Gas pain

Happy Halloween! I have a multi-part rant today for your reading pleasure today!

I went to fill up gas at Costco this morning. Costco has always had the best price on gas but during the recent declines the price gap has widened to the tune of about $0.65/gallon less than most other stations.

Of course with savings like that, Costco looks like Walmart on the day after Thanksgiving. Everyone and their brother wants to fill up at rates cheap enough to drive around the island for fun again. The line just to get into the driveway at Iwilei backs up Ala Kawa onto Dillingham. Which brings me to the beginning of my litany of rants:

Line jumpers
Everyone can SEE that the line in the right lane is solid around the corner, and yet dumbasses still make the turn down Ala Kawa in the left lane then proceed to block then road by stopping and trying to wedge in. Hell no! I’ve been sitting in this line for 10 minutes already. Pay attention and plan ahead!

People making left turns
I’m a little conflicted. Legally, people can make left turns from Ala Kawa into the driveway, but it sure feels like they’re jumping the rest of the line and by now I’ve been waiting for 20 minutes so I’m already cranky. Someone (Costco? City?) should prohibit left turns into the driveway.

Driveway of the Dammed(sic)
Speaking of the driveway, who the hell designed an offset entry that’s 2-3 cars wide for 10 lanes of pumps? Can you say “gridlock” boys and girls? I knew you could! I can see that you need some means of preventing cross-traffic from blocking lanes, but somehow Waipio manages without a Funnel of Frustration. Would it have been so hard to center it, or make it wider, fer crying out loud?

Non-existent attendants
Okay, so Costco is stuck with moronic infrastructure. The least they could do is staff the facility appropriately. Sometimes I’ve seen attendants directing cars near the entrance to ameliorate the effects of all the other screw ups by directing oblivious drivers (“Duh…I think I’ll block the driveway instead of moving up into the shortest line”). Not today though. There was ONE guy walking around the pumps. I’m surprised no one has cited Costco for blocking city streets.

Pump campers
Once you’ve waited in line for half an hour, fended off line jumpers, and managed to find your way to the front of the pump line you get to watch someone who’s apparently just unfrozen from prehistoric times try to figure out how to get gas. Somehow I’m always behind the person that doesn’t know how the pump works, needs to study each line of instruction on the display, doesn’t have their cards ready, inserts the cards in upside down or in the wrong order, and manages to fat finger their PIN.

EPILOGUE
ANYWAY… I eventually got my gas, saving almost $10 in the process. Now that I’m away from the chaos, all is good with the world so I’ll close with some suggestions in case you feel the need to use up half an hour of your lifetime getting gas at Costco:

• Go to the bathroom before you set out. Either that or bring an empty bottle.
• Bring a snack.
• Bring your laptop so you can blog about how waiting to fill gas sucks.

Contralulation’s!

There’s no way I can deliver anything as profound as yesterday’s WriteInMyJournal, so I’m gonna go completely in the opposite direction today.

One of my favorite Food Network shows is Ace of Cakes. The creativity and construction techniques they use appeal to the engineer-wannabe in me and Chef Duff kicks just ass in general. The cakes they create are fantastical, mind blowing, works of art… and will never show up here.

Cake Wrecks (”When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong”) is a showcase for cakes we’ve all seen at one time or another – a cake that looked like the baker was doing some serious drugs at decorating time, one that some poor celebrant would have to smile at and pretend they weren’t horrified when picture time came.

The Cake Writing 201 post had me tearing and trying not to laugh out loud at my desk at work.

Mmmmm… cake.

A glimpse inside a stranger’s mind

You ever see or hear something so neat/fun/profound that you think “I gotta show this to someone”? WriteInMyJournal is one of those things.

The concept is simple: The author asks people he meets to write whatever they want in his journal, a Moleskine notebook, and he shares it in his blog. However, the snapshots you are able to glean from a page or two of each person’s thoughts are as fascinating as they are tantalizing.

Some stories are introspective, some are touching, but you always wish you could find out more.

Unfortunately, the project has only been going on since June 2008 so there’s only enough content to whet your intellectual appetite at this time, but this is one site you’ll want to subscribe to.

“Maverick”

I don’t really know which way elementalgeek readers lean in terms of political identity, but this was too funny to pass on. If you’re a republican, hopefully you have enough of a sense of humor to chuckle a bit (while no one’s looking of course).

