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Wedding Photos

Brian & Mary's photos from Mandy and I's wedding turned out great.

Drum roll!

Pat Gaietto's (professional) photos of Mandy's and I's wedding are awesome. Enjoy!

Ethanol Is Much More Expensive Than Gasoline

"Now flash forward to today. With the Summer solstice less than 24 hours
away, East Coast gasoline suppliers paid $5.75 gal for the ethanol that makes
up 10% of finished gasoline blends in markets that demand reformulated gasoline...

Part of the difference lies in the reformulated blendstock, which currently
costs about 22cts gal more than conventional gasoline. But adding 10% of
ethanol at $5.75 gal jacks the finished RFG-ethanol price up by another 36cts
gal. Subtract the 5.1cts gal ethanol blender's credit, and the blame for
ethanol's impact on the finished gasoline falls to "just" 31cts gal."

Consequently, the government mandate of using 10% ethanol in reformulated fuels has raised the price of gasoline 31 cents in RFG areas. Add together the taxes placed on gasoline (federal, state, local) and additional costs caused by government mandates. Compare that number to an oil company's profit per gallon and see who is gouging consumers.

Steve & Nicole's Wedding

Mandy and I drove over to Rhode Island for Steve and Nicole's Wedding this past weekend. My photos from the trip are now available. We enjoyed the Mystic Seaport museum before the wedding and completed our visit the following day. Notice that the barometer predicted rain before Steve & Nicole's outdoor wedding in Wilcox Park. However, it didn't pour until everyone was safely inside at the reception.

We feasted on some great seafood at USS Chowder Pot III (in Connecticut) sampling their crab stuffed mushrooms, New England Clam Chowder, cajun style snapper, and seafood pasta. We also enjoyed a stop at Mystic Pizza (which features tasty pizza and New England Clam Chowder). I added Mystic Pizza to our NetFlix list.

Ethanol

Chris pointed me at a CNN article on ethanol.

I would not favor the government mandates mentioned in the article, for example:
"It would take a combination of consumption mandates to ensure that the demand would be there, and conceivably some production incentives to use sugar ethanol," he said.

When government gets too involved in mandating business, it leads to inflexibility to respond to market conditions since location specific blends of gasoline during supply / demand imbalance can't be used in another area with different regulations to remedy supply crunch. It also leads to higher prices since ethanol is currently more expensive than gasoline so blending it into gasoline increases the cost at the pump. Remember that ethanol has ~67% percent of the BTUs as gasoline. Therefore, you are paying more for less efficiency (less BTUs of energy).

"Ethanol prices have displayed a measure of volatility in recent months. In Nebraska — where the state has tracked monthly ethanol and gasoline rack prices since 1982 — ethanol was 18 to 44 cents a gallon cheaper than gasoline from March through June 2005. In July, though, the price of ethanol jumped past gasoline, and it has been more expensive since."

Ethanol contributes to further instability of the price at the pump since its pricing swings wildly. Furthermore, think of the transportation / logistical challenges since ethanol is mixed in at the terminal and needs to follow a parallel path to gasoline. Remember that it can't travel via pipeline, which is the best transportation mechanism, since it absorbs water. See transportation diagram entitled "Road to Pump" and note that ethanol and gasoline must arrive at the same time for a product to be available if ethanol blending were required by law.

Is Ethanol worth it?

"A professor of geo-engineering at the University of California-Berkeley, Patzek isn’t impressed by the notion that ethanol will help reduce American dependence on foreign oil. The researcher pointed out that in 2004 American motorists used some 140 billion gallons of gasoline. Meanwhile, the ethanol industry produced about 3.4 billion gallons that year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

Patzek said ethanol backers are “playing on human inability to see the scale.” “Five years from now with all the ethanol anybody will be able to produce, the impact” on gasoline consumption “of all of that is less than inflating car tires properly, just in passenger cars,” he said."

