Fogbow

Foggy wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 12:56 pm Of course, being a 21st century miracle, Fogbow handles all that clock stuff for you, so you can concentrate on the important things, like I don't know what, but sumpin'.

I have been seeing a lot of memes and people complaining about gas prices these days, blaming the current administration for everything. But, really? Is it the administration’s fault? Or is there something else that might factor in to the price of gas? Let us level-set a couple of things:
Gas prices are based on several factors, the largest factor being supply and demand, then the prices of oil. Some would say the greed of the oil companies is the largest contributing factor, but I would rather not digress into that argument. Two things that are easiest to see are supply/demand and price of oil, since we are not in the board rooms of the oil companies.
First up: Price of oil. The monthly average price for Brent Crude oil was 42.69 in November 2020. In October 2020 (which would have seen more of an impact on early November gas prices, it was 40.19 on average). Average price for Brent Crude in September 2022 (last month I found data) the average price was 89.76. There was a peak in June of 122.71. So, the price of oil as doubled since November 2022. I think that might have a bit to do with the increase in the price of gasoline.
On average, the about 50-60% of price of gasoline is attributed to the cost of crude oil. Refining costs can add around 10-15% to the cost of a gallon of gas. Then you add in local, state, and federal taxes, which is about another 15%, depending on where you live. The rest if marketing, transportation, etc. That means that around 65% of the cost of a gallon of gas is tied to the price of oil and the cost to refine it.
Now, let’s look at the other big factor: Supply and Demand. If you think back to November 2020, you might remember there was a little thing happening called a pandemic. I know where I live, things were pretty locked up. The last surge was only a month or two before with another one on the way. There wasn’t that much demand for gasoline. People were not traveling. Many companies went to a remote work model. I know mine did. A very large majority of our staff began working from home, if their job function allowed for it. Very few, and only those that were essential to running the business went into an office. The Demand for gasoline just wasn’t there. That will definitely effect the price.
If you have stockpiles of gasoline, you need to sell it before it goes bad (and yes, gasoline can go bad). So, if you have stock to move and nobody is buying at the price? You lower the price and hopefully people will begin buying again. That lead to some of the lowest prices seen since 2015. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has a nice article on it from October 2020. You can find it here: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/artic ... e-pump.htm.
Those two factors alone are enough to explain why the price of gas was so low in November 2020. So, what has happened since then? Well, life got back to closer to normal.
People started driving again, demand went up, so prices went up. Oil prices went up along with it the demand. Therefore, we have higher gas prices.

Sources:

• https://www.statista.com/statistics/262 ... velopment/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton ... bfaa4726de
• https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2020/artic ... e-pump.htm
• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/ ... ine-prices

bill_g wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 8:42 am It's set Your Own Damn Clock Back Day in the States today. We were living under Spring Ahead. Now we're Falling Back. For those of you with modern clocks set by the Interwebs, you haven't got much to do except sleep in. For those of us with lots of old analog clocks, we got our work cut out for us. Grab a handful of batteries and get busy.

You got the microwave clock, the stove clock, the clock on the coffee pot, clocks in both bathrooms, the clock by the TV, the clock on the wall, the dining room clock, the back porch clock, and all the bedroom clocks. And don't forget the clocks in the car and trucks.

At least it's easier than the olden days when we had to put all our clocks in bushel baskets, and take them down to the train station to be set correctly by the railroad crews. Sometimes the lines went around the building. That was when we all had wind-up clocks. As we started buying plug-in clocks, we had to wait for them to get around to your house before any of your clocks were right. Some of us would secretly set our own watches to the correct time, but we had to keep them hidden. The one thing Nixon did right was sign the Time Freedom Act of 1969 which made it legal for anyone to set their own damn clock. But, that doesn't mean everyone does. You don't know how many friends we lost over seeing their VCR's blinking the wrong time. Not our kind of people. No sir.

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Mon Nov 07, 2022 6:59 pm
This was also a time when we had clocks that denoted the "silent period" -- a red wedge running from minutes 15-18 and 45-48 for morse code, and a green wedge from minutes 00-03 and 30-33 for voice. No one was allowed to transmit on the calling and distress frequency during the silent period to give vessels in distress (which might have only a weak signal) a chance to be heard.

