Good morning, all.  The wife and I were up at the crack of dawn this morning (my normal time of getting up – around 5:30 a.m.) to get ready for her Praxis II test.  We left the house around 6:30 this morning and drove over to the University of South Alabama in Mobile.  After I dropped her off, I headed over to the Shell station across from campus.  The price there was $3.799 per gallon, but lo and behold they were out of 87 octane.  Since I was running on vapor, I had to go somewhere close.

The next station down the street was a BP.  It was a quarter of a mile down the road, and the price was $3.899 per gallon!!  I suppose this is all the supply-demand thing since Hurricane Ike has shut down a good portion of the oil rigs offshore of Texas and Louisiana as well as the refineries in the Houston/Pasadena area.  Still, I couldn’t believe the jump in price in that short of a distance.  But it’s better than most areas that are starting to see the price spike above $4.00 a gallon – some places even nearing $5.00.  Crazy.

If you want some interesting reading this weekend, here’s some links of the news stories that broke yesterday and today.  They’re broken down by area of interest.

U.S. News:

Hurricane Ike Slams into Houston and Galveston

Fifteen people killed when commuter and freight trains collide in Los Angeles

Science and Technology:

Anti-Spam Law Overturned; Spammer Walks

Google buys Korean blogging software company – Oh Nos!

Politics:

Obama Regrets Not Picking Hillary – Biden even dissed himself and lifted Hillary up.

Obama Backers Jittery, Obama starts getting desperate and calls McCain ‘Out of Touch’

Sports:

Brandon Webb hits 20 wins as the D’backs beat Reds 3-2.

Titans’ Vince Young was suicidal?

Alright, folks.  Enjoy the reading.  It’s time for me to head over to Barnes & Noble and see if I can find some PHP/MySQL/Wordpress books…Time to start developing my hobby!  Have a good rest of your Saturday and a great Sunday!