Busy day, oh yeah, it's that W day again...

[altivo]

The snow was over today except it was still blowing around getting on the roads and stuff. And my windshield wipers kept freezing to the glass, which is a real pain. I need new blades I think.

More new books in at work, including The Tales of Beedle the Bard but no more 1909 titles. Just two to go, maybe tomorrow.Roads were bad enough that our delivery driver slid off into the ditch on his way to the library and had to wait for a tow truck to get him back on the road. Fortunately he wasn't hurt. He also works as a Santa in one of the malls outside Rockford. I guess he should have had his sleigh and reindeer instead of the station wagon this week.

Gas price at two of four stations in town was below $1.50. This morning one was at $1.49. This evening the one across the street was down to $1.45 and the first was down farther to $1.43. I haven't seen that sort of thing in... oh, good grief, over 40 years.

Had two birthday cards in the mail today, but set them aside unopened to save for the weekend. Also got a real modem. One that has an internal brain of its own and takes the old AT... Hayes style commands instead of needing some goofy driver that sucks the performance out of your CPU and only works on Windoze. My old Intel "Winmodem" had a Linux driver but that wouldn't recompile when I went to the 2.6 kernel. Now I find that Intel has completely stopped supporting its modem chips and removed all documentation and drivers from the web. Pretty tacky, Intel. Stopping support is OK some number of years after you quit making the things, but this one is only three years old, that's a bit soon. Removing all the docs and stuff is simply unacceptable, though. It costs you little to keep those available "as is" and is a real pain for people who paid money for your stuff and find they can no longer get any information about it. Anyway, the real modem connects over USB or serial port and requires no special drivers in the OS. Hence it can be used with any software, even on my Alpha or an old TRS80. And the price was right, just $23 off EBay. Looks like AOL surplus, probably was a signup premium at one time or other. But it was new in the box, shrink wrap and all, so that's a good deal.

[Yawns] Off to bed. That's enough for a Wednesday.

Comments

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Sounded like an interesting Wednesday to me. Weather seems a bit similar here, too. We had some snow last night, and now it actually looks like a winter here :D

And Yay for cards! I got 2 foaling day cards, too! :)
However, I think those will be the only ones I will get. :\
Oh, well. No biggie. I'll only be one day older than the day before :D

And what comes to the modem... Definitely a good thing to get a "proper" modem, those software ones are just dire. I have never liked them, and never will. Oh, well. Now I am on cable or DSL, so it is not quite as complicated anymore. And Internet is there whenever I need it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I really dislike this trend of making cheap peripherals by having them totally dependent on complex driver software that never gets upgraded. That's why a large number of printers and modems don't work on Vista. The vendors and Microsloth really shot themselves in the foot with that stunt.

Modem's not hooked up yet, but will be today I hope.

You and I can have a party on Sunday. I found out that iceleopard has the same birthday too so maybe we should invite him. XD

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Yes, solving hardware issues with software never works :\

We have a partayh? o.O
Sounds fun, where? O_O

*nuzzles*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose if we met half way it would have to be in Newfoundland or else in Greenland. ;p

*hugs* Still I hope you have something nice happen for your birthday.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

You're slowly getting into the same range of prices that we've got now. :) At least if you take the actual numbers and don't concern yourself with what currency it is and how much fuel the amount actually buys you... ;)

(Seriously, though, it's down to 1.10 EUR / litre where I live right now, which is lower than it's been in a few years. It's currently about 5.46 USD / gallon; the highest we had - ~1.50 EUR / litre - was about 7.45 USD / gallon, but when we had that price, the dollar was much weaker, so at that time, it was more like 9.20 USD / gallon. Of course, the exchange rate fluctuations always make it difficult to compare these figures in any case.)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Direct comparisons are probably meaningless, since taxes are such a large component of the pump price both here and there. I think doco was the one who said that all octane grades are the same price over there too, which is definitely not the case here. The diesel fuel is much higher, and so are the better octanes.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

They are these days, yeah. Pretty much every car these days uses "Super" (95 octane[1]), and "Normal" (91 octane) is the same price as "Super" nowadays. So-called premium fuels (which, in my opinion, are mostly a scam) with 98 or 100 octane are more expensive, but not all stations have them, and no car needs them, anyway.

That being said, if I recall correctly, the Mineralölsteuer is a flat 65 cents per litre here, although you'll have to pay the regular VAT of 19 percent[2] on fuel, too. The flat 65 cents actually have the curious effect that when fuel prices go up, the state earns less from fuel taxes overall, as consumption will go down, too.

Anyhow, from the point of view of the end user, it probably doesn't matter whether the money goes to the state or the oil companies - you have to pay through your nose no matter what. :)

1. Keep in mind, of course, that octane ratings are calculated in a different way here, so they're not directly comparable: our ratings are slightly higher even when the fuel's the same. Wikipedia's got the details.

2. Yeah, it's quite high.

[alaskawolf.livejournal.com]

a lot of places up here 87 octane gas and diesel is $6-8+ a gallon with no taxes :(

im fortunate that its down to $2.60ish in my area which for no reason is still well above the lower 48 average when it used to be close to the same x(

heating fuel is more of a n issue up here

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I can imagine, yes...

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Modems Modems Modems

The physical manifestation of freedom
from Television.

We got no snow but a blast of warm and then
cold...so Ice.

*tries to do donuts in a parking lot but its
so slick the car revs and slips around sideways*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Nah, the physical manifestation of freedom from television is no HDTV, no satellite dish.

It gets icy here at night, but right now things are either dry or slightly slushy.

[goldenstallion.livejournal.com]

Whinnyhi, Rider.

So you beat me to the big six O if I remember correctly. Grats and happy foaling day, dear Rider.

Only gift I can afford to give you is my everloving friendship and a broad back and strong wings to ride and fly.

Imperator with a big, red bow tied around the base of his tail.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh, heh, heh. Nope. Sunday is 59 for me, so you'll get there first. ;D

Guess what I just found out? The WalMart in Harvard built a new bigger (not any better but bigger) store this year and moved late summer. Their old store has been sitting empty, but now there's a sign up. "Coming soon: Tractor Supply Co. : For the stuff you need out here." I don't think I've ever seen one outside of Michigan. Could be fun.

*takes the curry and brush to you so you look really good with the bow even though it's too cold to fly today*