Rain, Rain...

The dry spell in Florida is officially over. It's been raining mostly non-stop for the last three days. I picked a good week to be bike-less. Speaking of which, I no longer am. Bike-less, that is. During a brief respite in the rain, I stopped by the bike shop and picked up my now-noiseless bike. While it was there, I had them install a taller riser for the handlebars. HUGE difference!! Way more comfy and better for seeing down the road now that I'm not all hunched over. While they had everything in pieces, I had them stick one of those cool little doohickeys on it that tracks miles, speed, time, etc. so I can keep better tabs on how far I'm riding and what kind of pace I'm setting. I also looked at luggage racks, which are way cheaper than I thought they were going to be, but I'd already dropped a C-note and a half, so I didn't pursue it beyond a bit of tire-kicking. Maybe I'll blow my Christmas money on that stuff.

We were planning on a possible Disney trip over the weekend, but it looks like at least Saturday is going to still be rain. I hope to catch a break in the morning so I can at least get in a couple rides this weekend to make up for the week of couch-sitting. Between the Michigan trip and a broken bike, I probably only rode ten days in all of June. Gotta do way better than that.

Taibbi on Bachmann and the attention she's been getting in the press:

This to me reflects a few things, but most notably it shows the fascination that the mainstream media (including jerks like me, of course) has with Bachmann. Which is theoretically meaningless, except that voters pick up cues from reporters. If the national press treats Bachmann like the alpha dog in the Republican pack, voters will catch on to that. Subconsciously, she begins to be thought of as a frontrunner. I think all this attention actually enhances her credibility, unfortunately.

We've been here before; Democrat in the White House looking rather vulnerable but who wins re-election by a wide margin because the Republican candidate was chosen from the Seven Political Dwarves. So what's it going to be, GOP? 1980 or 1996? You need to decide fast, because right now it's lookin' a lot like 1996.

The job market is so good that 55-year-olds are sucking up (mostly-unpaid) internships that are traditionally taken by college students and recent graduates. This is going well. And note that even mainstream publications now readily admit that unemployment is over 15%, not the government's official rate of 9.1%.

Public-sector unionized workers view the rest of the population as a resource to be mined for high pay, extravagant benefits and a guaranteed, inflation-adjusted pension for life after working for 1/5 their expected lifespan. The rest of the population is less than enthusiastic about the role they are supposed to play. As the decline in real household incomes continues, the situation will only become more insupportable than it already is. We should all hope that what's happening in Minnesota is an aberration rather than a fiscal Lexington and Concord. What we desperately need right now is for everyone, public-sector employees, their unions and politicians, to act like adults for once in their lives. I know that's asking a lot. But try.

Lore Sjöberg's Alt Text column at Wired.com is usually humorous, but not this week:

Google+ might hit the big time by surfing the wave of Facebook resentment while eluding dead rats and discarded styrofoam cups. If so, its time will eventually come to an end as people realize that it, too, fails to provide the sense of community and closeness that we keep expecting to find on the other side of our keyboards.

Is the solution to somehow recapture the personal ties of years long past, when we knew our neighbors and the front porch was the main locus of information exchange? Will we create true community by embracing our humanity rather than our technology?

Nah. As soon as they invent a sexbot that can pretend to care about how many plots of tomatoes we planted in FarmVille, we won’t need other people anymore.

We have become seriously pathetic.

Debbie should be calling soon for me to come pick her up from work, so I need to wrap this up. Later.