A Problematic Office Hiatus

I've just been hit by a hiatus this morning.

I was just... vegetable in the office. Staring at the monitor. Not saying that there wasn't anything to do. Actually, there were tons of things I need to finish, I just can't shake the blank stare off my face and my dead brain to function. You know, like, here you are, telling your head to just get on with the work, you need to optimize the time if you want to finish everything on time... but the head is JUST not listening!

Couple of things I did to try to perk me up:
1. Walk around the office several times. (no, not working)
2. Ate a couple of candies (maybe low in sugar? no, still no good)
3. Ate a pear (maybe it needs some more "natural" sugar? errm.. I guess not)
4. Went to the fire exit to do some calf raises (yes, it is going to be embarrassing if my officemates find out.. but hey, I'm desperate)
5. Tried to "do" the aero choreography in the fire exit once (yes, I was jumping around with my heels on, but still, no go)
6. Ate some corn flakes (maybe its carbohydrates I need instead of sugar?)

I was already at my wits end.. my head wasn't moving.. I thought about asking my supervisor to give me something "brainless" to do, but I decided against it (he might realize I haven't been productive the whole day.. but then again, its not like I'm not TRYING.) Finally, I was left with getting myself a strong cup of coffee to jerk my heart rate up (while we're at it, I did also measure my heart rate while trying to figure out how to get out of this hiatus. Its 68 beats per minute.) or trying to listen to blaring music while trying to force myself to work.

I chose to do option#2 first.

It seemed to have worked ;) I've selectively picked a couple of perky, upbeat songs, and after the 3rd song and doing some brainless scanning of a huge 15MB database tracefile (text) that's been causing significant performance problems to the production server, I've successfully got the ball rolling.

My list of effective perky songs? Take a look...

You're Only Human (Second Wind) - Billy Joel
No SuchThing - John Mayer
Canned Heat - Jamiroquai
Enough To Go By - Vienna Teng
Shashta - Vienna Teng
Hope On Fire - Vienna Teng
Tear in Your Hand - Tori Amos
Happy Phatnom - Tori Amos
Crucify - Tori Amos
Dont Let It Bring You Down - Annie Lenox
One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - Ben Folds Five
Accidentally in Love - Counting Crows
Big Yellow Taxi - Counting Crows
Hard Candy - Counting Crows

Thank goodness for earphones, mp3s, and winamp in the office. And I even got the chance to find out what the performance bottleneck is. How wonderful.