20 April 2006
shock sticker
Though I own no shortage of digital cameras*, I rarely seem to have one handy at the right times. Recently I’ve seen a number of scenes or things I’d've liked to have photographed, only to find that I couldn’t. One that I was able to capture is the label linked in this post, which if you read all the way to the bottom mentions “shocks in excess of 40 G’s” as a warranty voider. I find that funny for a few reasons:
- Not only will a 40 g** shock likely cause more problems than a voided warranty, but how could you measure it? Does Seagate have physicists on staff, poised ready with slide-rules to calculate the forces on a (shockingly) dropped drive? How could you, or they, prove it wasn’t in excess of 40 gs?
- What happens at exactly 40 gs anyway? How ‘delicate’ can this equipment be if they are willing to stick their necks out for a drive dropped at any shock under 40 g?
- I’ve been away from physics class for a long time, but last I checked 1 g was the acceleration of gravity, about ten meters per second squared. Forty times that would likely be higher than many a terminal velocity, wouldn’t it?
But that’s the only photo I’ve taken lately. Two others I didn’t were:
- A giant ‘76′ gas station sign lying at the roadside, in the overgrown grass and weeds, discarded by a company unwilling to be proud of its past.
- Two workers in a cherry-picker bucket in front of a video billboard. One has his fists raised upward in the universal pose for victory, and the ‘board is shows some nice colors.
Okay, maybe you needed to be there. Better yet, you would’ve brought me a camera, too.
* Three at last count, and I’m not counting broken or throwaway (i.e. sub-VGA resolution) ones.
** I’m italicizing the g because Wikipedia says so.