Monday 11 October 2004

Pic of the day: Picture from this spring, taken only a few steps from the scene described early in this entry.

Life, death, variations thereof

Already in the morning there are subtle signs that a day is not going to be perfect. For instance, this morning I decided to burn some files to a DVD before going to work. I copied the files to the DVD, verified that they had been copied correctly, and deleted them. Only after this was completed successfully, did I noticed that I had deleted them from the DVD rather than from the hard disk, as I had planned. Trying to undelete was, of course, unsuccessful. I was also a couple minutes late for the bus, which means I was half an hour early for the next. So far, so good.

On my way to the bus, I walked past a car standing in the road, and a woman's pedal bike lying in the road. Also lying in the road, a bit apart from the bike, was the woman. Or possibly the body of the woman; she was certainly not moving that I could see, but on the other hand there was no telltale splash of blood and brains either. There was however and man and a woman. The man had just keyed a number on a mobile phone and was giving it to the woman. The woman was now very earnestly talking someone into coming at once, because -- as she said -- "I have run over a lady".

It was a rather sinister scene, as you can imagine. It was also just a few steps away from the place where last year a fairly large boat fell down on its owner and crushed him to death during routine maintenance. Not that I am superstitious or anything. Anyway, it was not as if I could do anything that these two could not. Well, at least I assume that they had called emergency medical assistance. It is of course possible that they had just called a relative or acquaintance to help them hide the body, but I seriously doubt that. And anyway, in that case they would probably have no compunction about hiding my body as well. A quick overview over the possible scenarios convinced me to be on my way, reflecting on the sad fact that the people who die randomly are usually not the ones we would like to see die.

Anyway, as I said, I didn't see any splattered brains and the victim wasn't all that old -- seemed middle-aged to me -- so it is by no means certain that she was actually killed. I just have this natural tendency to think things like that.

***

I am not allowed to tell you about work, and it wouldn't be all that exciting anyway. In the lunch break, however, I ate my monthly hamburger (a "big tasty" from McDonald's), almost certainly made from the flesh of some unhappy animal spending most of its life caged up in the barn. I also reflected on the idea that death ought to have meaning, not just be a random event. Perhaps I ought to register as an organ donor; it beats getting eaten, on the scale of meaningful deaths. Of course, such a community service is much better suited for people who commit suicide: They can do much to decide on the condition of their body. As for my humble self, I am likely to be thoroughly putrefied before anyone misses me, if I die a reasonably natural death. Hopefully that won't happen for a long time, though. Of course, that's probably why there are so few organ donors in the first place. None of us expect to die before we are too old to be useful as spare parts. Other people might die at any time: Such is fate. But as the main character, it cannot possibly happen to me. Not really.

***

In the afternoon I came home and resumed burning anime from my external hard disk to DVD. I had noticed in the morning that there was the occasional clicking and scraping sound from the 250GB Maxtor hard disk, as has also happened from time to time before when it was almost full. This time, however, it continued and even got worse after I freed up space. I assume that some data were stored in a bad patch, so I told it to first scan the disk and then defragment it. While working on this, the hard disk died. By now, it does not even need to be connected to the computer: As soon as I plug it into the mains, it starts clicking and scraping. The computer wisely refuses to recognize it at all even if I connected it.

The external hard disk, where I keep all my anime, was bought from North Corporation. That's the same people who sold me the previous DVD burner which also got worse and worse and then died. It is still in for repair, I suppose I can ask for it when I hand in this one. They are also the people who sold me the computer that I had to give away because it could not stay connected to the Internet from more than a few minutes and they refused to believe that. This of course was several years ago. Hope springs eternal, although it typically needs a couple years to regenerate. I noticed a couple weeks ago a 300GB hard disk in a competing shop. Same manufacturer, same specifications except 50GB more disk space. I suppose it is shopping time again.

Or rather, as the Bible (letter of St. James) exhorts us to say: "If the Lord wills, we are allowed to live, and we will do this or that". Actually, the Lord seems generally much less motivated than I to spend our money on computer peripherals and anime, although he seems very supportive of the DSL and my online journal in general (except a few of the entries). He may not need to kill me to keep me from doing things either ... it is almost a tradition that my best laid plans go west. But that is a story for another day... if any.