hpr_transcripts/hpr1558.txt

Episode: 1558
Title: HPR1558: Lunch Breaks
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1558/hpr1558.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 05:06:19

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Think about it.
Greetings, hacker public radio listeners.
This is Christopher Hobbs. I'm bringing you an update after about a year of silence.
I spent some time on GNU social and saw that people are talking about HDR still
and thought I would try and squeeze in and recording.
I don't often have time to record, nor do I have the equipment.
As you can tell by this poor fidelity, using my replicant-based phone to record this particular podcast.
And I hope it turns out well. This is a bit of a test.
I'd like to get some better podcasting equipment, maybe a handheld recorder or a good headset from my machine.
But this will have to suffice for now.
I'd like to talk a little bit about some fun activities you can do on your launch break.
Notably that of sort of, let's call it guerrilla leisure or maybe an offshoot of urban exploration.
And if this goes well enough, I may record another couple of podcasts following the What's in My Bag series and how I got into Linux series.
So without further ado, let's get started.
So your launch break, usually an hour, although I believe some companies give two 15-minute breaks as well as a 30-minute break.
And I'm speaking from a US perspective, I don't know what launch breaks are like in the rest of the world.
Most of the time people just brownpagot or they go to a restaurant and spend a bunch of money and eat and then go back to the daily grind.
And I don't find this very refreshing. I don't enjoy it very much.
I will occasionally go to lunch with co-workers, my wife or a family member, and eat with them.
But I prefer to spend my lunch break relaxing.
Often companies will have a break room available or some space available for you to go to lunch.
And I don't believe there's anything that requires that you be restricted to the building.
A lot of people will go exercise at lunch or even go out to pick up food.
So it's not a prison. You're not kept there. And nobody really needs to know where you're going. So why not go explore a little bit?
So a little history about how my launch breaks have sort of gone.
Years ago I was a bench technician when I first started working. One of my first jobs was as a bench technician for Radio Shack for a franchise store,
preparing VCRs and guitar amplifiers and things of that nature.
And we would occasionally pull pranks with the other stores in the complex on our launch breaks.
We would do fun things like run remote control cars down the hallway or play with some of our electronics,
some remote gag devices to play funny sounds and other people's offices.
And that really started my desire to break out of the lunch mold as it were.
Shortly after that job I started working for local municipality in the network department in the IT department.
And I would ride my bike to work every day.
I found that lunch breaks were a perfect time for bike rides and for sort of exploring the city as it were.
I would also occasionally hold up in the knock and take a nap, probably not the best use of my time,
but it was a nice 65 degrees and comfortable in there, 65 Fahrenheit for those of you who are curious.
And pitch black with the hum of machines, it made a great place to get a quick nap in.
I also used to spend some time exploring remote sites. I worked remotely quite often.
We had 16 sites connected by fiber and I would have to go repair a network and equipment at those sites.
Often it would bleed over into my lunch break.
I would be at places like a water treatment facility and just ask someone to show me around the place.
Show me all the pipes, show me all the controls.
Let me walk around the reservoir and it yielded some very very interesting places to look at.
And I find often that if you simply ask someone for a tour of a location, they'll be more than happy to show you around at least once.
After that job I wound up working up in Kansas City, Kansas briefly as a remote position,
but they would occasionally have me go up to Kansas to work.
And during that time, it's the first time I ever worked in a large office building.
I think it was probably 13 or 14 story building. To me, that's large. I live in a flat and sprawling suburban type city.
I spent some time wandering all of the different offices and floors.
And I would simply just pick a floor on a lunch break and take the elevator to a floor and see what offices were there.
Check out the directory, see if anything looked interesting.
And would sometimes ask people if they would show me around their offices, show me what the view looked like.
And it all worked out pretty well. I got to see a lot of different spaces.
I even got to hang out with some of the kitchen staff in the cafeteria and see how the kitchen worked.
I got to see a little bit about how the infrastructure of the building works, sort of the electrical and mechanical rooms.
And the elevator repair guys were there one day and simply asking them if they would show me how the elevators worked.
