a bit serious, and then a bit random
the upcoming might be a bit graphic dealing with death, so if you have a slightly weak stomach or whatnot, maybe you should just click here to jump ahead to the random part of this post.
ok...
are you ready?
you sure?
yesterday, i saw a dead man...
to preface, i'm trying to think if i've ever come across a dead person other than at funeral homes. i do recall being in my pap's hospital room and witnessing first hand his "death rattle". that was a bit strange, and the first time i'd heard of the term. other than that, i can't think of another time i'd seen an actual corpse. so yesterday on the way home from work, we are driving down NH-5, part of india's "Golden Quadrilateral" (one of the goofiest names for a road system ever, but more on that later), when we came to a standard indian chicane. if you don't know, this is where they put up movable barriers alternating left and right side of the road so you have to make an S-shaped weave on the road to avoid them, thus slowing traffic near intersections. this time, though, instead of alternating, there were two barriers blocking 90% of the road and blocking **COUGH** the remaining 10% of the road was an "indian traffic cone" (any rock about the size of a cantaloupe found on the side of the road and placed in the road to divert traffic). our driver being the bomb that he is, says 'fukk dat' and goes around all the dump trucks trying to turn around, drives over the indian traffic cone (come on, it's a tiny rock, what's that supposed to stop?), and we carried on our way. about 50 yards up the road is about 10-15 people shoveling dirt out of the road and a dumptruck on the side of the road, pointed the WRONG direction, surprisingly (NOT!), with a crushed in roof. looks like it flipped and lost it's load so somehow it was righted and everyone was picking up the debris.
we continued on as usual and hit ANOTHER slowdown, about a mile from the hotel. this is it. i'm riding in the way-back, but i can still see through the front window what looks to be a motorcycle on it's side in the middle of the road near the median and gas leaking across the road. as per usual, there were 10-15 "indian traffic cones" placed around the vehicle. as we got closer you could see the rider of the bike on the ground as well, actually it's as if he tipped over and the bike was lying on one of his legs. when we came to be almost beside the accident, the truck fell pretty silent... it wasn't gasoline flowing across the road, it was blood, and a significant amount of it. i don't know the occurrences that led to this accident but the bike seemed to be in fairly OK condition, but here this man was on the ground, with his head FLATTENED. you don't know what to say or do. in the states, the road would've been blocked or traffic would've been diverted, sheets would've been brought out, but not here. instead they placed rocks around the accident, one or two traffic cops directed traffic around the accident, causing us to drive through this man's blood and i'm guessing there had to be some gray matter strewn about. like it was nothing, or more like they didn't know any better what to do to lend some professionalism to the situation. one minute, this guy was on his way to the market, or home, or to visit family... and the next minute... he's just not.
i'm thinking that the closest to a gruesome accident i've ever been, it was just kinda surreal how lackadaisical the officials were. i don't know, and then on the way to work again this morning, another dump truck on it's side ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD, glass all over the road. anyways... on to the random
about a week ago i took apart my Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra to see if i could fix it (yeah right). took a million screws out of it, unplugged the screen from the board, and got to the HD. i dropped it several months before and it stopped working in a manner similar to when i dropped my 160Gb Iomega HD (see '@#$%ing dropsies'). the diagnosis for that was 4 bent heads, like $10k to repair. so i figured i could fix my CNJZX myself, see what is so fancy about 4 bent heads that costs $10k to fix. i was amazed by the hard drive mechanism. there are two disks mounted on a shaft with a space between them. there are heads on the tops and bottom of disks 1 and two. brilliant idea. WOW! so anyways, i tried to un bend the heads. didn't work. instead i ended up super-bending them and breaking one off. then the head pusher thing-a-majig was jumping all funny so i broke it too. then since it was TOTALLY destroyed (there was no hope for it in the first place), i wanted to scratch the disks. I COULDN'T DO IT!!! i was jabbing at them with screwdrivers, knives, whatever i could find and not a mark on 'em. wonder what they're made of. anyways, that leads to my headphones... kinda
i've noticed that my ear buds have been deteriorating in quality for the past couple months, particularly the right one. yesterday during lunch, it got real bad, barely echoes of sound, so i finished watching my "show" with emma's shite iPod headphones (though still better than mine IN THIS INSTANCE ONLY!!!). after lunch, being a slow day and being the mechanical TA i am, i decided to take them apart and figure out the problem. the problem was easy enough. i've had these things since PSU in 2001, and never cleaned them. earwax and dirt buildup in the bud holes. i popped off the covers, sharpened a staple to poke the holes clean, and WOW!!! i was almost deaf when i put em back in my ears. i'm SOO the bomb diggity mechanical engineer.
ok...
are you ready?
you sure?