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Click on everything you see. Sometimes you get different results if you click on something more than once.

edit: Make sure you have your sound turned on when you go to the site!

And the word of the day is: “Maverick”

Polls schmolls

I heard a story on NPR the other day that said in the last 4 years the percentage of households that have a fixed landline phone has decreased to less than 85%.

I happen to be part of the wireless phone only demographic, having dumped my landline around 7 years ago. Since I carried a wireless phone all the time anyway, it didn’t make sense to pay for the additional phone that hardly anyone called because they always tried the wireless phone first. Pretty much the only calls that came through on the landline were telemarketers or survey-takers, who I didn’t want to talk to anyway.

In election seasons like the one currently being inflicted on us, you’ll hear the results of an endless number of polls: Candidate A is ahead of Candidate B by X points, Y percent of people favor the rights of cats and dogs to cohabitate, Z percent of the population want the government to take away all of our rights for an illusory sense of security. The list goes on and on.

Here’s the part that makes me wonder: Polls largely rely on responses collected during telephone surveys. Landline telephone surveys.

So now the results of any poll you hear about is the result of collecting “data” from people:

That have a landline telephone
AND are home when the pollster calls
AND are willing to respond to pollsters
who may or may not actually have a clue what the hell they’re talking about

Scary huh?

Geek ink

For today’s post, I started and trashed a bunch of things that have been noodling around in my head, mostly because they were too damn serious. I figure that you, my loyal readers (all 3 of you), probably don’t come to elementalgeek to find the answers to the world’s problems or to discover life’s greatest truths, although if I ever do figure those out, you’ll be the first I tell.

Today’s post is just plain geek diversion. While your personal preferences regarding tattoos may vary, the Science Tattoo Emporium shows that just about anything can be “art”.

I keep on thinking I’d like to get a tattoo someday, but I haven’t decided what will still look good on an 80 year old triathlete. Try picturing a tribal armband on an elderly woman for a reality check. Maybe some traditional Japanese artwork – the samurai/yakuza guys still look cool when they get old (or maybe it’s the sword/gun/missing finger)

What (@Not the LG: what else) would you be willing to put on your body permanently?

I want honey in my honey!

It’s been a pretty hectic week and I’ve been craving comfort food, so in a moment of weakness I picked up lunch from KFC recently. While they don’t serve poutine like the Canadian PKF’s (“Poulet Frit du Kentucky”) do, I’m a sucker for the potato wedges.

The new original recipe strip combo meal (is “new” and “original” an oxymoron in this context?) includes a biscuit so I asked for honey to go with it. Here’s the ingredient list for the Colonel’s Honey Sauce:

• High fructose corn syrup
• Sugar
• Honey
• Corn syrup
• Natural flavor
• Caramel color

What the hell is wrong with this picture? Okay, okay… I know I’m not going to get health food at KFC, but c’mon! Is it too much to ask for some honey in my honey?

The packet says that there’s 11% “real” honey. Remember, ingredients are listed in order of percentage of volume so figure the packet is at minimum 66% HFCS and sugar, probably more. Is honey not sweet enough?

One of the reasons I’ve heard for using high fructose corn syrup is that it has a longer shelf life which is why it’s used in so many pre-packaged, highly-processed food items. Even that’s a load of crap – honey is one of the most non-perishable naturally occurring edible substances known to man. Archaeologists found honey in Egyptian tombs that was still edible.

How’d you like to be the team that discovered that by the way?

“Hey, that looks like honey!”
“You think it’s still good?”
“You try it.”
“No way, you try it!”
“I’ll give you a dollar if you eat the mummy honey”
“Shoooots!”

By now you’ve seen the propaganda by the Corn Refiners Association on television that HFCS is “made from corn, doesn’t have artificial ingredients, has the same calories as sugar and just like sugar, it’s fine in moderation.”

Now I’m no scientist, but if that’s true, then why not use oh, I dunno…sugar? Because it’s cheaper, and BFCs like cheaper. They make more money that way.

Oh, and the part about it being fine in moderation? What’s moderate? How can you tell how much you’re getting when HFCS is in everything? Next time you’re shopping, take a look at the ingredient list ofall the packaged goods in the supermarket (except maybe in Whole Foods – see Kendra’s Adventures here). You may be in for a surprise – juice, yogurt, bread, breakfast bars, salad dressing, BBQ sauce…

And now, apparently it’s in honey as well.