Gremlins

Monday afternoon I am sitting and waiting for Osmany to finish packing for his trip to Miami. Rush hour is approaching (it starts around 3PM now), so I thought I should check with Google Maps and see which route we should take to the airport. Google failed. Actually, I don't know what failed, but the route never materialized on my phone. I don't know if it was my phone (a Samsung Galaxy something or other), the cell phone network (Tracfone), or something farther up the line. Nobody else seemed to be having any trouble, but they all have Apple phones and use Verizon for service. Also, voice transcription failed. At first I thought my microphone had been disabled, but making a simple phone call worked fine. I suspect some node that connected Tracfone users to Google got swamped.

I wasn't the only one who got hit. My wife happened to be at Freddies when they had a major snafu with the credit card system.

Update February 2020 figured out what the problem was.