Can you dig it?

 I was awake early, but managed to remain in bed until seven. Tea and coffee were prepared and I settled down with the news and social media. As I read about the Air Traffic Control problems that grounded flights in the US and reflected on the worldwide Microsoft outage the previous day, I thought back to the basic failsafe design principles that we learned over the years. Of course, old heads with all that knowledge are too expensive and are soon culled. Younsters always think they have a better solution (and sometimes they do), but do they have the discipline to work through every potential point of failure and evaluate how to circumvent it or recover from it? Do they understand cascading failure scenarios? I remember the documents I wrote for the BBC World Service, which highlighted every point of failure and documented how we had designed a failsafe for it. If I remember correctly, we could survive a cascade of 6 compounding failure scenarios without losing a second of broadcast. Oh well, it's not my problem.

I had the usual call with my cousins. There seemed to be a lot of discussion regarding prepping for a disaster. Chris, having lived in Switzerland, commented on how ingrained in the Swiss psyche that was, and everyone had a stocked air raid shelter beneath their house, and there were civic shelters also.

We spent some time, later in the morning, planting some shrubs that Diane has been nurturing. They were to go in the strip of ground by the front path (which is mainly clay). I had bought an auger that fitted to my drill and allowed me to start digging and break up the soil.

It probably took us a couple of hours, but the shrubs are now in place and will hopefully thrive. We just need to replace the slate that we removed a couple of weeks ago.

We heard from Paul Badeski this afternoon. Laura and her partner have brought James Marcus Murray into the family at 8 lb 13 oz this morning at 7:33. Everyone is doing well, and the grandparents are buzzing!

We had to chuckle this evening. Diane's nephew Louis has been working with Alan (and ChatGPT) and has created a memorable monument to the women on Di's side of the family. 

I'm not sure when it will be moved to Rome, or maybe just the British Museum, but it did seem rather brilliant. (The teacup at Diane's feet seemed rather apt.)