Friday the 13th Strikes

Well!  Friday the 13th kicked some butt today!  FAA called a full ground stop for the entire country due to problems with the air traffic controllers not being able to talk to each other, or the planes in the air.  Apparently Secretary of Transportation Duffy's organization rolled out an upgrade three days ago.  It did not go so well.  

Microsoft is still down in many places.  I have read, and this is twitter, so it's suspect, that in one of the mass layoffs done by Microsoft, they let go of the people that had written, maintained, and understood the legacy code.  There is a lot of legacy code.  New code is being written by AI, old broken code does not have the knowledge base to know how to fix this.  Today was the second day of the outage.  

The National Weather Service is also experiencing difficulties.  This is from Gemini, (Google's AI) :

What is not Working Well

Websites & Forecasts: Users may encounter slow loading times, error messages (such as 500 or 503 errors), or outdated weather data on Weather.gov and local office pages. [1, 2]
Data Flow (NOAAPort/SBN): A major degradation affecting data dissemination began around 10:30 a.m. EDT, delaying non-warning products while emergency alerts are prioritized. [1]
Radars: The NWS has pushed back on rumors of a total radar failure, confirming that radar.weather.gov is functioning normally. [1]

What Continues to Work

Emergency Alerts: Local weather offices continue to issue critical watches and warnings.
Wireless Emergency Alerts & NOAA Weather Radio: Essential severe weather alerts (such as tornado or flash flood warnings) continue to push directly to mobile phones and radio broadcasts.
Social Media: Local NWS offices are posting updates and alerts through official channels like X and Facebook (e.g., @NWSLosAngeles). [1, 2, 3]

Technicians are actively working to resolve the network and communications disruption, which coincided with a separate nationwide FAA telecommunications ground stop. [1, 2]

So, one wonders if we're under a cyber attack, or if everything just decided to break at once.  

Scott Colum (last syllable gets the emphasis) won the Senate seat in Mississippi.  He beat Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was then the senator.  President Biden had nominated Mr. Colum for a federal judgeship.  Hyde-Smith torpedoed that with her use of the blue slip.  She was cackling about how she had denied him the judge position, and now she would deny him the senate seat, during her election night celebration.  Hah!  Hah! Double Hah! She lost, couldn't happen to a nicer person.  He is the first Black senator to be elected since Reconstruction, which was in the 1800s.  I am very happy to see his election.  

Here is a youtube of an ad he ran.  This is the best thing I have ever seen.  Please do play it, it's not long.  

We had a major packing fail.  I had Jim's Tilley hat sitting out where we would see it.  Do you think either one of us put it in the car?  No.  Given his propensity for skin cancers, a broad brim is a necessity for hiking out here.  I failed to put a hiking long sleeved shirt in when I packed.  It's hard to understand how two such important items failed to make it into the car.  

We went to the new Bass Pro Shop that has been built, along with a lot of other retail, in the southern end of Tucson.  We weren't there last winter because we don't like that Costco.  We went to Costco yesterday and were stunned by what all has been built.  Anyway, I bought a shirt I didn't like.  There were no hiking suitable hats.  I don't think we're really part of their demographic.

We came home, found a hat on Amazon that was on sale, and a Columbia shirt for me which was also on sale, so now we can hike.  We may leave these down here, hats are difficult to pack.

Random photos!
 
Wooly cactus in the front yard.

Cactus and Mesquite tree, front yard.

I think this is a Desert Willow, which we saw in the parking lot at the southern Costco.

Late afternoon sunlight.

 That's it!  That's all I have got today.  Make sure you watch that video, it's funny.