I got to see all the elevator controls and I got to do it to the top of the building.
So it's a pretty great thing to do to just simply ask.
If the days were nice and I didn't want to be in the building, it was in a semi-wooded area that was designed to preserve some nature in the region.
I would just go walk through drainage ditches and go into some of the more wooded spaces and look around if she was out there.
And I found some very, very pretty natural spots in the middle of a relatively large city with, I mean, views in there that people probably never pay any attention to.
The busy world is all around you and nobody stops and looks at these places.
Granted, some of this is trespassing but that doesn't take away from the fact that there are beautiful spaces that nobody really seems to see.
So wandering around in those wooded areas really made me want to look at urban spaces that are sort of hidden away and that nobody pays attention to.
That really carried with me to my current job and when I first started working there, they had a building in the middle of town with not a lot of interesting things around it.
There was a hardware store and lumber yard nearby in a coffee house and there was a trail that went through in some railroad tracks.
I'm not real keen on walking down railroad tracks especially because that is serious trespassing and if you get caught, you're getting relatively big trouble.
However, the trail system out there was nice, it was a paved multi-use path.
It did that end in a couple of places and the interesting things were a little bit at the limits of my walking ability.
However, quick drives in the region would extend my walking space and I found lots of great wooded areas and lots of spaces within a park that had been unkempt for a long time.
I found a lot of derelict equipment, playground equipment that was fun to eat lunch under and I also found a couple of large metal type areas between lots of offices that again I don't think anybody has ever visited in a very, very long time.
It's just a nice quiet place in the middle of a large urban area where you can get away and enjoy an hour alone or with a friend if you want to bring someone with you.
These spaces are just totally overlooked all the time and it's very refreshing and relaxing.
It seems an oasis of a little bit of nature in the middle of nowhere that nowhere being the bustling city all around you.
They eventually changed offices. We moved to a more remote location on the southern end of the city that I work in and this opened up all sorts of new exploring potential.
This new office was just off the highway and was right next to a neighborhood that happened to have a dead end trail that was another multi-use path which never quite had development finished out in the back of it next to a field.
I found that path on a lunch break simply walking through the neighborhood on the sidewalks just taking a walk around the neighborhood as if I was on a regular stroll.
When I reached the end of that neighborhood I realized that there was a short patch of grass that looked like it had some pavement behind it so I just hopped on back and started walking.
Dead ended on both sides one ended a farm the other end right at the highway and as luck would have it it connected to the field that was right by our office.
Spent a lot of time in the last few months on my lunch breaks when the weather is fair wandering around and exploring these regions.
I found if you follow me on Gunnar Social at all a couple of great places including a stream where I can hang up my hammock and kick back and read a book or mess around with my phone or just enjoy a little bit of secluded nature for a while.
I've also spent some time sort of exploring the interior of our building. Our offices were built into a warehouse and there were some open warehouse space and I spent a little bit of time just sort of wandering around and exploring what the building was constructed of, what it looked like and found some very nice quiet places to be where I'm still in my office technically.
And there's just interesting things to look at and nothing's locked up or kept away from me just people never seem to appreciate the unused corners of buildings as it were.
So both nature and the interior of your own workspace can be a great place to unwind, relax and see something you wouldn't normally see.
So that being all of that being said I know I've mentioned some of this is probably trespassing. Some of the spaces I've been in are public spaces. Some of them I'm not sure if they're public or private.
So I don't want to say that I'm condoning trespassing. It would be better to learn what the spaces you're going into are.
And after a couple of not necessarily bad encounters but a couple of encounters where I realized that I was on private land as opposed to public land or I realized I was entering a private space.
I think it's a better option to make sure you understand the zoning of the space you're going into and make up your own mind about whether or not trespassing on a lunch break is worth it.
You would rather go back to the office I would imagine after lunch as opposed to having to explain why police were called or anything of that nature.
So I'm not a lawyer and I don't want to see anybody getting trouble so just keep a good head on your shoulders when you're doing this sort of thing.
So that leads me to what kind of gear you'll need for this. You might go to work in business casual. I'm lucky to not have a dress code at work. I'm actually barefoot around the office quite regularly.
