Before the hurricane, gasoline was about $2.50/gallon here. It is currently $3.09 and the people in charge of pricing say it is not a matter of if, but when the price will reach $4.00 and how long it will stay there.

They blame this on the hurricane.

I call BS.

Yes, it is to be expected that the shutting down of a couple of refineries will raise the prices a little, but not by almost double. Let’s face it, we get somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of the oil we use for gasoline from Central and South America, not from the Middle East, and not from the Gulf of Mexico.

However, we have a war in the Middle East, and the gas companies use it as an excuse to raise the prices of gasoline. We have a hurricane and the gas companies use it as another excuse to not only raise the prices, but to raise the prices by an obscene percentage.

And let’s not kid ourselves – when the price hits $4.00/gallon “because of the hurricane,” it will *never* come back down to the $2.50/gallon that we saw before. We’ll be lucky to see $3.00 after that.

Face it, the gasoline and oil companies have been reporting record profits, and there’s no mystery as to why. They’ve been gouging their customers and using the excuse of war and natural disaster when the real reason is simply because they can.

Way to go guys. Make a buck out of the suffering of others. Soon enough, nobody will be able to afford to go to work because the price of gas will be too high and we all know the companies aren’t going to raise salaries to compensate. Even if they did, the merchants would raise their prices, inflation ensues, and we get tossed even farther back than we are at the moment.

Enjoy the profits while you can. Nobody will be able to afford it before long, and then we’re all screwed.

Ow

I fought the bed, and the bed won. No, it's probably not what you think. =]

Last night, I accidentally whacked my foot against the corner of my bed. After a moment of language that would make a Greek sailor proud, the pain went away and I went to sleep.

Waking up this morning, I find that I have bruised the bone that I hit (the metatarsal for my big toe). So, I get to hobble around the house and try to stay off of my foot for a few days.

If I can focus on something other than the throbbing in my foot, it gives me a reason to just concentrate on working on code.