Scott Bush

Let’s start with some facts:

• Gas is roughly $4/gallon
• Costco is less expensive than most other places for most items
• Many Costco stores sell gas
• Time is valuable
• People love to save money and will flock to “savings”

Simple facts that few would take issue with. How is it, then, that so many people miss the obvious fact that buying gas at Costco DOESN’T save them money?!
Let me explain by defining some parameters for my example (and yes, they’re simplified for convenience and easy math; I’m illustrating a point here, not proving my arithmetical skills):

• Your car’s gas tank has a 10-gallon capacity.
• You earn $40,000 a year.
• Gas at a non-Costco station is $4.00/gallon.
• Gas at Costco’s station is $3.75/gallon.
• Lines at a non-Costco station at a typical Sat. afternoon are 3 cars deep.
• Lines at a Costco station on the same Saturday afternoon are 6 cars deep.
• It takes an average of five minutes for someone to fill up and pay at either station.

Given these parameters, let’s see why it’s stupid to wait in line to buy “cheaper” gas.

Filling up at a non-Costco Station (”station NC”) costs you $45. That’s $40 for gas (10 gallons @ $4/gal.) plus the $5 it cost you to wait 15 minutes for your turn ($40k/year, an average of 2,000 hours worked per year (40-hour weeks for 50 weeks/year) means $20/hour; 15 minutes is a quarter of an hour, so $5). Filling up at Coscto (”station C”) costs $47.50. I’m sure you could figure this out, but briefly: $37.50 for gas and $10 for the time wasted in line.

That’s a difference of $2.50 more you spent at Costco for “cheaper” gas!

What’s that? I hear the dissenters clamoring to be heard. Oh, I see. Uh-uh… I see. Okay, yes. [nods head]. Let me address your concerns:

• You can go when it’s not busy - Absolutely you can, and I recommend it as it helps keep lines more consistent rather than peaking at the busiest times of the day. But the reality is Costco (and other stations, too) are busiest when people are out more, like weekend afternoons. So I think the parameter is valid.
• It’s stupid to assign a dollar value to time when you’re not at work - Is it? I disagree. I’ve worked on freelance projects outside of work and therefore have a strong sense of what my time is worth outside of the ol’ 9-5 (which is really more like 7:30-5). Time to spend with family, read, be outside, etc. is worth more than my approximate hourly wage from my employer. By virtue of not being work time I think that hour is even more valuable than the dollar amount assigned to it by my employer. And hey, if you want to get fanatical about it, that hour’s economic value is worth more than $20 if you consider benefits and the amount the employer pays on my behalf in training, benefits, taxes, etc.
• Most cars have tanks bigger than 10 gallons - True; but I stated this was an assumption for easy math. But assume the average is 17. gallons. That just increases the amount of the difference by $1.88 (7.5 gallons x $0.25).
• It doesn’t take 5 minutes to fill up a tank - Not for everyone. I try to be very conciensious to my fellow fossil-fuel addicts by pulling up, hopping out, and starting the fill-up process promptly, and getting back in and taking off as promptly as possible. Too few others take the same care. And what about the older person confused by the debit-card payment process, or the (God help their wallets) Suburban drivers with a 30-gallon tank? They take longer than five minutes. It’s just an average for illustration.
• HA! Well, I shut off my engine while I wait so I am saving money that way - Good! That does save gas, and therefore money and carbon spewed into the air. There’s LOTS of research about the effects on mileage of various techniques (slowing down, not driving aggressively, and turning off your engine rather than idling 10 or 20 seconds or a minute). But I didn’t even address the cost of gas wasted while idling, because that’s too variable to figure out. It depends on weather, engine capacity, etc. but still works out to well under a gallon per hour, so the 15 to 30 minute wait in the example would contribute under a dollar to the amount.
• Okay, okay–but you have to save money wherever you can - I agree. But idling in line to fill up isn’t one of them. How about not buying an overpiced coffee beverage instead? At $4 for a 16-ounce flavored latté, you’re paying $32/gal. Talk about saving money…

Two facts:

1. A.P. Style and just about every other grammatical reference for US English advocates placing a comma within quotes. I was a high-school journalist and continue to use AP Style when editing.
2. PHP and every other programming language I’ve ever used require strings (that’s coder-talk for some text) to be wrapped in quotes. Function parameters need to be separated by commas.

See where this is going? When coding, I constantly find myself putting the comma correctly within the quotes and having to go back and change it to the outside. The reverse is usually not an issue: when I write, I don’t habitually put the comma outside quotes. I guess that means I’m more of a writer than a coder?

One solution: move across the pond and use British English, where commas and other punctuation go outside quotes! < Gasp! > What savages!

Our dojo, Northwest Martial Arts, held a demonstration at the University Street Fair
today. In 2007, the attendance at the fair was down, and the dojo’s demonstration was watched by “four” people. Today’s 80-plus-degree weather guaranteed a larger audience. It also guaranteed something we hadn’t thought of: hot feet.

