TGIF!  Toes Go In First!  Or something like that.  That is what I keep telling myself.  At the end of a long work-week, this alternative interpretation of TGIF can have much more personal significance, especially on a Friday morning.  As a blogger, I have found that coming up with a post at the end of the work-week is a lot tougher than at the beginning of it.  I guess that this comes from too much living for the weekend.  So this post is a potpourri, a bit of this, a bit of that.  The bird pictures are from one of our recent trips to the Riverlands.

Earlier this month I described my Starbucks Index.  This economic index seems to be able to predict economic trends.  [At least, I have been able to convince myself of this.]  By way of a SBUX redux my bro Chris, sent me this link to a CNBC article on the Starbucks Java Job Indicator that seems to show that the jobs situation will be perking up.  Goldman Sachs has found that there is an 84 percent correlation between sales at Starbucks and employment trends.

This is one reason why the firm added Starbucks to their ‘Conviction Buy List’ on Thursday.  [With all of the recent Wall Street indictments, maybe this should be the Convict’s Buy List?]  Goldman’s economists see a 6 percent increase in payrolls in 2011 so they are also predicting a five percent jump in coffee traffic.

I have been cautioned against going to the Wiki-Leaks website.  I’m not allowed to do so at work, the site is blocked.  At least I am told that it is.  It is suggested that I also avoid doing so using my company provided laptop.  I’m fine with this too.  I don’t have a company laptop.  I do take exception to a further suggestion by one of my co-workers that I block access to Wiki-Leaks at home.  His suggestion involved blocking the website using our home router, “to prevent other family members from attempting to access the Wiki-Leaks website.”  I don’t expect that my spovely louse has any interest in going there and both the boyz have moved out, so what’s the point?

My fundamental complaint with this co-worker’s suggestion is the idea of me going into my router and actually setting this up.  I’m speaking of the mechanics of the operation.  I set up our DSL router, when we first got it, but since then my router and I have enjoyed a live and let live relationship that has lasted for many years.  I’m not about to mess with that now. 

I can read the New York Times and get the highlights anyway:  The French president is a pompous ass.  Afghanistan’s president is a thief and the president of Libya has a tall and beautiful Scandinavian “assistant”.  Except for the last item, there is nothing there that I did not know already.  So what’s the point?