I managed to muddle my way through my workday, despite getting an e-mail from my little brother Rich first thing this morning with the news of the passing of Ronnie James Dio.

I e-mailed him back, “That is a real kick in the nuts right there.”

To which he replied, “Square in the nuts.”

Yes, we Vinoskis are sensitive, expressive and taciturn, all at once.

My pal Scott summed things up nicely, too.  “In that family of groundbreaking vocalists, he was my number one.  Yeah Dickinson can get it done and Meine gets the hair on my neck standing up, but Dio’s versatility hit me when I was learning how to listen. ”

RIP, RJD.  “Long Live Rock And Roll.”

This is one of the areas I’m least qualified to opine upon.

That won’t stop me.

I’ll open by showing perhaps my favorite building of all time — a building that no longer exists.

The Larkin Administration Building, built for the Larkin Soap Company,  stood in my former hometown of Buffalo, New York, from the early until the mid 20th century.  You can read a good chunk of the story here.  Or you can get the whole story from Professor Jack Quinan’s excellent Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building:  Myth and Fact.

A couple key facts are that the imposing brick structure was uniquely designed to make office workers (mostly young women) comfortable in an otherwise grimy industrial area of town.  It arguably had the first central air conditioning system of any large office building — an evaporative system that cooled the air and scrubbed it of the soot and ash inherent to its surroundings.

Sadly, the Larkin Soap Company began its fatal decline in the 1920s, and eventually left its former office building empty and derelict.  The City of Buffalo tore it down in 1950 — as Frank Lloyd Wright’s popularity was just burgeoning.

PS — is that an early Smart parked out front?

…is right here.

I’m in good shape, though — sitting on good stock for most of my needs, and it looks like .35 Remington is readily available.

…is right here.

Happy Friday.

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe says corporate philanthropy is using other people’s money for your own charitable ends.

Nobody can rationally argue that he’s wrong, any more than anyone had a cogent counter-argument to Milton Friedman when he made the same argument decades ago.

Says a lot about our world that something so patently true and obvious is held in utter contempt by a majority of people.  I’m guessing Mr. Brabeck is finding himself awfully lonely these days.

American snipers are getting a new weapon.

I’m all for it.

PS — I want one.

No doubt you noticed in my post about my business contacts in Germany that my pal Detlef’s two colleagues both had the first name of a bicycle racing great — viz., Andreas Kloden and Karsten Kroon.

Sure you did.