Blessed by the Potato

I heard on the news that gas prices were going up significantly in advance of the long weekend, to the $1.15/L range. I already filled up earlier in the week at $1.05 expecting some such foolishness, but was quite surprised this evening when I drove by a gas station at $1.12, then the next one at $0.977 (with a fairly busy lot), then further down the road, 2 stations across the street from each other at $0.944 — the cars waiting in line backed out onto the road and nearly stopping traffic at that intersection. I just don’t understand some of this gas price behaviour — if the price really is going up, then how can the stations afford to drop it like that? If they have that kind of leeway in their margins, then are they screwing us the rest of the time? It reminds me of some of the other patterns in gas pricing. When I first moved to London, there was a very reliable pattern where the gas prices would go up on the weekend, and for most of the week would be higher in Toronto than in London. However, Monday nights they would reliably drop in London, dipping a bit below what Toronto was charging on the weekend. About two years ago the situation got a fair bit more complex, and I haven’t seen as much of a “weekend effect” in London, though there does still seem to be one in Toronto. Then there are particular stations: the one at Don Mills and Finch tends to lower its prices by 3-5 cents/L on Friday and Saturday nights after midnight (and it’s strange to see the streets virtually empty, but cars waiting 4 deep out onto the road for cheap gas). This latest nonsense with prices about 10 cents/L lower than par, I just don’t get… sometimes I think the station owners just get a kick out of motorists going crazy in line.

Also, this afternoon I was talking about the dipping sauces pretty much every pizza place sells nowadays, and pointed out that it can’t be too long before they start selling them in the grocery stores. In fact, many places (such as Easttown and Pizza Hut) just use prepackaged Hellman’s sauces, so I was surprised that they weren’t already available for individuals. And sure enough, tonight at Sobeys I saw featured in their deli section a 3-pack of Pizza Pizza dipping sauce; very serendipitous. What I found odd was that they were actually charging more for them than Pizza Pizza was ($3.85 for 3; I know the prices have gone up recently, but I do believe they’re still less than a dollar at Pizza Pizza).

I recently tried out Fictionwise, an online ebook store. Putting aside the matter of ebooks for just a sec, I think the store is rather well done. You can set up a micropay account, or pay with a credit card, and they’re pretty good about offering a large number of formats (including Acrobat in almost all cases). Considering it is an ebook they’re offering, the prices are not spectacular: I just bought 9 short stories (all by Robert J. Sawyer) for $5.50 (US); the last book of short stories I bought had 23 and cost $12.54 (including tax), so the cost per story is just about the same. Perhaps the whole business with the ink, paper, and shelf space doesn’t cost as much as one would assume… though I suspect agreements not to undercut traditional publishers has more to do with it.

I did find it somewhat awkward to browse through their catatlogue, but that was more due to the nature of browsing for books online than anything specific to Fictionwise (I have the same problems with Amazon, though at least Amazon’s default font is a bit bigger).

“Books belong to a special class of inventions that have not been much improved over the years because they are already so very good, such as with the hammer, knife, or spoon. The computer will never fully replace that.”

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found that quote, but it’s very true. I read a ton on my screen at work, and perhaps even more once I get home, so I don’t really have any problem with the concept of an ebook. But it will never really replace a printed book for me. I’m most comfortable reading short stories on my computer, since I find the worst part about the electronic versions (well, after the eye strain and inability to lounge around) is how hard it is to mark your place and come back to it later. That’s not to say I wouldn’t consider buying an e-novel — I have read novel-length documents off the screen, and will again — but most of my long-format reading will be done with a real book. To me, there’s an added level of inconvenience associated with a long story on the screen, so I’d expect more of a discount than what I’ve seen with the short stories (also, buying single novels takes away the convenience/choice bonus of buying individual short stories rather than the hit-and-miss assortment often seen in printed collections).

Here’s a probably-true story that might blow your mind just a bit: one of the people in my office was riding her bike at dusk last night on the trail. She was going pretty fast down a big hill, when something big hit her right in the jaw: she figures it was a bat or maybe a bird. She keeps on biking home after that. This morning taking the path, there was a dead bat on the ground, right where she said the collision happened!

I think she killed a bat with her face.

I just got a letter today saying that the price of my Rogers Extreme service will go up by $7/month (15%) starting August. Apparently, they haven’t even properly told their CSRs, who are mostly finding out from irate customers who’ve been getting these letters this week and calling to complain.

I have to wonder if Rogers is trying to kill off its extreme tier of service now. This is a substantial price increase for a fairly marginal increase in speeds (more than double upload, and almost double the cap, but only going from 5 to 6 Mbps down). They even encourage people to downgrade to the “express” tier in the notice.

Edit: that seems to be the current conspiracy theory: Rogers’ network couldn’t handle the extra upload of extreme, and throttling has largely been circumvented lately, so they’re now trying to kill off the tier (or really make people pay for the upload bandwidth & cap) by upping the downstream speed of express (it’s already where extreme was 2 years ago) and encouraging people to switch down.

Well, it’s another extreme heat alert day here in Ontario, so air conditioned buildings are opened up to the public/homeless to prevent heat stroke and the like. People are encouraged not to undertake strenuous activity outside in the sun, and all the rest that the heat entails. Far away, some debate rages over whether global warming exists at all — let alone what we should do about it.

But I’m going to talk about the heat on a more personal note. I don’t care for the heat, not at all. I used to; but then, I used to be skinny.

I’ve got a lot of trouble sleeping in the heat and humidity lately, even with my air conditioner running. Of course, with the heat this bad, I can feel the oppresive heat draft coming in through the partially opened door (only my bedroom is air conditioned, and I have to leave the door open a bit for the cat).

Beyond that, though, I’ve got to worry about what it was that got me so fat in the first place: food. The stinking heat and humidity is just destroying the food in my apartment, turning everything mouldy really quickly. I usually have a sixth sense about that sort of thing, throwing leftovers out before they ever get the chance to go really bad. But lately I’ve been seeing spots of mould forming on, and in some cases even completely taking over, my food before I get around to tossing it. Icky. Also, and perhaps even worse than the mould, is that the heat is melting all the chocolate in my kitchen. My Twix bar came apart when I opened the package, leaving me with a mediocre cookie and some gooey chocolate & caramel to lick up. I picked up a Toblerone (that I thought was on sale, but didn’t ring up as such) today, and when I took it out of the cardboard, all the little triangles went smoosh in the foil. It’s a real shame, because most chocolate isn’t as good after being melted like that and then resolidified in the freezer. I need to remember that for the future, and either keep my chocolate in the fridge in the first place, or at least in my room that is air conditioned for part of the day. (Last year, it was August before I finally started remembering to do that).

Lots of people are talking about books lately, so I was going to put up a list of the books on mine, but then it occured to me that “the medium is the message” — while it’s true that the large number of sci-fi and fantasy books would give you a pretty clear idea of my personality, the clutter and disarray of the shelf would provide an even better idea. Not only do I have some books that just don’t fit on the bit of shelf that isn’t dedicated to school books, so they’re sort of thrown on top, in front of, or even behind the other books, I also have a shelf that is soley devoted to junk and clutter. Matches, spare keys, change for the laundry machine, my hat, duct tape — you name it, and it’s probably been misplaced there at some point, and taking up valuable book-displaying room.