I also have read that if all the farm land in the U.S. were converted to growing ethanol via corn, we could make E10 (which is 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol) nationwide. E85 is a different story, since there isn't enough land to scale corn grown ethanol. Think about the huge outlay of infrastructure required just at the store level. Stations currently have two tanks, premium and regular, mid grade is mixed by the pump. To add an additional tank and dispenser would cost ~$100k for a small station and $200k for a large station. A small company has ~1600 stations.

Have you check your tires for proper air pressure lately?

Tom & Jullian's Wedding

Photos I took from Tom & Jullian's Wedding are now available. Mandy and I had a great time at the wedding reception and adopted a beautiful red beta (that was used in the vases as a decoration). I named the beta Brutus since he is red and appears to be an OSU fan. He is getting along well with our three other fish and is quite energetic. I will add a photo of him to the photo set when I get a chance.

Mandy and I received our professional wedding photos and they turned out terrific. I will upload them to Flickr in the near future. If you ever need a photographer, Mandy and I recommend checking out Gaietto Images which offers great photos at very reasonable pricing.

Comments

Joshw gave me a heads up that my blog comments were broken. Thanks! I fixed the problem and you can now use the comments functionality without error.

Please let me know if you find any other problems, since I switched web hosting providers.

Strickland Is All Talk

Talk:
'I am willing to debate Mr. Blackwell at any time, in any place about the issues facing Ohio,' Strickland said. (Cincinnati Enquirer, Sunday, June 4, 2006)

'The frustrated Democrat said that any time Blackwell wants to debate face-to-face, he'll be ready.' (Cleveland Plain Dealer, Wednesday, June 7, 2006)

No Walk:
'Ted certainly believes it would be viable to debate this summer, if possible,' Dailey said. (Associated Press, June 12, 2006)

'Dailey said Strickland believes it would be 'ideal' to start the debates in the summer.' (Dayton Daily News, Tuesday, June 13, 2006)

Strickland campaign spokesman Keith Dailey backtracked from his boss's earlier boast, explaining he really didn't mean any place, any time. Dailey further clarified Strickland would have to 'negotiate' any debates and that former DNC Chair and campaign consultant David Wilhelm would do the negotiating.

Captain Destruction

No sooner than we start to put in the slalom course and Captain Destruction shows up to do harm to all the hard work of everybody else. Captain Destruction stopped by Terry's house on Friday and proceeds to break the garage door. Then on Sunday Captain Destruction raises his head again and can not find a drain plug for the row boat. Then Captain Destruction trys to tear up the new slalom course by wrapping the steel main line around the propeller of the install boat. Everybody keep you eyes open for Captain Destruction. He is looking to reek more havoc! on others.

Any guess, as to who Captain Destruction is? Well, it can't be Doug since he has left his membership to the ski club expire. It can't be Terry, since he was to busy to help with the ski course and was off enjoying Wicked. Captain Destruction isn't afraid of turtles, so Jason is definitely out. A picture of a scared little girl screaming in a high pitched voice and jumping around comes to mind when thinking about the turtle incident.

Hosting Provider

I am currently moving my website to a new hosting provider. Please let me know if you see anything that is broken. Thanks!

Energy Hypocrite

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Al Gore has used enough hydrocarbons to circle the globe while presenting over 1,000 Power Point presentations on climate change. Gore’s presentation was entitled “An Inconvenient Truth� and asks, "Are you willing to change the way you live?"

Movie includes footage of Gore and his constant air travel with two CO2 meters running at the bottom of the page that compare Gore’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with those of an average person.

CEI also revealed that he recently used five large SUVs to haul his movie entourage a mere 500 yards at the Cannes Film Festival in France, all the while admonishing others to curtail their own energy use. Gore's "Saturday Night Live" appearance can't top that kind of comedy.

Perhaps Gore would get more respect if he stopped lavishly using the hydrocarbon based products he preaches against?

Gore may be an energy hypocrite, but at least he was "honest" when interviewed:

Q: There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix?

A: I think the answer to that depends on where your audience's head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

I was always thought that the end never justified the means. Gore's crying wolf might not have the desired impact if his credibility is lost due to mis-representation of the facts. I do care about the environment, but do have to laugh at the chicken little approach.