As a student of both karate and aikido, I was performing both kata (a pre-determined “routine” of punches, kicks, and stances), one-step sparring, beginner aikido techniques, and some target drills. We set out a number of multi-colored matts–a bit thinner than those we use in the dojo–a few minutes before we actually began. The crowd gathered, the sun beat down, and our sandals came off.

Luckily, the young kids started first with a few minutes of rolling so they weren’t subjected to the hot mats. But by the time we started with the kata it was quite uncomfortable. I was thinking, “damn, these mats are HOT” but we were beginning so my mind wasn’t thinking too much about it. But after returning for one-step sparring it was excruciating. We rushed through the aikido techniques (basics like kotoroshi, shihonage, kokunage, and ikkyo) but by the time we were doing the target drills, I was wincing and hopping around to keep my feet off the mats as much as possible. Apparently, it looked to some members of the audience like I was just “excited to start punching,” so that’s good.

All in all, it was a good demo. It’s always good to practice in front of people, although honestly I don’t remember much about what I did. I think I missed a section of one kata and my throws weren’t great but I did get through it. Check out our dojo’s Facebook group to read the kind words our aikido sensei had to say about me “manning up” despite the heat.

Soon I’ll post a photo of the red, blistered flesh that I call my feet.

Update: The photo is posted for your podiatric voyeurism.

As you may recall from an earlier post, I volunteer with Food Lifeline, a terrific organization in Shoreline. One of their big events each year is the National Association of Letter Carrier’s Food Drive. You get a plastic bag in your mail a few days before the second Saturday in May, and you fill it with canned- or non-perishable food and put it out by your mailbox. Then your letter carrier picks it up and brings it to their station.

Once again, I was team leader at the North City Station in Shoreline. Hank, the other team leader, was there again as well; 2008 marked our third year at the station together. We were lucky enough to have a number of returning volunteers, too. Speaking of volunteers, let’s see how well I do remember their names: Steve, Taft, Ben, Jeff, Anthony, and Cody on first shift; Scott, Wanda, Mark, Jody, Christina, Carol, Lynn, Thomas, Leslie, Tanner, Devin, Ryan, Sonja and a few others (including Crystal!). Special thanks to Janet, the station supervisor for her help as well.

Together we unloaded tons of food: literally. We filled one semi and most of another with totes (huge cardboard boxes), each weighing between 900 and 1000 pounds. In 2007 this station brough in 35,500 pounds of food; this year it probably approached the same amount but we won’t know for a few days. That’s excellent given the tough economy right now: thanks to everyone for their generous donation of food, money, and effort on Saturday.

Update: had two “entries” on this quiz: surprisingly, one of those got four out of five correct and I know she didn’t cheat because she guessed while we were together. Well done! Answers are now highlighted.

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The term “web 2.0″ is used more than kleenex at a funeral. It’s been defined a thousand times and executives use it in the hopes that by repeating that mantra, their company’s sites will become two-dot-oh-ified.As I researched this topic, I was amazed at some of the names of these sites. They’re unintelligible! Ask anyone “What’s ebay?” and they’ll answer “a site that overcharges people to sell their junk.” “No!” you yell at them, angry for no apparent reason: “What does the word ebay really mean?” “I don’t know,” they stammer, frightened at your inexplicable rage over oddly-named websites. Same for Google (yes, I know it’s a 1 followed by a hundred zeros): both make no real sense but both are household words. I suppose the founders of the following web 2.0 sites thought that, one day, their conceptual alphabetic jumbles would represent such ubiquitous services that everyone would be bliin-ing things or kosmix-ing each other. They were wrong.

Below is a list of many, many web 2.0 sites whose names are ridiculous and, I swear, not made up. Well, five of them are. But that’s the game. You identify (on a separate sheet of paper, please) which of the site names below are fake. I’ll post the answers in a few days. No cheating now: you could just copy, paste, and add “.com” to them to see whether they come up. But where’s the fun in that?! Besides, some have gone belly-up I think. Have fun!

• 24im
• aupeo
• bdeep (a web concept that two colleagues and I tried to launch… so this one was almost a real site)
• bliin
• collagr
• docoloco
• endeve
• gigpark
• jzuxie (random letters ;-)
• kaltura
• kerika
• koinup
• kontera
• kosmix
• kublax
• lexisum
• mux
• mypita (like a pita sandwich that’s yours)
• nesteggr
• pixoo
• qoof
• respectence
• rollmio
• ruqurios (get it? “are you curious”? I flexed my 2.0 muscle on that one!
• scoodi
• sosius
• tafiti
• ubuket
• wauw
• vuze
• xakasha
• yooguu
• zocdoc
• zyxwv (it’s the last part of the alphabet listed backwards)