How's Your Day? Archives

Hang in there.

 

Things are looking a bit better...Our property manager just came by saying that we had until March 15th to move out. That gives us a one month window of moving time! That is a HUGE release of stress right there!

 

Great!

 

I'm beyond happy right now. Canadian Forces Housing Agency called, my 4 bedroom house was approved for March 1st possession date, alone with my entitled leave to move my furniture, effects and dependants from my current place - so after 2 years of living in a different province and house from my kids, I'M FINALLY GOING TO A HOME BABY! Could not be better in the least. I've been sick of living out of a suitcase and seeing my family once a year at best.

 

That's great news! Congratulations! Will you still be living on base or off? (My bro-in-law lives in wainwright...he's a tank driver...but I think he owns his own house so I'm not sure how living works for those on duty. )

Regardless, I'm happy for you!

 

I'll be on base, the housing is SO much cheaper than renting somewhere near the base or buying a home near there.

 

gas companies are really screwing us now, apparently.
as if the price wasn't already inflated enough right now to begin with, now it seems they're screwing with the formula to make less mileage.

Exhibit A: both our cars typically get 23-27 MPG. Filled up both cars this week, did the calculations - barely 17! What the CRAP?!!?!?!
Maybe it was a bad tank that week (filled both cars up a day apart at the same station - same station we always fill up at), so we'll see next time I fill up.

BGDAAAA

 

Your now getting ethanol as well as those of us in the metropolitan areas. Sorry about that.
East Texas was exempt for a long time, but the new EPA rules keep increasing the area of Ethanol mandate, especially for Texas.
The federal subsidy has been removed from Ethanol production so the price is no longer subsidized through the U.S. Gov't but now directly at the pump.

 

I am TIRED!! too bad I am only 1/4 done my assignment. I keep dozing off...but it's due tomorrow at midnight and I really need to get the first draft done tonight. If only I could stay awake....

 

Several of the stations around here have started carrying Ethanol-free gas recently. Of course it's 40 to 50 cents higher per gallon too but I'm wondering if it's worth it.

 

Hurray! I have beaten back the sleep and am going strong on my assignment! I only have the conclusion and a write-up aboutthe company I work for left! And it's only 2:55am...

 

What are the pumps like in the States? Here (in alberta anyway) we have 3 grades of gas: regular, super and ultra (something to that effect). I thin regular has up to 15-20% ethanol, super is something like 5-10%, and I believe ultra is ethanol-free. Is ethanol-free gas something new for you guys down there? Just curious.

 

Pretty much the same. Here it's Regular, Plus and Premium where Plus is just a mixture of Regular and Premium. But they all contain ethanol... except for the stations lately that are dedicating a single pump to Ethanol-free gasoline only.

 

I see. Thanks!

***

Ooohhh...long day ahead. Got to bed at 4am. My wife kept asking if I was alright and other than the insane amount of work I forced myself to do last night/this morning...nothing is wrong. At least I won't be up that late tonight. The assignment needs to be submitted by midnight.

 

In the U.S, if you live in an area where you are mandated to have ethanol in your gasoline, there is little to no choice. You will have 10% ethanol in your gasoline at an average over the entire tank below the station. How much you get in your tank from the pump at any one time depends on a variety of factors that I won't go into here. Example, the Dallas Fort Worth Statistical Metropolian areas (we have more than one since we have about 6-7 million people spread out across a 50 mile radius from either Dallas or Fort Worth) and other major areas have that enforcement applied by the EPA.

Out in areas that the EPA does not mandate a requirement for 10% , the government has an overall ethanol mandate level for the country. The energy companies are required to provide a level of ethanol to meet the mandate. In order to do that they will provide ethanol blends which will be priced to sell the blended gasoline to meet the mandate so they will not have to pay massive fines to the government. They will sell unblended gasoline at a premium price in these areas because they know they can make more profit from people who have older cars that cannot run ethanol without engine issues (gaskets, seals, etc). In addition ethanol is not good for many gas tanks for boats and is definitely not good for small engines such as lawn mower engines.

In Brazil ethanol works because they produce it from sugar cane which yields 8 times as much ethanol as corn does and their engines have been built for ethanol use for several decades. The U.S. mandate was simply to prop up the corn industry in the U.S. and the subsidy that the government recently repealed was also meant to provide a lower price at the pump for ethanol blends. Someone was paying for it (you in your tax dollars) elsewhere.

Here is an Edmunds.com article (yes, I know some will complain about Edmunds) that is a pretty fair view of E85 (which is 85% ethanol) versus gasoline that may have been E10 (10% ethanol) or it could have had no ethanol to show the lack of efficiency of ethanol.

http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/e85-vs-gasoline-comparison-test.html

Here is an additional article on ethanol.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/ethanol-facts1.htm

 

It's too early in the morning for all this science.

 

Thomas Dolby would be proud!

 

Alternatively one could blame wood grain alcohol or certain extracurricular activities for that affliction...

 

So our laptop just got taken out by some insane virus. Our basic filter service that runs the firewall had been deleted somehow. By the time I got everything up and running through Norton...our hard drive had been licked clean. I am busy finding previous versions of our files and will back them up to our ext drive. Something on the comp isn't restoring them. I guess that will be solved with a quick factory reset though...all my wife was doing was reading a book blog...

At least some stuff is salvageable. Thank goodness for background programs I don't understand!....sigh....