I've had a good conference. For a variety of reasons, today will be my busiest; usually Thursday has just one or two things and a flight home. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.
The Wednesday schedule for this work conference is always the fullest, so I don't have a lot of time to post. One of the teams I manage started the day at Nashville's best breakfast spot, Biscuit Love, which means I don't have to eat again until April. And since we met in the hotel lobby just 15 minutes after sunrise, I got to wake up to this:
Again, kudos to the conference organization staff and the hotel for giving me exactly the room that I wanted.
Meanwhile, Cassie seems to be doing all right:
I am planning no less than a solid hour of couch time tomorrow night, though.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who you should remember as a Fox News presenter with no knowledge of the military, added Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat on the only-kind-of-secure messaging app Signal:
On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz.
Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”
A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
Josh Marshall points out that these people using Signal instead of a secure channel likely means they are violating recordkeeping laws as well: "How many of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders are happening on these apps? It’s the obvious place for bribes, various kinds of criminal conduct, asking foreign governments to do dirty jobs, maybe against American citizens, that Trump doesn’t dare try himself."
Incompetent, malevolent, and corrupt. We have another 16 months of this crap before we can even get Congress back. Marvelous.
Even better: Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) pointed out that one of the members of the group chat was physically in Moscow at the time. It just keeps getting worse.
Having the morning free, and having a lot of cool air and sun, I took a quick stroll around Nashville. I'll have more later, but for now, here's the Tennessee State Capitol, apparently under construction:
Of course, since the Tennessee General Assembly has a well-Gerrymandered 75-24 Republican majority, I would expect they're actually deconstructing the Capitol. But whatever.
I also passed by Riverfront Station, the downtown terminus of Nashville's adorable little 6-times-a-day toy commuter train:
It may be a really sad attempt to have real public transportation, but it's also a train station, meaning there are Brews & Choos-qualified breweries right by my hotel. I'm planning to visit one today. You'll have to wait until at least Friday for the reviews, though. And also for better photo editing.
Kudos to our conference team and the hotel for getting me exactly the room I hoped for, a high floor with an east view:
I've got some free time this morning, so after I finish reading the news (argh!) I'm going to take a walk. Updates as conditions warrant.
Business travel on Sunday evening brings some good, some not so good. For starters, I got from the curb through security to the terminal in 12 minutes, because there aren't a lot of business travelers. On the other hand, getting to the G Concourse lounge involved a lot of near-collisions as the leisure travelers shuffled around without looking where they were going.
I'm impressed with what they've done to the lounge, though. I haven't been in G Concourse since August 2016, so I was pleasantly surprised.
Next report from Tennessee.
I've added a bunch of small but useful features to Weather Now:
- Users can now set their preferred measurement system (metric, Imperial, default) and time/date formats.
- On Nearby Weather and Nearby Places, users can double-click the map to re-center and load new info.
- Moved the Weather Score column on lists to increase usability.
- Tweaked the Weather Score formula.
- Several other bug fixes and feature tweaks.
So if you set up a profile, which you can do simply by logging in with any Microsoft ID, you can customize the app in a bunch of ways. (There's no cost, but I'd appreciate it if you'd subscribe on Patreon.)
Have fun with it. I'm probably going to slow down on Weather Now updates for a bit as I change focus to replacing BlogEngine.NET.
In just a few hours, though, I'm going to a work conference in Nashville, Tenn., where I will have the opportunity to visit at least three breweries. Stay tuned!
Workers have started demolishing three historic buildings along Sheffield Ave just north of Addison, including Cubs Rooftops building at 3631, the location of the annual reminder of the Chicago Cubs' dismal record:
One of the most iconic buildings in Wrigleyville is being torn down just weeks before Opening Day.
Demolition is underway at 3631 N. Sheffield Ave., one of three historic Wrigley Field rooftop buildings slated to be torn down and replaced with a 29-unit apartment building.
A contractor at the site said the demolition, which began earlier this month, is expected to take up to another week to complete.
Longtime Chicago Cubs fans will recognize the trio of properties at 3627, 3631 and 3633 N. Sheffield Ave. as having housed the famous Torco billboard on its roof and as well as the property that became famous for its “Eamus Catuli” sign — loosely translated from Latin as “Let’s go Cubs.”
The owners of the three buildings spent a lot of money to build those grandstands, plus all the back-and-forth with the Cubs over revenue sharing. I expect the new building will have seating too. But unless incentives have suddenly changed in the real-estate industry, it won't have the charm of these old 3-flats:
And let's not forget, the Anno Catuli sign once looked like this:
Let's see what the developers put up, and if they bring the sign back. History deserves better.
Leading the hit parade of horrors this morning, London's Heathrow Airport completely shut down after an electric transformer caught fire yesterday, leading to over 1,100 flight cancellations so far. Flight operations have resumed, sort of, but Europe's busiest airport going offline will cause rippling failures throughout world aviation for a few more days at least.
Speaking of massive transport failures, we have yet more evidence that the Clown Prince of X knows dick about cars (or rockets or software or anything, really) as Tesla recalled nearly all of its Cybertrucks after people discovered the door panels can fall off. That's if they don't rust, or crumple, or warp, or cut your fingers off.
I Googled "how bad is the Tesla Cybertruck" and got so many responses I had to whittle the search down to just the last month, and it still took a couple of pages to find a source that most people trust: Consumers Union. And they don't like it at all. (I love this bit, too: "Unfortunately, we can’t ask Tesla any follow-up questions about the vehicle—even clarifying ones that could help us better understand it—because Tesla dissolved its media relations department in 2020, and the company did not respond when contacted through its press email." This is the guy now destroying the US government. You were warned, and you voted for the OAFPOTUS anyway.)
Time to walk the dog again, now that it's up to 9°C.
As predicted, none of yesterday's snow stuck around. Here's (a new edit of) yesterday's photo:
And the same spot just over 24 hours later:
In fact, the temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ has remained above freezing since just before 9am Monday, though it did scrape along at 0.1°C for a couple of hours last night.
Today's forecast predicts a high of 14°C, and this weekend's Garmin challenge predicts Cassie will get a 5 kilometer walk this afternoon.