Vertical Integration

At market close today, Lululemon’s stock was down over 5%, after having been down more than 11% earlier in the day. I don’t mention this to suggest I had anything to do with it, but I did. Everyone knows that most savvy investors make decisions based on three things:

1. The weight and type of fish CNBC Senior Economics Reporter Steve Liesman has caught most recently.

   

2. A complex algorithm involving the peaks and troughs of bite patterns produced by Warren Buffet.

   

3. Shit I type.

How fortunate for anyone short selling stretchy pants that I was so direct for once. Usually, the big players on Wall Street have to guess what I’m talking about after first decoding all kinds of whiny bullshit about bicycles and bad people. Which reminds me, here’s what’s really going on with the financial crisis in Europe:

But I’m not the only one sending messages. Turns out “comment spam” is one of the negative side-effects that comes with flinging rants and random thoughts out over the interwebs. The funny thing about comment spam is that it has to be written in a general enough way to apply to any subject whatsoever, and that makes it pretty funny to read. Here are some examples (typos have been left in, because they seem to be intentional attempts at authenticity):

• “What I find so interesting is you could never find this anyrwhee else.”
• Yes, I too find that interesting, Mr. Spam. We should get together and talk about how one person’s thoughts always seem to be slightly different from everyone else’s collective thoughts.
• “We’ve arivred at the end of the line and I have what I need!”
• Still comically vague, but also kind of ominous, that one. Makes me feel like I just rode the subway with Herman Cain.
• “Time to face the music armed with this great infmroation.”
• Yes, by all means, change your life based on some shit somebody you don’t know posted on a blog.
• “Great cmmoon sense here. Wish I’d thought of that.”
• You know what else if common sense? Spelling the word “common.” I’m not aware of any keyboard in which the “m” key is easily mistaken for the “m” key. Seriously, go ahead and try to type “cmmoon”: it’s barely possible when you’re trying, let alone possible to create by accident.

I delete these because they’re obviously junk, but does anyone out there know why people send these? They don’t seem sophisticated enough to be trying to dig their way into databases, and even if they did, I don’t have any useful information anyway, because I’m just writing a stupid blog. What are these things supposed to accomplish?

And what am I trying to accomplish? Another week spent crunching shock rates to no avail. I’m not sure why I keep being attracted to shit that’s not easy, but I need to knock it off. I do believe I’ve narrowed possible options down to a vertical shock position, though, so the nearly perfectly vertical blue line here is my current projected shock position.

Might mean I’m going to have to get my Giant Maestro on and go with something like a pierced downtube, but I’m thinking it would be no big deal to expand the machined part that houses the lower rocker (I’ve been calling this the “crankcase”) to include a lower mount for the shock. It’s possible that could be a single machined piece, which should be pretty light and should be able to create a huge surface for a not-too-hairy miter and lots of weld bead surface. We’ll see.