Sleep deprivation and KraftWerk
So, I go to bed late and plan to begin work today at a respectable 9am. Usually I consider myself very fortunate to live so close (15 mins drive) to the office. But this brings with it key holder responsibilities and this morning I get a call at 3.30am – just 3 hours after heading off to bed – telling me that the intruder alarm has been triggered at the office.
We’ve had false alarms before so it did cross my mind not to bother going down. I was barely conscious after all. If I go, by the time I checked it out and come back it was going to be almost 5 and the kids would be up between 5.30 and 6 making real sleep impossible at home. So, I tell my wife I will work early and come home early. The house will be empty for a couple of hours after lunch so I can catch up on my sleep and perhaps get some more work done before the evening play/dinner/bath/stories/bed routine.
Well, conscience got the better of me and I decided to go down. If two zones had been triggered, the police get notified automatically but for one, it’s just me. The most likely scenario is a false alarm, the next most likely, kids who would have been scared off by the alarm and wouldn’t hang around. But they might leave the building insecure so I have to go.
At this point one can’t help wondering what if there IS an intruder? Well on balance of probability I think it’s very unlikely someone set off one zone and subsequently disabled the alarm but nonetheless, caution is in order so my Wife sets an alarm for 30 minutes hence. If I don’t text to say all is well before the alarm goes off then she calls the police. At least if I’ve been left for dead or am otherwise incapacitated help should arrive very soon after. My wife isn’t going to sleep until I text anyway so this seems like a sensible precaution.
Well, as expected it appears to be a false alarm. I can’t figure out the alarm to tell me which zone it was so I decide to stay and begin the working day early. It’s useful, I have another server migration to do, this one can be done without notification to customers so I begin. The few minutes I have to write this post arises from the backup/restore/cycle that takes a while and starting any other meaningful work that will be interrupted a few minutes from now by a completed restore is foolish, resulting only in something else that will be delayed by interruption (llike my sleep).
Disruption to one’s slumber can have odd effects on the morning brain. Almost since I arrived here pre-dawn I have had the song “The Model” by KraftWerk playing in my head. You know the one, “She’s a model and she’s loo-king good… da dum, da da da da da da de dum”. This is often my “song for the day”, that often good but frequently dreadful tune that you have running around in the noggin all day long. This morning though, it’s so pernicious that on returning from tea-making a moment ago I sat at my desk, noticed the restore wasn’t finished but that my PC was strangely silent and wondered where is Kraftwerk? why has the music stopped? What crashed?
Several minutes of frantic clicking wondering why iTunes has closed -or was it a radio station I was listening to? or BBC iPlayer perhaps? has resulted in the eventual realisation that this song was only EVER in my head today. I’m at work. I don’t have an iTunes library here. That’s at home. iTunes didn’t close down. iPlayer or the radio didn’t close down. I wasn’t listening to anything other than my own sleep-deprived brain. “da dum, da da da da da da da dum”.
That’s all for now. It looks like the restore is nearly finished and I must also yawn repeatedly for a few minutes. As no doubt will you after reading this tosh.