Things Geeks Do When Bored

On the flight back to Atlanta today I was without my laptop, which is at Apple's repair depot for who knows how long, and started to think of things geeks tend to do when they get bored. I had considered making a "you know you X when.."-type post similar to one of my favorite posts, You Know You Go To a Tech School When... but I figured I would just ask you what you do when there's nothing else to be done, or everything else is being ignored?

Do you do any of these geeky things when bored?

  • browse the recent and random code postings on clipboard services like Pastie
  • emerge world on your Gentoo Linux box
  • check your website's traffic stats
  • participate in meaningless banter on miscellaneous tech forums
  • spec out your next file server on Newegg
  • kill -9 non-responsive processes hogging up too much of your system's resources (great video)
  • practice your power napping skills
  • run a Google Code search for "here be dragons" or expletives
  • recompile your kernel, ignoring options and modules you don't ever use
  • write the about page for that tech startup of yours that never seems to get established
  • attempt to code FizzBuzz in esoteric programming languages like Chef (I've actually had to use Chef for a class last year) and Brainfuck
  • think up amazing get-rich-quick schemes so you can actually afford Adobe's CS3 line of creative applications (Photoshop CS3 is 771! I wonder what the educational version runs for..)
  • stay up-to-date with your many, many RSS feed subscriptions