Sunny and Warmish

According to our little indoor/outdoor thermometer, it broke 50 today. Add in the blue skies and sun and you'd almost think summer is here. We don't know what's "normal" weather-wise around here this time of year, but I'm figuring it's all a head-fake and we'll wake up to a blizzard. But in the meantime, I'll take what I can get.

Work for me has surpassed slow and is quickly heading towards completely dead. I was told to expect it to get slow, but at this point, we can't even be covering payroll. Staff has been cut to the absolute minimum possible without reducing hours of operation. I feel bad getting paid to surf the web, but I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to do about it. Ah well; 5 weeks to go.

I signed back into Facebook last night for the first time in over a month. I've been checking on the progress of the updated FB Purity script since the latest redesign of Facebook broke the version I was running. Without Purity, Facebook was unusable to me which was a big part of why I just stopped using it. Well, a new Purity script enticed me back in. I'm still working on having better control over content. What I'd like to be able to do is see updates prioritized so if I'm short on time, I can make a quick check without having to wade through updates from people we're not as close to. But long story short, I'm back on Facecrack.

This morning, I saw a headline that started with "Positive jobs report..." and assumed that despite the fears, unemployment crept down in February. But of course in the world of the new normal, "positive" means "less negative." Of course.

While we're on the subject of large negative numbers, it seems our wunderkind in our nation's capital are digging us into a hole even faster than previously thought. I remember when billion-dollar deficits were going to be the doom of the nation. Then it was tens of billions. Bush II upped the ante to hundreds of billions. Hope-n-Change said, "See your hundreds of billions and raise you a trillion or so." No one really believes we can keep doing this, right? There is no way this has a happy ending.

I suspect Germany is feeling like the put-upon husband that is at his wits end with his shiftless brother-in-law. First, two German politicians told Greece they should sell off some islands to bail themselves out. Then an open letter to the Greek prime minister has this zinger:

Germany also has high debts but we can settle them. That's because we get up early and work all day.

Ouch. Me thinks the gloves have come off. More from another article:

"[Greek Prime Minister] Papandreou said that he didn't want one cent -- in any case the German government will not give one cent," [Germany's Economy Minister Rainer] Bruederle told reporters.

Damn. If Germany is saying it, I wonder how many other countries in the EU are thinking it: "Get yer lazy Greek ass off my couch and get a job!!"

It's Saturday again which means that another bunch of banks did a big ol' belly flop off the high dive. But like I said before, at least the pace of failures as well as the size of the banks involved seems to have backed off from 2009. Slightly more worrying is the lack of willing asset buyers this week. That may be an indication of how horribly run those banks were, or an indication of something more troubling. And there is also the off-hand comment by unnamed FDIC officials that the pace is likely to pick up later this year (wait; did the FDIC just predict a double-dip?) and that the list of "problem" banks has grown from 552 to 702 in three months. Meanwhile, The One insists that the way to solve a problem caused by excessive debt is to "promote" more debt. The gods save us from the world's dumbest smart guy.

Well, I should stop messing around here and see what's the latest on Facebook.