I read The Fountainhead in college and thought it was great. Then I recovered from the flu and thought "what the hell was that shit?"

millenial grey

There's nothing in the construction world that I hate more than the fake gray wood interlocking vinyl floor planks that are in every house now. I guess they're supposed to be the color of wood on old barns or fences, but I've never seen real wood of that color on a floor anywhere. I bought my house a couple of years ago and it had that type of fake flooring in the living room. I deliberately left it uncovered during the renovations, assuming that it would be trashed which would force me to replace it with something I actually like -- no such luck, that stuff is actually pretty indestructable, unfortunately.

My beef with modern home architecture (the stuff in the US, mainly) is not that it's different or modern, but that it's so fucking fake in its fundamental elements. Vinyl siding stamped to look like old-fashioned wood siding but obviously isn't because of the vertical seams and the bumps; double-paned vinyl windows with glazing dividers emulating old-fashioned casement windows that don't even look three-dimensional; shutters that obviously can't close; panel doors made from one block of essentially cardboard etc. etc.

I live in the Philadelphia area and a lot of the row houses here dating to a century or more ago have absolutely beautiful brickwork, incredibly creative and interesting stuff, often on houses that these days barely sell for $100K. It would be completely impossible to duplicate this kind of thing today even with a construction budget of millions. The craftsmen who can do that kind of work are nonexistent now -- today you're lucky to find somebody who can lay bricks in a straight line.

I have this absurd fantasy about being paid for my commuting time.

Too many stripper recalls lately.

I used to work as a contractor at the Comcast Center in Philadelphia. One day my boss (at my contracting company) came by and said we were going to a meeting with Time Warner Cable execs. I reached for my coat but he stopped me; we rode the elevator up to the 16th floor where Time Warner Cable had a suite of offices ... in the Comcast Center. A year or two later they announced plans for a merger of the two companies, which was somehow and mystifyingly stopped by the FCC. Like, they'd already merged essentially.

My current job (school bus driver) has a pension, which is the first of any job I've ever had in my life (and I'm almost 60). It's another 5 years before I'm vested and get the pension, and I'm not sure I would bet on the job not having been replaced by AI before then. Hopefully not, since the pension would allow me to afford the brand-name dog food.

I live 5 minutes from work and I am still unreasonably pissed about that. I'm a school bus driver, we have morning and afternoon runs with about four hours in between, so I have twice as much commuting as a normal job. Some of my coworkers live as much as an hour away and they just sit in their cars between 9 and 1 looking at their phones, so I really shouldn't be complaining.

Huh, just found a 2000 Whizzer Motorbike for sale for $800 on craigslist. That might be my speed. Apparently they top out at 40 mph but that would probably be OK.

Bob Tiktaalik, nice to meet you.

Shit, I know some people with bicycles that cost nearly $20K. Meanwhile I have a fleet of '90s hybrids that I paid $50 to $100 for on craigslist.

Some of the roads I drive on for local errands are 45 mph and I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that on an e-bike.