Complexities of Collapses

My friend Darren pointed to towards Rinkworks' Fantasy Novelist's Exam, which is, supposedly, a list of things which will doom your fantasy novel into the status of irretrievable dreck. Since whoever it is patently has a dislike of Robert Jordan, and I patently don't, I didn't get much out of it, except for an interesting link to an essay on how much swords actually weighed. Which is to say, they are much lighter than most sources actually say they were(including, wonder of wonders, the AD&D Player's Handbook)--no more than 3 kg(6 lb) for even the largest greatswords.

False Disloyal Knave

As the era continues in which gas prices in Edmonton(and thus in the rest of Canada, since we're one of the cheapest cities in the country)remain over $1.00/Litre, I remain amused by the gas stations who were, somehow, caught off guard by the prospect of posting four-digit prices. (Because they always post the price down to a tenth of a cent, like "64.8".)

Some of the stations had room for an extra digit--whether it was there before or they recently installed it, I don't remember. But a lot of them--and we're talking big chains here, like Esso and Shell--have their big gas-price signs entirely blank. Some of them have smaller temporary signs posting the actual price, but some don't, that I've seen--you have to drive up to the pump to find out how much it costs. Some places have managed to shove four digits into the space meant for three, though you can't always see all of the numbers.

What also amuses me is that most places still have the "3.5¢/L taken off the pumps" deal. Which is to say, even if you post "103.4", you actually are only charging 99.9. I still don't know why they don't just take the 3.5¢ off the price before they post it, but maybe they think people will get confused when they don't get another 3.5¢ off. I think we could probably handle it. And, admittedly, there was one place that decided to post "99.4" instead of "102.9" with the 3.5¢ discount. Then the price jumped another ten cents, and they want back to a blank sign.

Frankly, though, I just gas up at the most convenient place, that's easy to get into and out of and on my way to work. Ideally with "pay at the pump", where I can just stick in my debit card and pay directly without having to interact with the cashier at all. The prices do not vary that much from pump to pump for it to be worth driving out of my way to get a slight deal.

Anyway, I keep waiting for somebody to just get some "10" and "11" numbers printed up that they can shove in there. Even if you have to go up to "15", that shouldn't be a huge expenditure per station. But so far I haven't seen anyone hitting upon this simple obvious solution.