Y2K de ja vu: digitally challenged gas pumps

The acronym LOL comes to mind when I read about gas pumps that can't display a $3 gallon. I mean, the whole Y2K problem I can understand, but what pray tell was someone thinking when they left of digits 3 to 9 on one of the mechanical pumps? Did it really save any money to do that, wasn't it actually more expensive to have a special dollar indicator with less than 10 digits on it? Doh!

However, while I'm laughing out loud about mechanical pumps with a G3G (gas-three-gallon) problem I'm starting to wonder about what happens when the $10 gallon comes along which surely can't be that far away, probably when oil reaches $200 a barrel I guess. At that point the G10G (gas-ten-gallon) problem will be apon us. Better start planning now because I reckon there are tons of digital pumps with only one digit to display the dollar amount.

My suggested solution for G10G - sell it by the pint (because we certainly couldn't do it by the liter as the Europeans and Canadians do!). I figure that solution will probably see us through to the end of the oil age, assuming of course it doesn't compound the problem due to SUVs and trucks requiring over a 1000 pints to fill up!