The Price of Gas and Other Emissions

I went out to run some errands today. One of which was to get gas in my car. However, once I got to the gas station, I decided I wasn't about to fill the tank. $3/gallon?! This is insane. I can remember a time when I was very young, I was riding in the car and looked out the window and saw a gas station sign that read 23 cents. 23 cents!

Maybe you didn't hear me...

23 CENTS!

I can't remember the last time anything cost 23 cents. In fact, I couldn't even get the stamp machine at the post office to take any coins today - not even the $1 coins that it dispenses in change. However, once I got $8 in bills into the slot, it gave me 60 cents change all in nickles. So now I have a bunch of nickles to add to my loose change jar(s).

I counted the quarters in my loose change jar a few weeks ago. I need to take the jars to the bank so they can dump them in the sorting machine. I have over $170 just in quarters. But I'm afraid that if I take them in and get some bills back in change, that I'll wind up spending it on things like...gasoline.

I hate that.

So, now I am feeling like I can't even afford to drive to job interviews...which reminds me of an email that I received this morning. I will cut and paste it here:

No Email?????? .......... An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor's job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, "You will be hired at minimum wage of $5.35 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day."

Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a Computer nor an e-mail address. To this the manager replies, "You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day."

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmer's market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit.

Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family. During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day.

By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly.

Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage.

The tomato company's payroll has put hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed a million dollars.

Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn't have time to mess with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is stunned, "What, you don't have e-mail? No computer! No Internet! Just think where you would be today if you'd had all of that five years ago!"

" Ha!" snorts the man. "If I'd had e-mail five years ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and making $5.35 an hour."

Which brings us to the moral of the story:

Since you got this story by e-mail, you're probably closer to being a janitor than a millionaire.

Sadly, I received it also.

Well, that's it for now. I have to get to work on my mid-term Flash project (which is currently ill-defined...and due tomorrow). I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do. I am doing some work for Habitat for Humanity tomorrow morning, then I have a phone interview at 3:00 pm, then I have class at 6:30 pm. That gives me the rest of today to do my Flash mid-term project (since I have been spending the week working on JavaScript for my wife - which reminds me, they want to hire me on a contract basis to implement this code I already wrote for them - yes, it is a weird situation).

Enough parentheticals. Oh, I also got a software engineering job lead from a guy for whom I installed a garage door opener on Sunday. Oh, that reminds me - I still have to collect payment for the work I did for a woman on Saturday, helping her dig out her garage because her spastic landlord is kicking her out for no valid reason.

Alright, that really is all for now. It's kind of rambling gibberish, but then I guess I created this blog for this sort of outlet.

Enjoy the rest of your day while I hack away!