LarryC’s World

There should be a new gold-medal sport awarded… watching the NBC coverage of the Olympics! If there was ever a more soul-deadening experience, I can’t think what it is. The nightly Olympic marathon on NBC runs (locally here in New Mexico) from 7:00 PM until 11:00 PM. Thats 4 hours of coverage. Within that 4 hours we are lucky if 40 minutes of it is actual competition. About half of the time is filled with commercials (at least 24 minutes out of every hour), the remaining time is filled with fluff pieces about (American) athletes who are not that interesting as people, and travelog’s on China. Then we have the interminable interviews, and the authoritative pronouncements from Bob Costas. The kicker is that since the Olympics are happening on the other side of the world, all of the action took place at least 12 hours before it is on TV!!

Listening to the various commentators makes me want to scream in agony. It is hard enough to determine who might be winning the competition, especially if there is no American involved, but every effort is described in terms that make you wince. Every athlete is inspirational, has battled adversity, has overcome challenges, has achieved (or not) their dream… ad nauseum! I can’t take it. Thank heavens for the online coverage, where the live broadcasts have NO narrative! The peace is wonderful. Unfortunately, the typed narrative is usually far behind the action, so determining leaders is problematic. I also have the Dish Networks channels that provide the full telecasts of all basketball and soccer matches, without commercial interruption. But I still have to put up with the sappy narrative.

So, as a public service, I am including the Slate Magazine Sap-O-Meter! This widget displays in real time the latest sap measurments from NBC telecasts.

We are in Fallon Nevada today. The trip from Las Cruces was pretty easy. Stopped over in Vegas Tuesday night before moving on to Fallon on Wednesday. We head on to San Jose tomorrow .

I guess I am obsessing about gas prices cuz we’re planning a trip to California in a few weeks, and it looks like we are going from a place of relative low prices, to some of the highest in the country. If you look at THIS MAP, you will notice that El Paso, has the lowest prices in Texas, and Las Cruces prices are moderate (less than $4.00 per gal.). This map is courtesy of Gasbuddy. Gas Buddy does a pretty good job of listing local prices, but they don’t show every filling station in town.

While our prices may be hovering near $4.00 per gallon, across the border in Mexico, gas is $2.19/gal. Some of the local service stations and repair shops are warning about buying “Foreign” gas. That’s like the warnings about buying Canadian prescription drugs. Near the border here, most of the gas they sell in Juarez and Palomas is from Western refining in El Paso!! Besides, the cars they drive in Mexico are all made in the USA (well at least as much as any car is made here now), and have those foreign names like Ford! They have the same gasoline requirements that our cars have, 87 or 86 octane, I’m not planning on driving over just to fill up my tank, though. Driving into Juarez is easy, but the return can involve lengthy waits at the crossing. What is the sense in filling up your tank with cheap gas, if you use half of it while in idle at the border crossing?

Well here’s a quick link to Gas Buddy in a gizmo. I wanted to put it on the front page, but it is not resizable like the zFacts gizmo is, so I will just add it here. I’ll also put it on my ‘Links” page, when I get the page finished.

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