Gas Shortage: Day 16

It's been 16 days since Hurricane Ike made landfall at Galveston, Texas. At first the fuel crisis in Atlanta seemed to be minor: a few stations were out and prices were up, but generally fuel could be found and there were no lines. But as the days progressed fuel supplies dwindled. More and more stores ran out and fewer were being resupplied. There are no official percentages that I can find indicating how many stations have gas, but I know that in my area the percentage did not improve during the week last week. If anything it grew worse. Very few stores have had gas: on my average day I would see one in 7 with gas. Last weekend I was able to get gas without waiting. Last Wednesday I waited behind two other cars (10 minutes only because the SUV in front of me had big tanks) but two days ago (Friday) I waited over 15 minutes in a long line. And Friday afternoon I saw gas lines much worse than the one I experienced that morning.

Demand was up significantly yesterday as nearly 250,000 people drove to or through Atlanta on their way to various college football games. I have not ventured out much this weekend, but I did pass by the 4 stations closest to my house and they were all empty. Personally, we are set until Thursday. All of our cars are full or nearly full and only one has to endure a long commute.

So why did this happen? And why is it so much worse than the few days of shortages after Hurricane Katrina? Here is an article from the AJC that provides some insight:

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/09/28/gas_shortage_explainer.html

Ruby on Rails

Over the past month or so I've been playing with Ruby on Rails. I've decided I really like the environment and developing in it has been (mostly) fun. It is very powerful and makes accessing database information wonderfully easy. Of course I first had to learn Ruby, which turned out to be a pleasure all on its own. The last object oriented language I did any serious work with was C++, which is a really cumbersome language that tends to make some object oriented programming techniques far more painful than they ought to be. So it's been great to be able to use a language that as designed from the beginning to be object oriented.

Brother, can you spare a gallon?

On the eve of the landing of Hurricane Ike I checked the tanks in all our cars to make sure we had plenty of gas. I added 10 gallons to the Jeep that night anticipating that we might have shortages as we did the week after Hurricane Katrina. Well the shortages didn't appear right away. Last week most stations had fuel although the prices were a bit higher.

Upgrading FreeBSD

I decided it was finally time to take care of our old FreeBSD server and get it running something supported. This box is the main server for our household. It processes mail, provides network services (imap, dhcp, dns), houses photos, music, video, and acts as a web server for the house, including a calendar and addressbook. So it's a rather important box for our family and when it is down it is missed. In fact, during this latest upgrade my wife asked me at least 6 different times either "can I get to my e-mail yet?" or "can I get to the addressbook yet?"

Dead Lexus

So we all piled in to my wife's Lexus this morning, running late as usual. Put key in ignition, turned to start, and nothing happened. The first stage of grief (as in "Oh Good Grief!") is denial, and while lingering in that stage I tried to start the car again. And again, and a few more times just because denial is such a blissful place to be. Of course my repeated attempts to coax electrons out of an empty battery were completely futile. We quickly grabbed all our stuff and piled in to my daughter's Jeep, then proceeded on our way, adding at least 3 minutes to our tardy time.

This evening I went out in to the garage to resuscitate the dead Lexus. Battery juxtaposition was such that the easiest course of action was to push the Lexus partway out of the garage. My wife got in the driver's seat, turned the ignition on to unlock the steering wheel, then went to put the car in Neutral. The shifter wouldn't budge. I asked "Is your foot on the brake"? "Yes" came the reply. Of course I didn't believe her. But of course she was right. Even with the brake pedal pressed as far as it would go the transmission would not come out of Park.

Like most modern automatics, this car has a safety interlock between park and the brake. You cannot shift the car out of park until you have the brake pedal depressed. Unfortunately it seems that this interlock actually needs power in order to unlock the transmission. No power, no unlock. Well, this kind of makes life a challenge when you need to push a car with a dead battery.

I finally pulled the Jeep in to the garage and got the Lexus jump-started. Then I drove the Lexus around for about 20 minutes to charge the battery. I found this entire event to be extremely stressful and therefore I required nourishment, and since I was driving around anyway it sure seemed like a stop at Cold Stone was appropriate.

We are still not sure why the battery discharged. We suspect that the headlight "auto" setting did not turn the lights off when it was supposed to. We have had problems with this before, but always caught it before the battery drained. So from now on we don't trust "auto".

Tomorrow we get to see if the battery can still hold a charge.

Fay Targets Florida

My parents, who live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, left their home about a week ago for an extended road trip. They travelled to Minneapolis for a high school reunion and are planning to go on from there to Denver for a wedding. They are stopping in to visit us Labor Day weekend on their way home. So they will be away from home for about 4 weeks. Before they left my dad put up his hurricane shutters. These consist of corrugated metal panels which are custom cut to fit over every window and exterior glass door. They are quite ugly but they are the best protection against the high winds of a hurricane. He tells me that his neighbors thought he was nuts for putting them up before the extended trip.

As of today Tropical Storm Fay is 350 miles southeast of Key West and forecast to take up a northerly heading that will take it across Punta Gorda and on up in to the Tampa Bay area on Tuesday. It is also forecast to reach hurricane strength before making landfall. A hurricane watch is now in effect from the Florida Keys to Anna Maria island at the mouth of Tampa Bay. Somehow I don't think the neighbors are laughing anymore.

Angel Flight Crashes

It has been a troubling summer for Angel Flight organizations across the country. Angel Flight, for those who don't know, is a collection of volunteer organizations which provide free transportation to medical patients in need. Volunteer pilots provide the transportation in their own airplanes or in planes that are rented. The pilots receive no reimbursement for their time, fuel, or operating costs. The patients and those travelling with them pay nothing. Most planes used in Angel Flight are small (4 or 6 seat) single engine propeller driven airplanes that operate as "General Aviation". Pilots tend to be those (like me) who obtained licenses for recreation rather than for an avocation.