Movie madness

 And by madness, I mean the prices!

It's been a long time since I went to the movies, and longer since I actually bought tickets. Out of idle curiosity, I looked up some prices at my local cinema to see the prices of going to the movies.

Twenty three dollars! Per person!

And on top of that, it wanted to tack on a three dollar "booking fee". What on earth? Why is there an extra charge for them to do less work? I know cinemas don't exactly have huge profits at the best of times (and they would have taken a hard hit with Covid) but I think FIFTY DOLLARS for two people to go see a 90 minute film is outrageous. And that's before snacks. And for a couple only - how bad is it for the families with two or three (or more once you add in friends!)?

That's a very hard pass from me.

For $50, we can go down to the local shops, pick up a DVD (or an older movie on blu-ray) and have $20 left over to go buy a bunch of snacks from the grocery store.

No wonder they aren't as popular as they used to be. And then they get all shocked and dismayed when people prefer to go on the dark webs and pirate stuff.

Eerie

At the airport, getting ready to fly home after holidays and it is very strange seeing a plane parked up at every gate. We're on an early morning flight, but it still seems very odd. Never seen that before.

Geo-jog

Currently in Adelaide, and just got back from what I think is my most succesful geocaching jog yet. Covered just over 12km on foot, found 14 caches with a fifteenth that was a DNF.

Not too bad for one morning's jog. There are loads more caches in Adelaide with a heap near where we are staying, but only so many that I can reach on foot.

I doubt I'll go out again too much more while we are here, except for targets of opportunity if the situation presents itself.

Busy Saturday

Nine and a half hours later, the CB and spotties are mounted on the new (fresh) car. Could have done it faster, but get a better result being careful and running cables in neat out-of-sight spots rather than just draping them and letting them hang.

Still on the to-do list; polish up the headlights to get them looking sparkly and clear again. Most everything else has been taken care of. Doesn't look like I'm going to be getting much rest this weekend.

OGame - finally attacked

 It took a while, but after a pretty long build up, my stockpile of resources was enough to grab some bigger players' attention and they smushed me.

Attacked by nearly two million ships, it wasn't much of a surprise that my few thousand got pushed aside. I don't know what my total resources that I had on hand at the time that I was attacked, but I last recorded over eight hundred million mixed resources sitting there. Normally I get attacked when my resources get over about twenty million sitting there unattended.

The original plan was once the place got smashed, I'd just let it sit and get attacked and just log in once a week or so - leave the planets producing so that others could attack it. After about six years or so it's a bit hard to let it go, though I don't really get anything out of it anyway. We'll see how it goes (though I did log in this morning >.< ). 

I did the math

 This last weekend we did a bit of shuffling with our cars. I've stopped driving the small car and I'm now driving the big 4WD. So I thought "wouldn't a motorbike be a cheaper option"?

First, I need to lay down a few assumptions:

• I already have the big 4WD, so I'm not comparing purchase cost of one vs the other, I'm comparing potential savings on running costs.
• I travel roughly 200km per week for work. I'll just use this figure for my math, as most other travel I do is with the family so we'd be in one of the cars, not on the bike.
• The 4WD is listed as using 9.5L/100km but that's when it was new. Due to the accessories we've added and the age of the car, I'll assume 10L/100km (though it is probably more).
• A learner approved bike (under 250cc) is generally listed as having an average consumption of 3L/100km - I'd probably buy an older bike, but I tend to be a cautious driver so we'll go with this figure.
• We'll assume an initial purchase price for the bike of $2,000 - learner bikes vary by price, but odds are I'd buy one second hand and even if I got one cheaper I'd still need to do some repairs, rego transfer, insurance, etc.
• We'll assume safety gear is $1,000 - can save money by buying second hand (except for the helmet) and any money saved on the gear would probably go on the bike anyway.
• Cost of fuel is currently $1.20/L we'll assume it'll stay at or near that price (lol).
• And final assumption - we'll ignore all other costs such as servicing. The bike service might be more expensive, but cars can have things go wrong too, so it's much of a sameness.

On the above assumptions, per 100km the 4WD is costing $11.52 in fuel, and the bike would be $3.60 - so over an average 200km week, the net savings for riding the bike over the 4WD are $15.84 in fuel.

That means that (assuming $3,000 purchase cost on bike and gear) it would take 189 weeks (or 47 months or just shy of 4 years) to break even. That's assuming always and only using the bike to get to work and back, assuming the cost of fuel remains the same and assuming no unexpected expenses (like getting knocked off the bike by some idiot in a car).

The more likely scenario that I can see would be using the 4WD on Mondays and Fridays, and only using the bike on Tue / Wed / Thu to get to work and back. In that scenario, the savings drastically drop to $4.94 per week - and to break even at that value it comes out to 12 years!

And the savings will be even less than that, because in the 4WD only scenario I'd be using a bit more fuel, but in the 4WD + motorbike scenario I'd be saving a bit in fuel but having to pay registration (and insurance) on two vehicles.

So the math says no, no motorbike. Also, my wife said no - and she has the final say anyway.

The resources keep building up

 Although I had wanted to just let the resources build up, I gave in to the urge to spend some of it. Seeing so much sitting there, I went ahead and did some research and some upgrades.

However:

Currently sitting at just under 800 million resource (combined metal / crystal / deut). It should be a fair bit higher, but I've been spending some. Although a couple of other players have had a peek at what is sitting on this planet, I'm impressed it hasn't been attacked yet. I honestly thought one of the mega-players would smush me and crush the defences long before it got up to this level.

Be interesting to see how high it gets, though I assume that one day I'll just log in and see that it's all gone. But that's the way Ogame works.