Gas prices make it cool to be a numbers geek

Gas prices make it cool to be a numbers geek

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 06.12.2007
By spending 42 cents Monday morning, I could’ve saved you $1.08 on your next 12-gallon tank of gas.
That’s because I found gas at $2.889 yesterday morning, nearly nine cents lower than the average in our area. That makes that extra 4.4 miles and 14 minutes on my way to work worthwhile. It would be especially comforting if all 84,500 readers got a better price on gas, since they’d save a combined $94,500.
It’s all in a day’s work for the http://www.limaohio.com/gasprices team and math geeks like me.
Like everyone else with a car, I found myself paying a lot more attention to gas prices these days. It was hard not to, especially when prices crept near $3.50 for several days.
I quickly added gas-price tracker for our Web site onto my list of things to do each day, and it gave my inner dork room to run.
Using the fastest, most direct route to work, I only pass four gas stations on my 23-mile trek from Ottawa to Lima each day. With a little bit of research, I added those 4.4 miles, those 14 minutes and another 12 gas stations to my list. And it’s truly a list, printed out each week with neat little boxes for those 16 gas stations I pass each day.
It’s really my dream job. Deep down inside, I’m a numbers geek. While most of my journalism brethren disdain math, I enjoy it. I open up Microsoft Excel on my computer before loading Word on most workdays.
I’m half convinced I spent the first eight years of my journalism career in sports simply because I enjoyed adding up rushing yards in my head during football games.
I even spent a few minutes trying to work up a formula for happiness in our family’s home. I tried to think of an inverse proportion of hours worked to number of compliments given to my wife, multiplied by the number of times our daughter shot root beer out her nose because she laughed so hard.
I couldn’t find one that worked until I found this mathematical truth: My wife’s happiness equals everybody’s happiness.
I think there’s a certain degree of math geek in most of us. As soon as we learn what greater than and less than mean, finding a bargain consumes us. Most of us will drive the extra half mile to get gas from a cheaper gas station.
That’s why so many people wonder aloud if it’s worth their while to drive to Beaverdam to save 10 cents per gallon of gas.
The answer, at current gas prices, is maybe. At the roughly 30 miles to the gallon the ol’ Sebring gets, it’s worthwhile for nine cents or more. If you have a gas-guzzler, such as my wife’s Jeep and its 20 miles to the gallon, it’d have to be 13 cents cheaper per gallon.
I warned you I was a math geek deep down inside.
It all makes me wonder why we fixate on gas prices so much. Consider my other preferred fuel, Dr Pepper.
After a little number crunching, I realized I spent $8 per gallon for Dr Pepper at the office. It was the same whether I bought 12-ounce cans or 20-ounce bottles. If I buy it in 2-liter bottles, the price drops to $4.73 per gallon. Or I can get it for a mere $4.26 per gallon by buying it in six-packs of 24-ounce bottles.
It appears milk might be the most efficient way for me to get around. I can get that for $2.59 per gallon. Something tells me most people don’t comparison shop on milk, though. When I called Wal-Mart, the woman laughed at the bizarre question before answering it.
It all offers perspective. With nearly any product, people will pay what it’s worth to them. Whether it’s $2.889 a gallon for gas, $2.59 a gallon for milk or $4.26 a gallon for Dr Pepper, you’ll buy it if you think you need it.
Occasionally you’ll reduce your consumption, but that’s the exception to the rule. You’ll pay whatever they ask for it. You can count on that.
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Strange thoughts dance through your head at a recital