to preface, i'm trying to think if i've ever come across a dead person other than at funeral homes. i do recall being in my pap's hospital room and witnessing first hand his "death rattle". that was a bit strange, and the first time i'd heard of the term. other than that, i can't think of another time i'd seen an actual corpse. so yesterday on the way home from work, we are driving down NH-5, part of india's "Golden Quadrilateral" (one of the goofiest names for a road system ever, but more on that later), when we came to a standard indian chicane. if you don't know, this is where they put up movable barriers alternating left and right side of the road so you have to make an S-shaped weave on the road to avoid them, thus slowing traffic near intersections. this time, though, instead of alternating, there were two barriers blocking 90% of the road and blocking **COUGH** the remaining 10% of the road was an "indian traffic cone" (any rock about the size of a cantaloupe found on the side of the road and placed in the road to divert traffic). our driver being the bomb that he is, says 'fukk dat' and goes around all the dump trucks trying to turn around, drives over the indian traffic cone (come on, it's a tiny rock, what's that supposed to stop?), and we carried on our way. about 50 yards up the road is about 10-15 people shoveling dirt out of the road and a dumptruck on the side of the road, pointed the WRONG direction, surprisingly (NOT!), with a crushed in roof. looks like it flipped and lost it's load so somehow it was righted and everyone was picking up the debris.
we continued on as usual and hit ANOTHER slowdown, about a mile from the hotel. this is it. i'm riding in the way-back, but i can still see through the front window what looks to be a motorcycle on it's side in the middle of the road near the median and gas leaking across the road. as per usual, there were 10-15 "indian traffic cones" placed around the vehicle. as we got closer you could see the rider of the bike on the ground as well, actually it's as if he tipped over and the bike was lying on one of his legs. when we came to be almost beside the accident, the truck fell pretty silent... it wasn't gasoline flowing across the road, it was blood, and a significant amount of it. i don't know the occurrences that led to this accident but the bike seemed to be in fairly OK condition, but here this man was on the ground, with his head FLATTENED. you don't know what to say or do. in the states, the road would've been blocked or traffic would've been diverted, sheets would've been brought out, but not here. instead they placed rocks around the accident, one or two traffic cops directed traffic around the accident, causing us to drive through this man's blood and i'm guessing there had to be some gray matter strewn about. like it was nothing, or more like they didn't know any better what to do to lend some professionalism to the situation. one minute, this guy was on his way to the market, or home, or to visit family... and the next minute... he's just not.
i'm thinking that the closest to a gruesome accident i've ever been, it was just kinda surreal how lackadaisical the officials were. i don't know, and then on the way to work again this morning, another dump truck on it's side ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD, glass all over the road. anyways... on to the random
about a week ago i took apart my Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra to see if i could fix it (yeah right). took a million screws out of it, unplugged the screen from the board, and got to the HD. i dropped it several months before and it stopped working in a manner similar to when i dropped my 160Gb Iomega HD (see '@#$%ing dropsies'). the diagnosis for that was 4 bent heads, like $10k to repair. so i figured i could fix my CNJZX myself, see what is so fancy about 4 bent heads that costs $10k to fix. i was amazed by the hard drive mechanism. there are two disks mounted on a shaft with a space between them. there are heads on the tops and bottom of disks 1 and two. brilliant idea. WOW! so anyways, i tried to un bend the heads. didn't work. instead i ended up super-bending them and breaking one off. then the head pusher thing-a-majig was jumping all funny so i broke it too. then since it was TOTALLY destroyed (there was no hope for it in the first place), i wanted to scratch the disks. I COULDN'T DO IT!!! i was jabbing at them with screwdrivers, knives, whatever i could find and not a mark on 'em. wonder what they're made of. anyways, that leads to my headphones... kinda
i've noticed that my ear buds have been deteriorating in quality for the past couple months, particularly the right one. yesterday during lunch, it got real bad, barely echoes of sound, so i finished watching my "show" with emma's shite iPod headphones (though still better than mine IN THIS INSTANCE ONLY!!!). after lunch, being a slow day and being the mechanical TA i am, i decided to take them apart and figure out the problem. the problem was easy enough. i've had these things since PSU in 2001, and never cleaned them. earwax and dirt buildup in the bud holes. i popped off the covers, sharpened a staple to poke the holes clean, and WOW!!! i was almost deaf when i put em back in my ears. i'm SOO the bomb diggity mechanical engineer.
posted by slyght at 2/17/2006 01:37:00 AM
4 Comments:
yep - you are still nuts. i managed to get pics in blog several times, but each time when i preview, and want to go back to edit, i keep gettig out of the entire blog. will have it tonight.
XXXOOO
Hey Z, sounds like some pretty serious shite to witness. Guess it is reasons like that my mom would never let me own a nice bike. I always wanted a Ninja or a Katana, but Nance told me no. Speaking of your MP3 player, I'm in the market for one. Thought maybe you could recommend an IPod, Creative, or IRiver player. I'm thinking about the 30GB that IPod has, but I've seen others that spark my interest as well. What do you think?
You would have thought after everything that you have seen on the stile project site and those other greusome sights you have looked at you would be able to handle anything. You need to get back to the USA so things like that would be normally taken care of in a right kind of manner.
take care
xoxo
Unfortunately, those things happen here, too. Somebody got run over by a bus a few years ago in Arlington, and it was visible from our office windows. It took a while to get over, it was pretty gruesome. That day I was worried because I had to walk to my car, and the hit site was on my way, and I didn't want a close up. Thankfully, there was no sign left by the time I left after work. Which leads to the question...how do they clean it all off so completely?
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