When Z-day Comes…

…how long will stuff keep working?

Take, for example, electricity. How long will our current power generators and distribution systems last if no one shows up to maintain them one day? How much human intervention is required to keep them going? Will I just keep getting bills auto-generated and stacked in ComEd’s outgoing mail pile?

How ’bout cell phone service? Will all the satelites and fiber optics just keep going until my service is cut off ’cause there’s no one to process my payments? Or the Internet? What if everyone at Google and AT&T just didn’t come to work? How long would their systems keep working?

What about GPS? Will TomTom guide the few remaining people through the  post-apocalyptic wasteland?

I just saw Terminator: Salvation (thumbs, up, mostly) and they seemed to have a fair amount of functioning infrastructure considering the situation. It didn’t seem luxurious by any means, actually quite the opposite, but they seemed to have some sort of digital network, electricity, etc.

I’m just curious. Seems pretty important to have that stuff working, especially since I can barely make a lasagna without internet access.

By the way, that show on History channel, Life After People, sucks. Seriously. Don’t waste one minute watching it. Great idea, poor execution.

My brain is trying to kill my body

I have been up since 3:30am today.

Three…Thirty…A…M.

I have a theory as to why this is, and it goes something like this:

When I decide that I’m going to be drinking, my brain says, “OK! Have fun! See you when you wake up!” and goes somewhere else to be productive. I’m clearly not going to be using it for a while.

I am not one to get up in the middle of the night, so when I do go drinking, and then need to get up in the middle of the night because my body needs to deal with a lack or abundance of water, my brain says “Hey! Welcome Back! Here are all your messages: …” and proceeds to make sure that I am both obnoxiously awake and thinking about stuff that couldn’t matter less at 3:30 in the morning.

So, after laying in bed for an hour trying to get back to sleep but still thinking about everything that’s going on, I decided to get up. And do some server maintenance. That’s reasonable. Right?

I’m not even hungover. Just annoyed. And tired.

…but we did take first in our league.