But when I did have to wear business casual when I was at the city the best thing I'd found or the simplest thing I found is just to keep an extra pair of shoes with you either in your car or in your bike bag.
Wherever you happen to be just a good pair of sturdy walking shoes or sandals or whatever you like to walk in.
That is the easiest piece of gear that you can do for sort of lunchtime exploration.
Next I would bring a light bag. I found that of all places I don't like to promote it.
So I won't say the name but my local big box store happened to sell a very very very lightweight bag.
It's a backpack that folded up into itself and sent down into a little pouch.
I've also used grocery bags that sent down and I find these really useful. I put them in my office bag just a nice collapsible bag that folds up into itself.
And whenever I decide I'm going to go on a little exploration trip I get that bag out, open it up and put whatever I need in there.
So I'll often bring some water with me and of course it is lunch so it is good to eat something.
You don't have to totally skip eating so I'll put a snack in there of some kind.
And maybe a book or an activity that I want to take with me.
One big thing if you go into places like I do I often wind up walking through a bunch of brush or into places with potentially sharp metal bits or something.
Bring a first aid kit, small super light first aid kits are easy to find.
You don't want to be carrying a giant bag with you so keep everything small.
Keep your snack small, keep your first aid small.
Another good thing to bring is a towel or a bandana. It's easy to keep or handkerchief. It's easy to keep a handkerchief or a bandana in your pocket.
I have one with me daily and as Hitchhiker's guide says never forget your towel.
So that's a great thing to have with you. If you get a little bit dirty you can use it to wipe off.
If you need to take a hold of something that's dirty you can wrap that around it and grab it.
You can cover your face with it or cover your neck or whatever you need to do.
If you get into something that just smells terrible you can use it to breathe through endless uses for that.
Of course you may want to bring a camera but most of us have a phone so multi-function is a definite key.
And if you're going to be there for a while like I tend to be you may want to think about investing in an ultra light hammock.
I carry a grand trunk ultra light hammock. It's green so it ideally fits in with my surroundings when I'm outdoors.
And that with a couple of carabiners and a little 550 cord fits up into a very very small, mostly unnoticeable space.
And what I find that carrying a shopping bag is the most a collapsible shopping bag is the most benign thing I could carry.
My little ultra light backpack that I got that folds up into itself is awful tiny but it still looks a little weird wandering around.
You look almost like a vagrant of some kind. If you happen to have a shopping bag you look a little more like someone who's just strolling.
However that ultra light hammock is very small fits in either bag.
Even well sometimes not carry a bag and just clip that on my hip and carry it around. And nobody seems to care about it.
It looks a little bit like a fanny pack when I've got it on my hip and it doesn't really draw any attention.
Another option is a lot of as I said ultra light with the hammock. A lot of ultra light backpacking folks recommend sit pads or they even sell sit pads.
You can get clothes sell foam pads from your local big box store for very very very cheap.
And just cut a small square so that if you find a place where you want to sit down and you're in your business casual clothes that you don't want messed up.
They are water resistant and it's not water proof. You can just set that down and put a dirt barrier between your butt and the ground.
That way you won't have any problems with messing up your fancy clothes or if you just want something comfortable sit on it's a great option.
So from there let's talk about how to find places.
So you got all your gear with you. Hopefully it's not a lot of gear. Hopefully it fits into a small space.
And you've decided that you're going to go ahead and condense your break time at work to an hour so you can get out and roam around.
And you're going to go leave your office premises. You walk out the front door with your bag. Now what?
Well if you don't know where you're going you're going to waste a lot of time. So what I like to do before I pull off any of this is get some mapping software or talk to people in the area or see if you can find county maps or city maps of the region at City Hall.
And just look at the layout of the buildings. Look at the space that's marked and look at the distance between spaces.
If you're looking at mapping software and you find that there's not a lot of tags as it were or a lot of things listed with a good deal of space between them.
You may be staring at private land but you also may be staring at public land like retention ponds or clearing spaces or regions near and around railroad.
A lot of times those are actually quite easily accessible through main roadways and have interesting things to look at in them.
