Mostly about my amusement

Month: April 2006 (page 1 of 1)

A tank of gas for $50.75

“I think you’ll hear the president say very clearly that he will not tolerate price gouging,” McClellan said.

CNN.com – Bush orders gasoline price probe – Apr 25, 2006.

I don’t really dislike the oil companies making money, and except for it hurting my pocket I don’t even know if the oil companies are doing anything illegal. If they made “normal” profits would anyone be upset with them or would people be upset with the source of oil again?

Tonight I stopped to fill up my gas tank. My fuel gauge is broken on my car (yeah, have to get it fixed). It shows how much gas I have based on how the car “feels” and it had been a while since the last fill up. Per the manufacturer I fill it with premium gas. I drive an SUV so some more pain for that.

A little math here: premium at the Mobil station was $3.459 per gallon (saying $3.46 is way too straight forward), I filled up 14.671 gallons, rounded comes out to $50.75.

Last year we had hurricane Katrina as the excuse. But the real problem here is that gas is driven by supply and demand. Congress wont even make oil company executives swear to tell the truth. What will President Bush do, put Dick Cheney in charge of investigating the oil companies?

Oil companies are (probably) not breaking any laws, they get a pass from the government on whatever they want. Why should they build more infrastructure in or around the U.S.? We have laws that limit that, we have regulations (good or bad) which make it hard to do. Why ruin a good thing when congress and the administration make it easier to rake in the dough than create new infrastructure?

Except for politicians making pointless noise, I expect prices to keep going up.

Burnout Revenge vs PGR3

PGR3Okay I’ve gotten the Xbox 360 and have been playing for a couple of days now. My son really likes it and I have to keep him off of the console for the most of the day. He only can play for a little more than an hour and with me the whole time.

I am beginning to see why people prefer game consoles. I had been playing PGR3 which is a great looking game and easy to get into.

It’s a straight you drive, you win, and get money kind of game. It’s lots of fun and very addictive and the more races you win, the more parts of the game are unlocked.

BurnoutrevengeThen I started playing Burnout Revenge. This is really just like PGR3 except you score points by making your opponents crash in horrible ways. You have racing just like PGR3 but you also get to check and force the other cars into the walls, traffic, etc. You get a boost for the more aggressive driving you do.

Burnout Revenge really appeals to me. I like the driving of PGR3 but the other game is great with all the things you can do and points you can get. Once I get more practice I’ll play on the Internet and see how I do against the 10 to 15 year old crowd.

Woot: Xbox 360 arrives

XBOX-360Okay when the xbox 360 came out, like many folks I figured I’d just go and pick one up at the store.

R-i-i-i-i-ght. Supply was non-existent and people were lining up the night before. So I ordered the premium system online at EBgames. It arrived Thursday. My boy loves it. I got the racing game Full Auto for the kids, it is a game where you drive around and blow stuff up. I also picked up a few other shooter games that I don’t allow the kids to even see.

The graphics are amazing and the system interface is very well thought out. I hooked up the box to the Internet, setup my online “gamer tag”? and poof. In another racing game Project Gotham Racing 3 I am going through the qualifier races. Thanks to Internet connectivity I get to see online how badly I rank in the world…

I usually do all my gaming on my PC, so switching to a console after all these years ought to be a challenge. As long as I’m careful as to what games the kids can see or play it ought to be fun for all.

Kids and parties

Kids rule! Obey the kids!

Ahem.

Today Lily and I took our son to a classmate’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. This is the 3rd one this year (it’s April 1st) and all the kids had a good time.

Next week we’ll take our son to another birthday party. It is funny to realize that our weekend social schedule is based on our kids schedule. This will happen more and more, price of being a parent I guess. When our daughter starts getting (and having) parties then either we will have to turn some invitations down or just lose our free time.

I am not really a party person; Thursday we went briefly to a friends get together for getting a job at a new company. Lily and I left that gathering to catch the 8:15pm train out of Penn station. It was good catching up with friends and I wished that I’d stayed and taken the 9:15pm train.