my dear friend charlie was discussing the fact that angry birds has a energy limit that leads to you having to quit the game, alongside some unrelated feelings of deep seeded boredom at work. As a class-a work slacker, I decided to make a page dedicated on how I best slack off at work, so you can slack off too.
Neocities
I made this page with neocities. I started off working on html study while in boring classes during my last semester at college, but neocities is one of the great attention hogs of work if you can come up with a good idea to get lost in. If for nothing else, it can be a good tool for digital organization (see workboard.) Also, you can explore stranger's pages, and looking at global activity sorted by recent can show you what people are editing within the last hour or two. I do not have many regular blogs I follow but if you can find one it can be worthwhile.
rateyourmusic
Rateyourmusic is my favorite site, the premiere social music front of the internet. Really great backlogs of lists and charts to look over and get some cute little discoveries. Admittedly, my enjoyment is combined with the fact that I have built community on the website for 7 years now, and I make autobiographical lists documenting my life that I post to a little community, but still. I'm working on one for spring albums rn. Forgot to mention that since my wifi is extra isp protected, rym was never blocked but for a period of time it would go to white screen. my prediction was that there was an automated blocker that had rym unlisted but they saw me go on it so many times that they blocked it without a popup screen. That being said, recently it notices the company vpn so maybe it was just a weird authentication glitch. anyways. follow me
Goodreads || Letterboxd
Same Principles as rym, but I think they are both worse sites. Goodreads is nice to write reviews and see what my friend's are reading, but it's clunky and the discovery is horrible. Letterboxd is excellent for discovery, but the social aspect is barren (unless you have a lot of friends on the site) and many of the one liner reviews are way too annoying for my taste. I have a formidable watchlist piling up though. ... Follow ... me
wikipedia
In my zeal to include some of the more obscure options, I neglected to add wikipedia, which is my second favorite site behind rym. Good for random research, significantly better for searching than Google (ai slop) or reddit (negative attention magnet, anecdotal drivel). Everyone should make an account and try to edit a couple of articles, its really easy and it hold's your hand through it all.
wiby.me
wiby is an old internet search engine, using minor scraping and contribution to build a backlog of little personal websites for wide ranging interests. beautiful not because of the longgone nostalgia of old blogs and such, but because of how in depth the knowledge is. i'll probably link a few below, one of my favorites is a guy who cataloged every notable farm in maine.
The Pulse
The pulse is the NYT free newsletter for sports. I read it every morning after I do my work homework.1 Good with a cup of coffee, it was more entertaining when they had a weekly NFL ranking.
The Atlantic Latest || NYT Lifestyle || NYT arts || archive.is
I do not like the news, but this is different. Okay, the atlantic accidentally gets you involved with the news, but I usually just scroll around til I find some interesting thinkpiece or some such. Archive.is gets you around the paywalls.
Annas Archive || Ocean of PDFala || Project Gutenberg || Libby || Cloud EPUB Reader|| BookFusion
This one is certainly job dependant, if you are in school then it literally does not matter. Ocean of PDF is at the reccomendation of Ala last night, I have never used it. Annas Archive is the premire destination for books, they host the upper eschilon of sites and pull directly from them, you download the links after a ddos check, use the slow partner download, it's been taking me around 30 seconds but at osu it took me around 5-10 minutes per book. Project Gutenberg has almost every public domain book (books before 1927, #CopyrightWin) in every format including one html text page. Well done for sure, but sometimes more obscure books aren't translated. Also, how could I forget about libby? It is not as good as overdrive (you cannot download mp3s of the audiobooks without installing a script and an extension for chrome) but i mean, library books, on your computer.
For reading, I use BookFusion, but it only lets you upload 3 books a month which is a huge pain in the ass. I have considered buying the subscription but I cannot bring myself to. I put longer and more time consuming books there, the rest I read with Cloud Epub reader. When you install it, it'll pop up when you click on an epub file in your drive. It's not great, the customization is bare bones, but the other alternatives are all worse or need to be installed (if you are on a personal computer or one where you suspect they dont give a shit about it, get calibri portable, but this computer I'm typing on defintiely tracks me.)
This is in my opinion the best use of your time at work. For me, My boss does not hover so much as come to the front once every like 45 minutes, and he does not really give a fuck what I'm up to, but even if he did him and no other managers have ever batted an eye at an open page of text, even when it was that raunchy (albeit brilliant) Jeanette McCurdy book.
finwake dot com
Finnegans Wake is James Joyce's infamous masterpiece, a nearly eight hundred page book, written over seventeen years, seventeen years that his family begged and pleaded with him to give up, and it emulates the nature logic and speech of dreams. I still do not know what it is about, because it feels like a spoiler. This year, instead of simply doing ambient september, I am doing ambient autumn in celebration of the inagural five year anniversary of the yearly celebration. I am going to finally commit myself to reading finnegans wake, a book I have opened over a dozen times and know full well I cannot traverse alone. It is the most ambient book because of how it commands language. That being said, it is so dense, so multifaceted, and takes so much time that it is the perfect work book. This website goes through pretty much every notable definition and synonym you could need, but I am sure it is only partly universal for grasping the story as a whole.