If nothing else simply walking to that region is a good bit of exercise that you can use to wake yourself up and stretch the legs a little bit.
So once you've got sort of a target area there, spend some time on a day that's not a lunch break for lack of better words, casing the joint as it were, just driving around looking for entry points.
Now what you want to try and find is an easy entry point with a lot of good cover. You don't want to have to walk into a space and have to conceal yourself repeatedly.
Keep in mind you're only going to be out for an hour. A good chunk of that is going to be travel time getting to your destination and you want to spend as much time exploring as you can while you're there.
So make sure it's got one good point of entry and once you've made it past that good point of entry you should be in relative cover where you can explore safely and privately.
You don't really have time to be sneaking around and trying to find multiple entry points.
So those are the two easiest ways to find either. That's the easiest way I think to find these places.
Another thing that's for outdoor spaces but if you're looking at indoor spaces start wandering around the building where you work.
If it's a big complex building just pick a floor on an elevator or just start looking at places where you're not supposed to be where you normally wouldn't go.
Ask people where they work. Go see if you can take a look at their regions of the office.
None of this has to be covert operations. You can do this in the open and be friendly about it.
Just look around. See where people go, see what they do. You may even learn more about other departments that way.
If you're going sort of the covert route, I want to talk a little bit about not getting caught in what to do if you get caught.
Some of the spaces I've been to, like I said, were clearly private property. I've discovered that later.
I don't intentionally go out to private property but once I discover they are I definitely never go back.
If I've been found out there, I always apologize and treat people well.
I find that the best way to not arouse any suspicion is don't be suspicious for lack of better words.
I normally don't tell people where I'm going. If I'm going somewhere that might be a little bit dangerous, if it's somewhere where I could fall and hurt myself or something of that nature, I will text my wife and let her know my location.
People at work, I just simply stroll out of the building and if anybody speaks to me, I say, hey, I'm going to lunch, I'll see you later.
I don't make a big deal about it, I don't make a production, I behave as if I would if I were simply going out to fetch something to eat.
If you're trying to conceal it, it often may be helpful to bring back a fast food bag or something if you're really trying to hide it.
Though I don't see a need for this, most people will understand and at the worst they'll call you a little weird.
So getting out, just be natural, don't worry about it. Now once you get to your location, even though you've got a little bag on, if you decide to go that route, again, don't be sneaky.
If you look natural, if you look confident, if you behave normally, if you smile and be friendly with people, generally nobody's going to question you.
If you look like you belong, nobody will question whether or not you belong. We're programmed not to care if somebody looks like they belong in the environment.
So don't stick out like a sore thumb and don't be sneaky.
The other thing is be friendly. If there's other people out there or people near there, you can often get through with little or no question by greeting people.
Don't hide yourself. Don't try to avoid eye contact. Don't try to avoid other people. Wave at them. Be friendly. Good afternoon. Happy Monday, that sort of thing.
And go on about your business. If you're friendly, people will usually leave you alone. Now, on the off chance that you get caught somewhere you're not supposed to be, I think the best plan of action here is to just tell the truth.
If it's private property, the owner, if you tell them the truth and tell them what you're doing, they'll likely tell you to, hey, go away. This is my property. Don't come back. And you honor that. You apologize. You say, thank you for your time. Be nice. Tell the truth.
I was out on my lunch break and I was looking for a neat place to look around or sit down and have a drink and some food. Be completely honest with them, especially if you wind up in a confrontation with the authorities.
If there's police or security guards or if you're near railway, the bull is out there, the railway police, if any of those people out there, be completely open with them, completely honest.
I was just wandering around seeing what's out here, looking for a good place to sit down and have my lunch. They may tell you there's a partner by, they may tell you to go away. Either way, the polite, respectful, tell the truth and be friendly.
And again, don't be sneaky. That's going to be the worst thing for you. So I think that's all I've got for this episode, friends. And I hope it worked out well. I hope the recording quality is not too terrible and that it's enjoyable enough.
And if this pans out, I will see what I can do about recording some more episodes for you. Thanks everybody for listening. Take care.
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