Witness Me
What I thought would be a routine vacation week is certainly more interesting now. The day started off relatively boring by archiving content from the micro SD cards to a little black box (Raspberry Pi 4 with a 2TB SSD in a 3D printed case) for long term storage. More television was consumed while people were working and in meetings until lunch time. We had lunch at Jack Brown's Beer and Burger Joint with a fried Oreo for dessert. The food was delicious and portions small enough so I could eat more than one item. I am also glad I do not have to worry about this in most of Southern California:
After lunch we did a quick drive down Monument Avenue to view monuments...or at least what was left of them after an interesting 2020.
It was back to television after lunch until the end of the workday. Nothing too crazy was planned except buying some maintenance items and dinner. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked A change of plans occurred when my friend was notified of a gasoline shortage in the area. The new goal was to acquire fuel for the vehicle which seemed like an easy enough task. Wrong. I usually let filling up my vehicle be a future me problem which is always an annoyance but it was never a serious problem. So we will see if I have learned my lesson after the events from today.
We passed a Shell station planning to go to Wawa for gasoline until we saw a queue...so it was back towards the Shell. We were too late. We saw vehicles pull in and immediately vacate the premises. Naturally we still went into the station because trust, but verify. We were greeted with despair in a simple but effective message:
The shortage was real. If you noticed in the above image only $0.59 was sold for a total of 0.205 gallons. It was now a race to find petrol. Could this be our future? Some stations had queues,
some taped off as if it was left barren,
just reporting cost as 0.00 for regular,
or straight up closed now (just kidding this was obviously closed prior to today's events).
The anxiety began to set in as empty stations continued to reinforce what was now reality. Could this be a glitch? No, the impact was real and it is here due to the success of ransomware. Just what I needed, a state of emergency for gasoline while on a cross country road trip. The scarcity of gas stations in the boonies is one thing, but lack of gasoline in a populated area? Time to panic. It is toilet paper all over again but with gasoline. At least if the prices go up it will still likely be lower than the baseline I am used to because California.
We finally located a gas station with some gasoline still available and we did not have to resort to using the "credit card" to fill up. Unfortunately the other people after us were not so lucky. Once we filled up it was time to relax and continue as if nothing had happened. We procured sustenance (nearby to minimize the use of fuel) along with tools and supplies for motorcycle maintenance. I am sure the Cycle Gear employees were pleased I knew what we needed and found it quickly as closing time was approaching. What do you do if you are working while everyone is buying all the gasoline?
After dinner we got a local game of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (soonTM) started and we spent more time troubleshooting than playing because I cannot read. Always user error.
Remember when I said these posts may likely be sans images? I lied.