Universal Paperclipsthomas / zach
I was introduced to universal paperclips by my friend last december, and it became kind of a sick obsession. Given so many games are outright blocked on the servers, this one not being blocked was a miracle. I think over the course of the sixteen shift hours I clocked about 9 hours of universal paperclips time. I did not know you could hold down enter on my first run, which became a game changer on the second run. Works well as a clicker game (better than many alternatives) and the science fiction aspect of things brings it up a tad.
Retrogames Cz
Since my last job was at OSU they could not block certain things from the wifi for some general accessibility / "you also live here" reason. Unfortunately the isp at my job blocks all games (well, if you don't look hard enough, theres always the GBA emulator that gets through) but this has a good selection, even though the mario's are not availible. This is on here mainly for NES tetris, which while being one of my five favorite games ever, is really easy to pick up and play at work. If someone calls me I can just put it down and it don't matter.
Pokemon Quizriley || Sporcle
This one is for the geeks, my old supervisor plays this one very frequently. You stare at the blank pokedex and try to fill them all in from memory. I have seen him with it open for 3+ hours. I think his best is like 85%. While I have you here I might as well remind you about sporcle, which has a wide variety of games. Learning and silly ones. Unfortunately, my work blocks sporcle.
Snake Game || nyt access through columbus library || USA Today Crossword || Bracket Cityala
Snake game has a daily challenge that occupies a good five minutes of time. The second link gives you NYT all access, including games, you just have to re-up it once every 24 hours. The USA today crossword is free with an account, they say you can only play 3 per week but if you print it (hopefully your place of work has printers that nobody tracks) you can get as many as you want. Bracket City is courtesy of Ala (Shoutout number two), she mentioned it offhandedly once and it has really been entertaining for me at the front desk.
Catfishingnick || Jetpunkjustin || cityquiz.iojustin || hugequizjustin
Snake game has a daily challenge that occupies a good five minutes of time. The second link gives you NYT all access, including games, you just have to re-up it once every 24 hours. The USA today crossword is free with an account, they say you can only play 3 per week but if you print it (hopefully your place of work has printers that nobody tracks) you can get as many as you want. Bracket City is courtesy of Ala (Shoutout number two), she mentioned it offhandedly once and it has really been entertaining for me at the front desk.
OnHockey || StreamSports99 || plaintextsports || HockeyDB morning Report || Spectors Hockey
Advanced level of slacking off at work here. I got into hockey last january almost at random, but now am a devoted fan of pretty much every League2. Throughout the season in the lower leagues (esepcially the ECHL) they have 10:30am games on tuesdays and wednesdays. It sometimes is at random (there have only been two this month) and the streams can be spotty (sometimes I just look up a radio broadcast) but when the stars align it is a really entertaining way to pass the time at work in the mornings. If you are REALLY bored you can get into eastern european hockey. StreamSports99 has a number of international channels as well, it is how I watch the NLL on fridays. Plaintext sports is ESPN without the fluff (my work has tvs around the lobby so I watch a lot of ESPN while I pace around, and I can confirm that it is fluff.) and HockeyDB has a report that breaks down all trades and shows you upcoming games. Olympic Break makes for the hockey related stuff to feel a little bit barren. Spectors Hockey is also good for trade rumors. A good coffee read.
FMHY
Free Media Heck Yeah is not much of a direct slack off tool, but it is the way that I found a lot of stuff. It's very important to me. I think everyone needs this bookmarked.
1 "Work homework?" you ask. Yes! After I disinfect the computer I print out the avalibility display which shows the check ins (16 today) check outs (19 today) occupancy (90% today) avalible rooms (11 today) and Vacant Ready Rooms (4 as of 7:12am). I print out the additoinal authorization requests to make sure all credit card money has been authorized, I print out all exceptions where credit cards were declined, and the guest Prepay list to confirm the authorization limits exceed the credits for the room rate. Then I print out the contingency report (15-25 pages that go through every aspect of the hotel in case the computers shut down), i remove parking fees and write out all the market segments (defines whether it is a regular rate, a discounted rate, or a company rate) on the page. There is a new incentive that whoever gets the most company names filled in for reservations gets a $25 gift card, so while I insert market segments I look at guest email addresses and previous reservations to fill those in and print them out. Then I check people out until 12pm, I take the deposits for future reservations, and then I close my shift at 3. Work homework takes between 15 minutes and 30 minutes, my reward is coffee and newsletter.
2 NHL: Columbus Blue Jackets, Buffalo Sabres, Toronto Maple Leafs, Utah Mammoth
AHL: Cleveland Monsters, Belleville Senators, Abbotsford Canuks,
ECHL: Worcester Railers, Toledo Walleye, Trois-Rivières Lions