Had a nice day today, worked on the network plumbing for Aperio's SecondSlide network, hung out, ate some cookies...  and rode Rockstore for the first time since my wipeout.  I descended Decker rather gingerly and didn't post my best time, but it was good anyway.  There was some kind of biker congregation at Rockstore itself, tens of Harleyish bikes decorated with American flags; pretty cool.  (Interesting isn't it how patriotic bikers are; they love America because it just leaves them alone :)  And now I'm blogging, and tonight we're off to a party.  Yay.

The other day I posted about the loudest bands, and I realized today that I foolishly omitted Michael Schenker!  How could I have...  First Scorpions, then UFO, and finally MSG all really rock at volume.  Today I was riding along Mulholland to UFO's Doctor Doctor and the omission became all too clear.  Sorry. 

I have a Google alert for "Eichhorn" and today it dragged in a most excellent picture of an Eichhorn (squirrel) from a German website.  I can't explain what happened with the hair, maybe it was a bike helmet? 

I cannot tell you how pissed off I am that President Bush is bailing out the U.S. automakers.  There is no good reason for this except his own vanity, he doesn't want to see the car industry go bankrupt under his watch.  This is unworthy of him, he never did stuff like this before, and it will go down as one of his worst moves.  Besides the fact that we don't have the money, it really just delays the inevitable.  This is some kind of weird welfare.  I sure don't want my tax dollars used to subsidize UAW members so they can build cars nobody wants.  Blech! 

Mark Steyn says we're in the fast lane to Bailoutistan.  Not a good place to be.  [ via Powerline ]

Horse's Mouth calls it a wipeout.  "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."  Riight.

The chart at left shows crude oil prices during 2008.  Wow, nice cliff.  I guess gas prices alone can't explain the lack of new car sales, huh?  [ via Scott Loftesness ] 

Megan McArdle notes Credit Suisse is paying its top executives in illiquid mortgage-backed securities.  I echo her conclusion: sheer genius. 

Dave Winer notes that InformationWeek has named Werner Vogels of Amazon CTO of the year.  Good call.  Not only for the infrastructure on Amazon's website - which is amazing - but for pioneering "cloud computing", selling server space and bandwidth as the commodities they are. 

ZooBorn of the day: a cheetah cub.  I love cheetahs for some reason, they're cool, and little ones are even cooler :) 

Want to know how cold it's been?  Aspen's snow keeps coming, but 'too cold to enjoy it'.  So be it.