Thursday update

IMPORTANT: If any device you own – computer, tablet, phone – says that a security update is ready to install, do it immediately. Do not put it off, even for a little while. A serious vulnerability that has existed in processor chips for 20 years has been uncovered, and operating systems are having to be redesigned to patch the vulnerability. Details here (of several articles I read, this one explains it best in layman’s terms).

Legendary North Memphis blues club Wild Bill’s has closed after a 24-year run. The club was a well-known hole-in-the-wall in Memphis, considered a great place to hear the blues. It had been profiled in national publications including the New York Times.

Also closed is DejaVu. The Cajun restaurant on Main just wasn’t drawing enough business, and Chef Gary Williams said he just couldn’t do it anymore. However, he has plans in the works to get his old Florida Street location back in the next few months.

That shitty Econo Lodge on North B.B. King Blvd. between Court and Madison is being converted into a boutique hotel called Hotel Indigo.

Memphis Magazine has a requiem for late pro wrestling announcer Lance Russell. The article author notes that Russell called the 1979 Tupelo concession stand brawl with all the gravitas of Walter Cronkite reporting the news from Vietnam.

Ghost River has a book club. First meetup is two weeks from today in the taproom:

Most college football coaches have bonuses written into their contract if their team achieves milestones like winning a certain number of games, winning a conference championship, going to a bowl and so on. Undefeated UCF, winner of the Peach Bowl but shut out of the college football playoff, announced yesterday that it will pay its coaching staff the bonus for winning the national championship. Very, very classy, especially considering many of the coaches have departed to Nebraska.

For those of you familiar with the name, Jason Doty has been sentenced to 25 years without parole for aggravated child neglect and reckless aggravated assault. He had a history of violence against women. Doty was a baker for Bluff City Coffee several years ago. He won’t get out of prison until he is in his 70s.

I’ve been trying to keep up with coverage of the winter “bomb cyclone” moving up the East Coast on The Weather Channel’s site, but their constant use of “Winter Storm Grayson” sounds so foolish that their content is almost unreadable. They even compare “Grayson” to past winter storms, referring to those storms by names no one but the Weather Channel used. Do they not realize how stupid they sound to everyone not working for Weather Channel corporate?

I pre-ordered Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff. Cannot wait for it to appear on my Kindle app next Tuesday. White House officials are questioning Wolff’s credibility, but he is said to have dozens of hours of tapes to back up what he wrote.

That’s it for now. Back tomorrow with more news.