When I'm short I feel very confident if I'm getting an avg. run of cards on picking my spots for 3bet shove resteals from various positions and what not.  What I am not good at figuring out is how to pick-up chips when I got card dead for an hour.

This realization came last night during a live 1 table $30 rebuy tournament.  Most of the players are pretty good, and all except 2 are very aggressive.  From 5 handed down to 4 I never picked up a hand that I could do anything with and/or the situation/dynamic wasn't right for 3 bet shipping 15bb's with poop.  Is there a video on TPE or other and/or some good reading I can do on stragedy's to employ. 

4 handed the stks didn't really allow me to do much.  seat 1 was a very good very aggressive big stk, seat 2 was a station with 15~bb's, me on the short stk, and seat 4 was a ubber tight weak spot. 

 When I was UTG I couldn't open light and was even nervous to shove light because the station was in the BB.  When I was on the btn the very good very aggressive (super huge stk) was in the bb.  We know each others games very well and he would most likely be calling me very light (especially with his ubber huge chip stk).  The only real easy shove spot I had was when I was sbvbb.  The weak spot actually folded 77 to me face up when I shoved with 8bb's at one point (I had Q6s).  Showing me that hand was a mistake, but it allowed me to stick around a little longer waiting for a hand and a call (hopefully holding up). 

First is my anaylsis of the stk sizes and players types correct to continue playing tight on the bubble?  I was getting a lot of T3's and 74's ect. so it wasn't like I was open folding KJ on the btn with 8bb's or anything, but I never really got a chance. 

Could someone give me some advice on spots I can pick-up chips pre-flop with 20bb's or less in bubble situations.  I know most people don't want to bust the bubble, but niether do I.  I also know I can push certain players off of hands they should never be folding to my shoves, but this particular situation and I'm sure I'll be in many many similar situations how can I better understand short stking strag in the future so my stk doesn't dwindle down to 3bb's before I ship giving bb the chance to call with almost ATC.