Millions of text messages were sent simultaneously at midnight on New Year's. Many were delayed, or didn't arrive at all. A delay in holiday greetings is not a big deal, but what about during a real emergency? Emergency personnel and government officials are automatically given priority on landline and cellular networks, leaving the average consumer in the lurch. After 9/11, cell-phone traffic in New York was at a standstill for days. Cellular networks, like highways, aren't designed to have everyone use them at once. When everyone tries to make a call at once, for a holiday or emergency, communication breaks down. The communications infrastructure, as it is currently designed, will never be able to handle calling patterns thousands of times heavier than normal. Your best bet? Send an IM. (Photo by PhotoOptik)

Reddit founder and teenage RSS co-developer Aaron Swartz has been posting chapters to Bubble City, a novel in progress. The guy's no Gore Vidal, but with today even slower than Christmas on the Internet, an 11-chapter serial about corrupt startups and an eeeeevil Google may be just what you need to kick back with until Cory Doctorow's next dispatch.
(Photo by Jacob Applebaum)

Who called a freaking holiday right in the middle of the last week of the sales year? Clearly, the in-duh-viduals who run HR aren't on a revenue-based compensation plan. If you're still working the deals and/or deliverables today, know you're not alone: 25,000 readers have hit Valleywag already and it's not even noon in Santa Clara. My wife is cranking out a new solutions guide, Dave Winer is on Twitter, and Gizmodo is posting like mad even though Denton gave them the day off. What are we eating in the Valley today? Everyone else's lunch. Merry Christmas, lusers.

Many Starbucks sites are open today. Tully's is hopping. Muddy Waters and most of the cafes on Valencia Street are online. But the traitors at Ritual Roasters have locked up and gone home. Same for the Peet's in Pac Heights. Worst offender: Whole Foods (!) is closed and I'm out of organic nutmeg for the veg-nog. Given the contempt and/or twittering condescension the NPR bluestaters in these places usually express for America's Christian demographic, I doubt they're staying home today because it's the baby Jesus' birthday. Clearly, the secularization of Christmas is worse than anyone thought.

Do you think the Internet runs itself today? Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. Here's to the sysadmins. And while we're at it, the unthanked people at your local electric utility, for whom five-nines uptime isn't just a marketing slogan. Central Maine Power, take a bow!