Fun times.

Foggy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:08 am Jez, I don't have the research, but I read long ago the price of gas is controlled by the specific trading desk in the NYSE. Those few people have unbelievable influence on the price at the pump.

jez wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:09 am

Foggy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:08 am Jez, I don't have the research, but I read long ago the price of gas is controlled by the specific trading desk in the NYSE. Those few people have unbelievable influence on the price at the pump.

I wouldn't doubt it, but thanks for the lead. I'll see what rabbit holes I can run down.

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Mon Nov 07, 2022 6:59 pm Back in my days in Radioland the first thing we had to do for every position change on watch was to dial in to WWV, the radio station for the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), and get a "time tick." You set your receiver to 5 or 10 kHz, and listen. You'd set the minute hand on the clock to the following minute, and hold the second hand in place. The voice on radio would say, for example, "At the tone the time will be six hours and three minutes, coordinated universal time. Beeeeeep." And you let go of the second hand at the beep. Then you'd listen for the next minute, and if the second hand was off at the next beep, you had to do it over again.

This was also a time when we had clocks that denoted the "silent period" -- a red wedge running from minutes 15-18 and 45-48 for morse code, and a green wedge from minutes 00-03 and 30-33 for voice. No one was allowed to transmit on the calling and distress frequency during the silent period to give vessels in distress (which might have only a weak signal) a chance to be heard.

Fun times.

bill_g wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:37 am That was a fun read. Thank you. I did not know about the silent periods. It seems a bit parochial to set clocks multiple times a day, but then everyone knew how to do it.

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:52 am Well, back then the clocks were not all tied to the atomic clock, and even a very good quality clock like the Chelsea clocks we had in the radio room would gain or lose time.

I worked at large-ish communication centers where the watches were 12 hours long, but we’d rotate through positions in the watch (morse code, voice, radioteletype, landline teletype) every four hours, so you were never doing the same thing longer than four hours.

bill_g wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 8:04 am

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:52 am Well, back then the clocks were not all tied to the atomic clock, and even a very good quality clock like the Chelsea clocks we had in the radio room would gain or lose time.

I worked at large-ish communication centers where the watches were 12 hours long, but we’d rotate through positions in the watch (morse code, voice, radioteletype, landline teletype) every four hours, so you were never doing the same thing longer than four hours.

Thos clock faces must have had finger smudges all over them getting set six times a day.

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 8:58 am
F85D2D2E-CBF5-4A2F-8512-ED2AAEDEAD74.jpeg



This isn’t the best picture, but there’s one more interesting detail about the radio room clock. Those red dashes around the outside of the face are there for a reason. When a vessel in distress was preparing to send a distress message, before they’d send the message itself they would send out an “auto alarm” signal - 12 four second dashes.

Most of the ships in the merchant fleet only had one radio officer on board. Their radio rig would be set up to listen for the auto alarm, and when it received one it would sound an alarm in the radio officer’s stateroom and on the bridge. Then the distress vessel would wait (the longest of his life) two minutes before sending the distress message. That would give the radio officer a chance to get to the radio room and get ready to copy the distress message.

For those of us on watch at shore stations, we’d watch the second hand on the clock cross those red dashes, checking for four-second intervals. It was often difficult to tell the difference between an auto alarm and a transmitter warming up. So you watched the clock.

Anyhoo, that’s how it was all supposed to work. In 8 years of standing that type of watch, I only saw one textbook case — the Marine Electric. The radio officer followed the procedure to the letter (and died). There’s a great book about it called Until The Sea Shall Free Them.

neonzx wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:18 am

jez wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:09 am

Foggy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:08 am Jez, I don't have the research, but I read long ago the price of gas is controlled by the specific trading desk in the NYSE. Those few people have unbelievable influence on the price at the pump.

I wouldn't doubt it, but thanks for the lead. I'll see what rabbit holes I can run down.

It's commodity futures not a stock so not on stock exchange. Like Frozen Orange Juice concentrate. I saw a documentary on this racket in the 80s.

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 8:58 am