Over the past weekend I trekked around the southern end of Lake MI over to see iGor in Milwaukee, WI. On Sunday we rolled up to Green Bay and took in the final regular season NFL game on the frozen tundra of Lambeau field. (And YES it was frozen!) To summarize the game, it was not a good day to be a Lions fan. But then there really are not a lot of days when it's good to be a Lions fan….

But football isn't what this is all about. Vacationing is all about the trip and I spent about 14 total hours in the car in those three days. If you've paid any attention at all in the past couple of years you'll know there are a lot of articles in the paper, on television and radio, and all over the web about gas prices. None of them are favorable either if you're the consumer. Using sites like Gasbuddy.com it's easy to find the best and worse prices in your area and see trend lines for gas prices locally and nationally, at least in North America.

What I hear and read are nothing but complaining and whining. Prices are too high and rising too fast. It's a hardship and people cannot afford it. Now I could compare prices now to inflation adjusted prices from the past, or point out that the United States has one of the lowest gas prices in the world, or use other analytical mathematics on which to base my complaint. But I'm not gonna do that, you can find that in other places.

Instead I'll use some anecdotal information gathered over the weekend. As you probably know from prior posts I spend most of my highway time in a Toyota Prius. Since it's normally just me my ThinkPad and a cup of coffee why spend more money on gas than I have to? Since putting Old Red into semi-retirement I've cut my fuel spending by 75% and over the weekend I averaged 52 MPG on the way to Wisconsin and with better wind conditions, 58 MPG on the way home.

While driving though, I paid some attention to those around me. Most of them were driving faster than I was. Most being about 999 of every thousand drivers. At one point going south on I94 between Milwaukee and Chicago where there are three lanes going in each direction, I set my cruise at the speed limit. For a one half hour period I passed exactly zero vehicles and was passed by another vehicle on average about every 5 seconds. When I set my cruise at 5 MPH over the speed limit, I still passed exactly zero vehicles in fifteen minutes of driving. Of course I couldn't see in every one but a large majority of them were transporting only the driver. Probably a third of them were large SUVs or pickup trucks.

OK So just because I didn't pass anyone doesn't mean nobody else was going my speed. If they were it would be unlikely that I'd see them. However looking ahead and behind me the grills and bumpers were constantly changing so there couldn't be very many.

So my conclusion is if nearly every car on the road is going faster than the speed limit, many significantly so, and are transporting only the driver, I will borrow a phrase my mother used to use: "Quit yer bitchin!" Add to this that many vehicles are massive overkill for the task at hand it's really time to shut up. If gas prices really were a significant problem people would do more than simply ratchet jaw about it. They would slow down, stop tailgating, and drive something more appropriate to the task. If you WANT to drive a fire breathing V8 4x4 pickup, go ahead, it's a free country but shut up about how much it costs to drive the thing.

I apologize to those of you who have no choice but to drive a truck or large vehicle because of your job. But in my defense, all of you guys were blasting past me as well!

Slightly different topic: Do you complain about all the maintenance required to keep your servers running? The registry gets polluted so you have to rebuild the things from time to time and run a registry cleaner to fix the daily issues. They are super prone to viruses so you need to run a solid anti-virus program. Security is soft so additional security software may very well be required. Build in backup software is 'lacking' (being generous there) so additional software is added to cover that. Of course the near daily updates require frequent reboots for the updates to become active.

Same comments apply though. If all you're gonna do is whine about such issues, then "Quit yer bitchin!" But if you want to do something to allow yourself to proactively solve these issues, take a good look at System i. Sleep better at night, spend less time in the data center, spend less in the data center? Leave yourself more time to complain about gas prices :-)

Where does your company's processing run?

- DrF