Reaching new heights of bad luck

For those observant fellas who are on my Gtalk list, this was one of my status messages sometime back, and very truly so. The previous post I wrote was about my bad luck in my BTP, I think my bad luck charm in relation to the same has been working ever since I came back from holidays back in December. Considering the fact that I need my computer to work properly for this last semester, anything going wrong with it was like a crumpled piece of irritation thrown down by God!
So, the hard drive stops working. Then the RAM, hence the monitor. Then the SMPS. Sigh!
Four months. Just four months.
Four problems, FOUR problems!!
BTP. BTP!!
Sigh.
So I drag along a friend of mine with my CPU to the most trusted computer shop for all IITians out here - Devraj Computers. The owner of this place literally swims in the money earned by selling computers and laptops to us. Rich bugger.
The CPU was heavy.
Problems don't end.
Nope.
First, we don't have the change for Rs. 500/- to pay the auto-wala 70 bucks. After 15 minutes of bouncing off other shops saying no for any change requests unless I buy something from them (Argh!) I realise that there was a crisp 100 rupee note relaxing in between my SBI ATM receipts.
Okay, nothing bad happened for a little while.
We start back for the campus when the repair work is done.
The CPU was heavy.
We get an auto and after a little bit of bargaining, we convince him to take us back in Rs. 90/-. Loss of 20 bucks, but whatever!
There is a straight route from Devraj back to our campus, but the auto guy tries to act like a smart ass. Actually he ended up being just an ass. A big one. Real big. His auto stops working right in the middle of nowhere. Not a main road, not even a gali. Some deserted place in Chennai where the two of us had never been. Two stranded ladies. Okay, it wasn't that bad, I'm over dramatizing it. :)
So we get off and ask the auto wala to look for an auto for us. Now, as previously mentioned that he was trying to act as a smart ass, he again tried. Again cupped.
So obviously we got off and started looking for an auto for ourselves, on foot. The CPU was heavy. We finally find another auto and the driver refuses to come down from 55 bucks to 50. He had dropped his price from 80 earlier to 55. Argh.
So giving him the benefit of shit, we mutually agree on 55.
Campus gates welcome us. Grin. Nothing can possibly go wrong now. We had taken the auto till the hostel and not till the gate, and although the bus waiting for passengers at the gate, the thought of the comfort of an auto came over us. So we carried on in the auto taking the route where the bus doesn't run. 'Coz nothing could go wrong. But it did. Again.
The auto ran out of petrol. :D
No auto, no bus, 1.5km, CPU was heavy.
It was a Saturday. :D
Saturday=Movie at OAT=People coming from outside insti to watch it=Cars=LIFT!
Elation. But no car for some 10 minutes.
So we start walking. Soon, we manage to convince an uncleji and auntiji to drop us off at GC.
We thank them. We get off the car.
Thud. We drop the CPU.
Silence. Hysterical laughter for 4 minutes.
End.

So thats basically it. My computer is in good health and has shown no side effects of the fall. No mental derangement, although I still suffer from some damages.

Touchwood!

Tsk, Tsk..

Yeah its been long, very long since I've blogged. Actually I had given up on the fact that blogging can be used to utilize time between codes that take hours to run. Not the point, I was chatting with a friend of mine, KVM, about a really trippy incident that took place and he encouraged me to write about it. So here goes.

The past two weeks have been good and bad in such a wide variety of ways that trying to fit it in one post will cost me not only my patience, but a hell lot of patience! So, I'll just mention the top ones. Good in the sense that I've been getting a lot of time for myself and my sleep. Bad in the sense that my BTP got stuck at a point like a 3-DOF hinge (I kept rotating about the same point, unable to move forward in any direction). And so my days over the past weeks turned gloomier. And then suddenly I had Mentos - Dimaag ki batti jala! (Ok, I had Polo but I think it had the same effect). I realised that in the formula of

where p=pressure, I=impulse, t=time of impact, A=area; I had been reading 'I' as '1' ! And what added to the whole stupidity is that I was confused as to how the guy has given no dimensions to an impulse term. Oh come on, everyone knows Force times Time is Impuse and should be 'Ns'. But no! I kept on getting elastic response for my plate with this pressure pulse. And why wouldn't I, when I later realised that I=31Ns!

I guess all's well that ends well is partially true. I'm happy to have resolved the problem, but not happy to have wasted so much time on a silly reading error.

Oh well!