Saturday, July 26, 2008

another bus broke down

this time in the afternoon, just after i was done with blogging and ready to get out of my house.

instead of breaking down at the bus stop, the engine failed while the driver was making a turn from Marsiling Lane into Marsiling Drive. So the bus was in an awkward position, occupying slightly more than a lane. Heard the driver restarting the engine a few times, then trying to move. But the engine only roared, like revving in neutral mode.

went near to have a look, and saw Uncle Boo at the driver's cabin. So i stayed around to chat with him while he was waiting for the mechanics to come. He had to direct the next few buses to pass with care, since there wasn't much clearance for heavy vehicles.

4D!


The traditional Mercedes Benz bus dashboard.
The battery and fire hazard indicators were lit with beeping sounds.


the mechanics came, checked the gearbox oil and what not. Then using some Fluke and electronic meters they adjusted some stuff at the articulated section. The bus was movable after that, but had to be driven back to the depot. So we bid goodbye and uncle followed the mechanic's van back.


something is terribly wrong this semester at work. There are many viral outbreaks, already 4 as of this week (15). Luckily, the semester is ending soon.

normally, once i found out the root cause, i'll obtain a hashed value of the executable and pass it to P for blocking at domain wide level (entire SIT and affiliated domains). But the latest discovery caused mayhem - tests had to be postponed as the computers were effectively made useless. Plus the executable file varied in date/time and size, so the hashing method was useless. Command prompt was deleted too, so no way to delete off the bugger. I suspect there's another one undetected, so i'm tracing it down when i go back on sat.

at this rate, we will be busy catching worms and wearing bio suits in the lab. Instead of working on more technical and pressing issues.

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