Short call is assigned in 14 hour blocks. They can call you at any time in that window, but short call is considered duty. So, the farther you go into your window, the less you can do.

Also, typical, they call you 6 hours into your window and tell you, you are released, and assigned another short call for the next day. As you said, night mare for commuters. Rolling continuous short calls, just because the crew desk can. You can have most of the reserve list on short call, no rhyme or reason as to how many, or when, just because they can.

Also, and this is he bonus round, you can still sit 24 hr short call/duty cycle. 14 hours short call, 10 hour minimum rest. As Mako said, if your fleet is fat, you get a lot of pay to stay at home. If not, hope you have a good crash pad.

Oh, and the crew desk can build short calls at any time of day they like. You check and see what is open--no short calls. Great! An extra night at home you say?? Not so fast, 1 hour later, they build a slew of short calls so no one that wants them can pick them up, and you guessed it, the commuters get the now unwanted short calls. Almost like they check who is picking up, and they don't want to pay for extra short calls.

One of the very few gets because of FAR 117, is, coming off days off. They can't assign you anything before 10 am. You can pick up before that, but they will try to get you to bite. Don't. That's what's rumored the company wanted in exchange for some other stuff on the contract extension.