions for Multihoming IPv6 for DSL sites
On 4/13/11 12:13 PM, Jeff Wheeler wrote: > However, LISP does have non-Internet applications which are > interesting. You can potentially have multi-homed connectivity > between your own branch offices, using one or more public Internet > connections at each branch, and your own private mapping servers which > know the state of reachability from one branch to the others. In > effect, it can become "poor man's L3VPN." > > Beyond non-Internet applications such as this, I think LISP is useful > largely as a case study for what happens when a bunch of engineers get > together and "solve" some problems they do not understand -- DFZ > size/growth being chief among them. They moved the problem along, that's what indirection does. to borrow from david wheeler: "All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection... Except for the problem of too many layers of indirection." It could be that ultimately what passes for end-system/network multihoming moved up the stack to application layer overlays that already incur the overhead associated with building such a topology. > Like others, I still leave room for the possibility that I am wrong about > this. >