Strange thoughts dance through your head at a recital
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 05.08.2007
Three hours at a dance recital probably doesn’t count as culture if you snickered at it the whole time.
That thought kept going through my head Saturday as I watched little girl after little girl tap-dancing, hip-hopping and balleting her way across the stage.
Their ages ranged from 3 to 18, but really all I cared about was that one 5-year-old. There were 43 dance numbers in the show. My daughter was in one of them, which is to say she was not in 42 of them. Thus, my mind wandered.
• Does Trace Adkins mind his song “Swing,” about three men trying to pick up the same gal at a bar, being used as a line-dancing song about baseball for junior high girls?
• Does it bother a songwriter when dancers act out every lyric in a song literally?
• Which of the unenthusiastic dancers in the back row is the next YouTube hit waiting to happen? I wish I had a video camera to capture those girls with the expressionless faces and rapidly moving arms.
• How does a grandma in the audience feel when her little sunflower gyrates wildly on stage to a hip-hop song?
• What possesses a parent to yelp out “woo woo!” after the daughter finishes a routine? Does this embarrass the child? It embarrassed me, and I wasn’t even on the stage.
• They shouldn’t make the preschool kids dance in the same performance as the high school kids. It’s unfair to the parents to sit through that much dancing by someone else’s kids.
• Why don’t you notice how suggestive some song lyrics are until you’ve seen a freshman in high school dancing to them?
• I spent some time auditioning names from the program for our house’s little coming attraction, due out in August. Why are there so many ways to spell Ashley, Brittney and Jennifer?
• Is it wrong to watch dancers like you do ice skaters and hockey players, waiting for one to fall down or start a fight?
• Did someone just sneak out the backdoor as soon as his daughter’s routine ended? That doesn’t seem fair.
• Why do dance outfits cost twice as much as regular clothes when they look so cheaply made?
• Do choreographers see dance patterns the same way a great hitter sees the ball coming to the plate?
• Were people thinner back in the early 1900s? Every seat in the old auditorium seemed cramped. Come to think of it, none of them seemed that cramped when I saw a show there as a kid.
• Would more pedophiles come in to watch this if it didn’t cost $7 per seat?
• How does a mother learn the routine enough that she can wiggle in her seat with every motion, trying to urge her daughter into keeping up?
• Every little girl looks like a middle-aged burnout when you put a pound of makeup on her face and put her hair up into a bun.
• Do organizers of these types of events have the express written permission of the music companies to use the music, like you’re supposed to do before replaying a sporting event in front of a crowd?
• What are all the other fathers thinking about when their daughters aren’t on stage?
• Is someone snoring?
• Was that me snoring?
I live to tell from the experience. And really, the two and a half minutes our 5-year-old spent on stage dancing to a Winnie the Pooh song made the rest of the show palatable.
It reminded me of something important. While other people’s kids may look silly and strange, your own children always look cute. Love may be blind, but it’s just nearsighted when it comes to your kids.

Glory days weren’t so glorious after all

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Glory days weren’t so glorious after all

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 04.10.2007
The scene would’ve seemed dull just 10 years ago.
It was 9:30 p.m., and I reclined on my couch. My wife’s slumbering body pinned my lap down. Our 5-year-old had been sleeping for about an hour, and Mrs. Trinko was asleep for nearly that same amount of time.
The television set clicked off, leaving only silence and time to reflect on life. We make a decent living, and there’s plenty of laughter in our home. There’s love, happiness and joy. By all accounts, life is good for us.
I started thinking about a fellow I knew, in his early 20s. He would’ve hated that scene. Silence intimidated him. He was young, and he wanted to live.
The Lima bar scene was his place in the world. Nearly every night he’d head out after work, consume a few too many alcoholic beverages and somehow stumble home. “Bud Heavy,” he’d call his drink of choice. If a bartender looked at him cross-eyed or confused, he’d clarify, “Budweiser.”
That’s how he spent his free time, drinking with a group of friends, talking about the issues of the day and arguing how the world would be different if he were in charge.
He had good friends, and there were plenty of ideas in his life. There was independence, spontaneity and thrill. By all accounts, life was good for him.
A few weeks ago, my wife and daughter were off visiting other parts of the state, leaving me free on a Tuesday night to relive that nighttime scene.
That’s when it became obvious to me that I’m the man I am now and not the man I was 10 years ago. The conversations I overheard seemed trite. The alcohol seemed like a Band-Aid on bigger problems in lives. It was a chance to vent. Once the venting was done, all that remained was a room full of emptiness for many of them.
Yet that will become a glory day for many of the people there. I think back to some of those hilarious stories you share about those days.
We had one friend who fell asleep in nearly every drinking establishment in Lima. We had another friend who eventually ended his marriage so he could have more fun. Then there was the time we left a guy behind accidentally when we were swept away for a surprise half-birthday party.
And none of us will ever forget the night we stayed up drinking all night and headed to Bob Evans at 6 a.m., only to find out it opened at 6:30 a.m. in that location. Some brave souls even tried playing golf that morning before returning to work in the afternoon.
As I look back at those fond memories, I have to wonder if I should enjoy them and be proud of them. It makes me realize what a stupid kid I was, relying on suds to help make my life seem right.
I’m no teetotaler. I still enjoy good beer and great conversation. I also realize how it could’ve easily destroyed my world if I’d ever been caught being so reckless and ridiculous. I could’ve truly hurt myself or someone else by being so dumb.
I could have ruined the life I’m living and loving now, even if I would’ve hated it then.
So here’s a word of warning to the young and bulletproof. Be careful with your lives. Every decision you make could affect your future.
Have fun, but be responsible with it. You’ll thank yourself for it, say, 10 years down the road.