TC the Terrible

You Send It - I Post It

Truer words have never been spoken.

June 17th, 2008 Posted by TC the Terrible | You Send It - I Post It | 3 comments

Metro Math, It Doesn’t Add Up

Last Monday I was sucking fumes on the way home so I pulled in to the local Shell station and for the first time in my life paid four dollars a gallon for gas. At first it pissed me off, but then I thought about it and decided that I’m a rich white guy, so it’s not a big deal to pay high prices at the pump. Hell I can afford it with all the money I make oppressing minorities and dumb Democrats.

But part of me has always been curious about how the common man lives, so I thought I’d give this mass transit thing a try. Guess what? It actually cost me more to take Metro to work for one day than it does to drive my car. Here’s the math.

Parking at the Centreville Park and Ride was free. The 12C bus to the Vienna Metro station was $1.00 and took 25 minutes. The Orange Line train from Vienna to Ballston was $3.10 and took 20 minutes. The bus from Ballston to the office was free since I had transfered from the train, but took another 10 minutes. That’s $4.10 to ride the system for 55 minutes. Round trip that comes to $8.20 and two hours each day.

Driving from my house (a mile or so west of the Centreville Park and Ride) to the office is about 23 miles. My non-hybrid compact 5-speed averages 30 mph, so at $4 per gallon it costs me $2.93 to drive to the office. The drive is about a half hour in the morning because I leave at the butt crack of dawn. Afternoons when I’m forced to share I-66 with mere mortals takes about an hour. Round trip is $5.96 and90 minutes per day.

By driving my own car to the office I save $2.24 in cash and 30 minutes in time. Plus I don’t have to be around people I don’ t care to know. I get to listen to my radio as loud as I want. Driving by myself gives me the chance to make phone calls to catch up with people from the American Heartland. If it’s hot and I want to strip down to my boxers for the commute home, I can do that too.

Don’t try to bring up the cost of owning a car because that’s a non-issue.  Cost of ownership (car payment, insurance, etc.) are fixed costs that don’t change no matter how much or little I drive.  Oil changes and other routine service calls are part of the service package that I bought with the car.  Again, those won’t impact my caluclations.

So what’s the bottom line here?  It’s that I can save both time and money by using my own car instead of riding with the dregs of society on mass transit.  This I consider to be a good thing.

June 12th, 2008 Posted by TC the Terrible | DC Life, Random Non-sense | 3 comments

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

That’s right kids.  Follow the Pied Piper right up Pikachu’s pleasure tunnel and waste your money on shitty whiskey.

I’m talking about Eric Denman’s column in the DCist this afternoon.  He’s extolling the virtues of Wasmund’s Single-Malt Whisky.  Which is pure crap.  Crap as in I wouldn’t let my dog drink it crap. I bought a bottle at the local ABC store two weeks ago and tossed the bottle in my recycle bin after a single glass.  Yep, I tossed $40 worth of booze in the trash just to get it out of my house.  So go ahead and drink Wasmund’s Single-Malt Whisky if you’re a lemming with no mind of your own.

As for me, I’ll stick with good whiskey - Talisker, Glenlivet, Glenmorangie, Glenrothes, and so on.

June 2nd, 2008 Posted by TC the Terrible | Random Non-sense | 3 comments