LIVING HERE

Banks, airlines, television networks, and health systems worldwide that rely on Microsoft 365 apps were hit by widespread outages early Friday.
This outage was linked to the company CrowdStrike. Businesses worldwide grappled with an ongoing major IT outage Friday, as financial services and doctors’ offices were disrupted, while some TV broadcasters went offline. Air travel has been hit particularly hard. Thousands of flights and train services were canceled globally, including more than 1,800 in the U.S., and there were disruptions to many other public and retail services. The issue was caused by a technical problem that global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said it had identified in its software and was working to resolve.

Texas-based Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike said the problem stemmed from a “defect found in a single content update for Windows.” CrowdStrike provides Microsoft with antivirus software for its Windows devices. Over 3,000 flights had been canceled within, into, or out of the U.S. as of Friday night, and more than 11,400 others were delayed, according to the flight tracking service, FlightAware. Globally, more than 42,000 flights were delayed on Friday. It appeared that many companies and organizations worldwide would have to rely on their technology departments to get systems back up and running.

This IT nightmare is a lesson on what a cyberattack could do. In Lake Geneva and Milwaukee, many members of the Republican Delegations attending the Republican National Convention were stuck in Wisconsin, as their flights were canceled. Of course, over a thousand of them flew in private jets so they were unaffected. The buses, four hundred and fourteen of them, were all rented from the states the delegates were from but were all gone early Friday morning. They went back to their states empty, leaving many delegates and their entourages behind. The conventioneers only rented 13 Wisconsin-owned busses, as they wanted to keep the money back home. Those buses were for the Hawaii and Alaska delegations, who could not send their buses.

Security cost twice what was budgeted so Milwaukee took it in the shorts when it came to the money and lost its proverbial butt, plus no protestors showed up. Only one man was injured (killed) and he was a homeless veteran protesting nothing, but then he was killed by an officer on loan from Ohio and maybe all those rent a cop like him didn’t play by Wisconsin rules.

Business Improvement District Interview
Christine Totten, Sacred Sisters LG, 830 W Main St., The Market of Lake Geneva
“I love nature, planets, astrology. Everything is energy. It’s amazing what comes from our Earth. The lake, in particular, calls to me. The sound, movement, the energy of it. I like to put my feet in the water before a full or new moon & let the sand & water wash away negativity. I started my business for my daughter. As an in vitro baby & it took me years to get pregnant with her. She’s one out of six. I lost five. When I had her, I couldn’t have anymore. For the last 23 years, everything was for her. When she went to college, I decided it was my turn. I’ve gone through lots of struggles in my life. Meditation & working with crystals have done so much for me. I wanted to do something that would make me proud of myself, but also make my daughter proud of me.

Doing this on my own is a lot. I have severe autoimmune illnesses & there are days I’m so sick & in pain, but I still show up. I believe my crystals & their energy get me through the pain without any pain medicine. My daughter sees me struggle & she’s so proud of me. That is the best part of everything. I’m a tree hugger & embrace my uniqueness. Looking at my store, it all comes from nature. I feel a vibration, an energy, that attracts me to every crystal in here. I don’t have a favorite, but I’m drawn to “enhydrous” as they are very rare. One quartz here is over 50 million years old. As the quartz is forming, water gets trapped inside. The water creates a fossilized tunnel & you can see the water move. It’s the purest form of water untouched by man that is millions of years old. This same anhydrous quartz has several rainbow shines that emit loving energy into the universe.

Quartz is a master healer & an amplifier, so it heals mentally, emotionally, & physically at an amplified rate & with the enhydrous, it is highly vibrational. I’m grateful for every person who walks through my doors. I work hard on making this space a calm, soothing, relaxing energy. When they come in, they can breathe & release. When someone buys something, I’m even more grateful because they’re choosing to get something from a place created out of love.”