{"id":90196,"date":"2026-04-09T09:22:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T14:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=90196"},"modified":"2026-04-09T09:22:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T14:22:44","slug":"unwarranted-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=90196","title":{"rendered":"Unwarranted Optimism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The other day, I went to downtown Saint Paul and actually parked and patronized a downtown business for the first time in probably over a year and a half. \u00a0I was meeting someone at a downtown cafe to talk some business. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I met them at 4PM, on a Robert Street where a desultory car or two swished past as I wrangled with one of Saint Paul&#8217;s byzantine meters. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I hit the button, entered my space number, and waited while it buzzed and whirred&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and said &#8220;Invalid Space: Rush Hour No Parking Zone&#8221;. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I looked up and down the street. \u00a0I saw a northbound car a block away. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That was it. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Downtown Saint Paul hasn&#8217;t had a rush hour that &#8220;rushed&#8221; since Norm Coleman was mayor. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other day, I went to downtown Saint Paul and actually parked and patronized a downtown business for the first time in probably over a year and a half. \u00a0I was meeting someone at a downtown cafe to talk some business. \u00a0 I met them at 4PM, on a Robert Street where a desultory car [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90197,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90196\/revisions\/90197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}