Technology

This pilot fish is writing mainframe software for a large defense contractor, and he's discovered a way to become a lot more efficient: arrive at work at 6 a.m.

"The traffic is light at that hour, and I get a couple of hours of work in without much interruption," says fish. "It also means I get to find what changes the computer center -- which is at a different location -- has made overnight.

"One morning I sat down, fired up the PC that's my terminal and started to work. But the editor was acting very strangely, so I called a system guy I know to find out what was going on.

Fish: Fred, what did you do the editor last night

Fred: "We made some minor changes, but there were no changes visible to the user."