Dream on

A few days ago, a really terrible thing happened to me. There I was facing my kryptonite and like superman, I crumbled. It was awful. I had never felt more miserable. But all of a sudden, poof! everything's gone. Turns out it was a nightmare, and now I was awake. Life goes on as usual, D-day (the day I was to face my kryptonite) comes again, this time in real, but what the... Everything happens just like it happened in the dream. Argh! No no no! this can't be real. And then again poof! Turns out I never really did wake up. I mean I did wake up but only in my dream. Wow! how bad can life be? I was having nightmares in my nightmares. I was scared now. Then yet again D-day came, I choked n I crumbled again. I am just waiting to wake up. I hope I wake up again.

Somebody stop me!!!

What is the most important component of a bike??? The engine??? Wrong!!! Its the brakes. I realized this fact, this Monday morning, when I was riding to college with a pillion behind me. I had recently gotten my bike serviced, and had gotten new brake pads for both the front and rear wheels. When you put in new brake pads (brake-shoe lining) , they don't quite stop the bike that quick n need a little while to settle in. What's more was that the rear brake shoes weren't properly put back together. The drum brakes work by a set of brake shoes (shown in image) pressing outwards against the insides of a drum, using friction to slow it down. Due to improper alignment, only one of the brake shoes of my rear brakes came in contact with the drum, giving me very little braking, despite applying a lot of pressure. Then when the second brake pad came in contact with the drum, so much braking was applied, that the rear wheel locked (stopped spinning/started skidding). So as I was riding the other day, on applying the brakes, I did not find myself slowing down adequately, and out of sheer desperation, applied the brakes as hard as I could and fishtailed to an obscene angle on each side before coming within two inches of the vehicle in front of me. I normally don't fishtail (rear-end of the vehicle swerving from side to side like a fish's tail) that much even if my rear wheel is locked, but that is when I am riding solo. With a pillion behind you, getting the rear wheel to lock isn't that easy, since the weight on the rear wheel increases (hence increasing the friction) and then even if you do lock your wheel, handling is greatly compromised because of the pillion. For those of you wondering why make a big deal of the rear brakes??? In a bike having both front n rear drum brakes, where it's weight factor easily puts it in a situation where it would have done well with both disc brakes, you need all the braking you can get and quite a lot of it is provided by the rear brakes.
PS : I used the word "brake" only 18... make that 19 times in this post.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

On thursday, 31st of Jan '08, at about 3 in the afternoon, i got this call from a classmate of mine, sounding as though he would burst out crying any moment. He kept saying something about this friend of mine trying to commit suicide. This friend of mine, Abysmal (Make that Abby) is one of those happy go lucky kinda guys, who's always had a smile on his face. Why would Abby wanna kill himself??? i asked myself. Well anyway, I did call up a few ppl who lived close to his place, n soon there were ppl looking over for him all over the city. Turned out Abby was serious about the suicide thing... and had wrote a suicide note in his ex-girlfriend's scrapbook (in orkut). This is the actual suicide note, and reading it only shows how inconsiderate Abby had been.I mean what kind of a #$%^&*(*&%^&*%$%^&*!@$#% tries to kill himself over a girlfriend he had broken up with him over 6 months ago... And seriously... even if he does love her so much... He should have done it without disturbing her... Without all the dramatic shit. In case you are wondering what he tried to do to himself... All he told me was that he had an injection inside him (I did not ask him what he tried to inject himself with... And I never will either) and it was then that the name Shirdi came to his mind n so Abby set off to Shirdi... On a devotional trip... Only to return to his parents. Hallelujah!!!

OMG!!! The death of the internet.

It was there in the business section of the newspaper a couple of days ago. But I didn't take it that seriously. It is there again in today's newspaper, and now I am worried about it. Come year 2010, and the internet connection is gonna go KAPUT!!! And guess who will be responsible for it. It'll be me, and you, and quite a few other people who are never gonna come across this blog. Apparently studies show that at the rate at which the internet is growing, and because of the pressure we are putting on the existing infrastructure, your broadband connection is gonna end up becoming highly unstable. And unless nearly 137 Billion Dollars (US) (if my memory serves me right) is invested, i.e. about 60% more than what investors are ready to invest, the internet is not gonna look like the way we have gotten used to seeing it. Unless something is done to bridge the gap, "rich media" sites (like youtube and other sites requiring large amounts of data transfer) are gonna be a thing of the past. Emphasis is gonna be laid on sites being more efficient in the amount of data transfered. I still can't grasp the idea of life without internet, although it is gonna make little difference to my blog. I shall continue to type my posts offline, and since hardly anybody visits my blog, its not gonna make much of a difference. Which reminds me, I finally got my first visitor since I installed a page hit counter (Yeah! the rest of the page hits were by me. Over two weeks and just one page hit. Man! I felt dejected.). The good ol' navigational bar finally remembered my blog. Oh! n it was one of those Internet explorer Users. I thought those things were extinct. Apparently not so in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, 'cause that's were the visitor was from. BTW I don't criticize each n every visitor, and would like to thank Ms. Red Queen, whose comment was analogous to CPR for my blog.
Good Day