The oil, gas, natural gas, diesel price rise was caused by the weather and not computerfailures. Put it together, every year we have this thing called winter, the weather gets cold and like clockwork, every year about this time, mid-winter, there's a fuel shortage and gasoline shoots up in price. It's happened every year for the last 20, 30 years.

Doomers have small brains with weak memories so they forgot that last January and every January before, unleaded spiked up to $1.40 gallon and home heating oil goes to $1.85 when you can get it. Odd, my records show that I paid 84 cents/gallon for unleaded last winter. Odd too that propane is expensive and in short supply. Is propane made from oil? - Cory Hamasaki

LINK

Not saying I'm agreeing with him. What do *you* think?

-- RPGman (tripix@olypen.com), February 17, 2000

Answers

Dude, If you had whapped Cory on his chin, he'd of cut off his tongue, it's so far out in his cheek for that line. READ the WHOLE WRP.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), February 17, 2000.

Read Cory's whole piece. I think in alot of places he may be being a little sarcastic--further excerpt from WRP135 follows:

"...Anyway, looks like the pollies were right. None of these problems happened. Rail is running perfectly. No problems with trains, no derailments, collisions, or missing freight. Planes aren't snarled, grounded in Australia, crashing other places.

We've got the usual winter layoffs right on schedule. Layoffs at Lockheed Martin, Amazon.com, ValueAmerica.com, just like normal.

The economy is fine. Makes sense for a bunch of dot coms to spend millions of dollars advertising on the superbowl. Lifeminders.com, register with them and every year in December, they'll send you an email reminding you to buy a present for mom. Now there's a valuable service.

One dot com, a forty person company, dropped 2 million bucks on an ad, I think they sell office supplies on the web. Whooo-weee, skinny- minnie, I'm sure Quill and Office Depot are scared. Quill has terrific prices and fast delivery on common office supplies. I got vue 3 ring binders from Office Depot for a buck on Saturday, they had 'em on sale.

No unusual problems. Stock market's down a little, but that's a buying opportunity. The pollies were right; you'll see, any day now. Things'll be fine..."

Note Cory's reference to various mishaps that any reader of thie board knows full well to be occurring (we can debate cause and degree of unusualness...). I think it is clear from his reference to the Aussie AVGAS situation that Cory's tongue is planted firmly in his cheek.

As far as petrochemical price increases: there is seasonal variation, yeah, but I thought the North American truckers are pseudo-striking because the price has not been this high in anyone'e recent memory. Cory knows that.

As far as propane: isn't about half the U.S. supply made from crude? Or did I hallucinate that someone said something like that here a while ago?

I think it is entertaining that Cory has gotten to be such a guru that we are parsing his every word. I am a big fan, myself.

Cory, are you out there? Are you being just a tad sarcastic or what?

Salud, --Andre in southcentral Pennsylvania

-- Andre Weltman (72320.1066@compuserve.com), February 17, 2000.

RPGman,

Cory is using sarcasm.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and believe that you were distracted when reading the WRP, and not blatantly trolling.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), February 17, 2000.

I think Cory's got it about right. Lots of stuff successfully fixed. Lots of problems even so -- mostly (?) being fixed. And life goes on.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), February 17, 2000.

It's hard to believe that anyone could fail to read Cory correctly here. He LIVES for irony. Anyone on this forum, especially!

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), February 17, 2000.

Sarcasm.

Is it an "every year" occurance that freight companies and airlines tack on fuel surcharges?

Who could take this line seriously:

"Odd that propane is expensive and in short supply. Is propane made from oil?"

Either the writer is a moron or he's being sarcastic; I beleive the latter.

-- No Polly (nopolly@hotmail.com), February 17, 2000.

Clearly not over.

Currently, Cory H. identifies an Edwards 3 workload for programmers defined as 80 hour work weeks; gives a 1929 style depression a 5-10% probability and states that 02/29/00 and 01/01/01 as critical dates to watch.

On another thread on this forum US Navy identifed more pre-Y2K testing failures for 02/29/00 than for 01/01/00.

Watch and see.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), February 17, 2000.

Whew! I thought we'd lost Cory there for a minute and it really was TEOTWAWKI!!!!

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), February 17, 2000.

Cory Hamasaki sips a little saki

-- (ohno@mr.bill), February 17, 2000.

J and Andre Weltman: You are absolutely right. I didn't read the whold thing. I was a little surprised by the "Doomers have small brains with weak memories" statement and thought Cory was actually getting serious on us for a change. I should have known it was pollycasm (that's sarcasm with a pseudo-polly twist).

Once I did read the whole thing, this interested me: If something's happening like Yuma's post implies, gold plated, guarenteed not to fail under any circumstances, systems failed and failed and failed again. Anyone know what "Yuma's post" Cory's talking about? I'd like to see it.

Thanks for your responses...

-- RPGman (tripix@olypen.com), February 17, 2000.

That's a very good read... He and the others there seem to have let go of the Y2K issue very honestly.

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), February 17, 2000.

LOL, I bet Cory punched a hole in his cheek with his tongue on this one. LOL... <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), February 17, 2000.

Still waitin' for that stock market crash, the lights to go out, the store shelves to empty, the road raiders to appear, the banks to close. Still waitin' ! Second month of 2000, still waitin'!

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), February 18, 2000.