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Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Pugnate on Friday, September 12, 2008, 01:07:36 PM

Title: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Pugnate on Friday, September 12, 2008, 01:07:36 PM
?
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: TheOtherBelmont on Friday, September 12, 2008, 01:09:30 PM
Dragonlor and I are in San Marcos, Texas, which is about 30 minutes from Austin, why?
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Ghandi on Friday, September 12, 2008, 01:27:20 PM
Pug wants to meet a real-life cowboy just like in those westerns that they have over in the middle east.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Pugnate on Friday, September 12, 2008, 01:56:26 PM
Just wondering because of the Hurricane news.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: TheOtherBelmont on Friday, September 12, 2008, 02:20:40 PM
Just wondering because of the Hurricane news.

Oh, we're like 4 hours away from the coast so we'll probably get some rain and wind out of it, but nothing much different than a normal Texas thunderstorm during hurricane season.  It was a little windy outside today, but nothing unusual.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: gpw11 on Saturday, September 13, 2008, 04:36:17 PM
Texas has a coast?  I'm from Texas and I didn't even know that.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Pugnate on Saturday, September 13, 2008, 05:31:25 PM
I thought you were from Canada.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Quemaqua on Saturday, September 13, 2008, 05:38:42 PM
But he's a Texan at heart.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: gpw11 on Saturday, September 13, 2008, 08:46:22 PM
I thought you were from Canada.

WHATEVER. Same shit.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: scottws on Sunday, September 14, 2008, 06:32:41 PM
Holy shit.  We just got the remnants of hurricane Hannah or Ike here.  Winds were like 60mph.  I've never seen anything like it.  Got a few shingles to replace and a huge as mess in my yard to clean up.  Some houses are almost entirely devoid of shingles.

We've gotten hurricane remnants tons of times, but not like this before.  It was insane.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: idolminds on Sunday, September 14, 2008, 07:06:59 PM
We didn't get wind, but we've had a ton of water dumped on us in the last couple days. Flooding everywhere.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: scottws on Sunday, September 14, 2008, 07:57:46 PM
What was weird is that it didn't rain.  It was just insane wind.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: gpw11 on Sunday, September 14, 2008, 09:50:57 PM
Did all your oil stores go up in flames?  Because the price of gas here just went up 20 motherfucking cents a liter overnight.

Mid 30's MPG highfive!
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: idolminds on Sunday, September 14, 2008, 10:59:59 PM
Its amazing that a storm forcing several refineries to shut down for a few days causes the price of the gas that was already refined and at the stations to cost more. I'm not worried, because I'm sure once those refineries are working again the price will go back down. Right? RIGHT?!
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Ghandi on Monday, September 15, 2008, 12:14:52 AM
Did all your oil stores go up in flames?  Because the price of gas here just went up 20 motherfucking cents a liter overnight.

Ah, the joys of speculators...

The best is when the price per barrel increases before the storm even hits.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: gpw11 on Monday, September 15, 2008, 12:59:35 AM
Speculators are a lot of it, but the gas companies themselves are largely to blame as well.   You don't post record profits every quarter without increasing your margins whenever you have something even remotely close to an excuse to do so.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Ghandi on Monday, September 15, 2008, 11:51:10 AM
True. I was just pointing out one facet of it.

In the end, the government is largely responsible for letting this happen. Hell, they are giving them tax breaks as they get record profits. It's outrageous.

I hope everyone on the boards that got hit by the storm is O.K.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: TheOtherBelmont on Monday, September 15, 2008, 12:28:55 PM
Did all your oil stores go up in flames?  Because the price of gas here just went up 20 motherfucking cents a liter overnight.

Mid 30's MPG highfive!

*highfive* I love my Geo Metro, but yeah gas has been a little crazier than normal here, a few gas stations have run out of regular unleaded and the one across the street from us even ran out of midgrade.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: gpw11 on Monday, September 15, 2008, 10:37:29 PM
I liked how when people here started buying diesel cars the price went up to above that of gas.  I can't remember why they said it was, but they played it off like it was increased demand.  Normally, it'd be all like 'fair enough', but then you look at the numbers and think about it - the increased demand in diesel is all consumer grade (like a 5% spike if I remember correctly), and it's the most widely used commercial fuel source here...basically, it's a drop in the bucket as far as demand curves go - not nearly enough to call for a massive price shift in the range of 20-30%.

I'm not entirely for strict government regulations on price setting for things like gas usually. Mainly because I'd rather see stricter regulations on things people absolutely need like medicine first (sure, we all need gas but if you drive a 5.4l V8 for no reason you can go fuck yourself before I'll listen to you bitch about gas prices).  That said, it's blatantly clear that the government isn't even forcing the gas companies to abide by long standing legislation already in place.  Every once in a while there's a huge outcry as people have to cancel vacations and shit (Wait..what?) and the government pretends to have a formal investigation into industry wide practices.  The result is always the same - no evidence of price gouging, anti-competitive behavior or illegal levels of collusion. Yet, the common-sense based evidence is blatantly in front of our eyes.  Price setting? Check.  Collusion? Check. Anti-competitive behavior? Check.  Record profits? Check. 
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Cobra951 on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, 08:16:59 AM
It's not like legislation is a scarce commodity.  They can regulate the price of medicine *and* the price of gas in the same session.  It's all about money and corruption.  Capitalism is an amoral force.  Social conscience has to be imposed upon it.

I should have known posts about Ike's path of destruction would have ended up here.  I miss the drama already.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: Cobra951 on Thursday, September 18, 2008, 10:55:46 PM
I had it a lot easier than this. (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_short_but_eventful_life_of.html)  What a massive storm.
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: WindAndConfusion on Monday, September 22, 2008, 12:00:53 AM
These videos are made more awesome by having redneck commentary in the background:

SHEE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIuHbQSPjEA&eurl=http://poetv.com/video.php?vid=44111)-IIIT (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou6O5lGHTmk).

(news article) (http://blogs.chron.com/hurricanes/2008/09/spring_resident_captures_video.html)
Title: Re: Anyone from Texas here?
Post by: gpw11 on Monday, September 22, 2008, 12:06:38 AM
It's not like legislation is a scarce commodity.  They can regulate the price of medicine *and* the price of gas in the same session.  It's all about money and corruption.  Capitalism is an amoral force.  Social conscience has to be imposed upon it.

Ha, very true. It's sometimes hard to keep this in mind when, you know, they act like there's nothing that can be done because they ran out of pixie dust.