[TheForge] Adventures in steel delivery.

[Saint Phlip]

Andy, at least you're OK- everything else can be fixed or replaced.

Sounds rather like the first SCA event I went to, over in this Kingdom...

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Andrew Vida <osan at netlabs.net> wrote:
> So I spend all this time excavating the crawl space beneath the house with
> nothing but a shovel and wheel barrow.  200 yards of impossible WV red shale
> clay.  The 2' crawl space is not 10' deep and almost ready for the new
> foundation wall.  I order about 1000' of rebar and a few other bits for the
> work ahead.
>
> West Virginia Steel truck arrives yesterday and as it backs down our steep
> driveway the brakes apparently have issues and the truck just keeps rolling.
> That length of 12" channel just kisses the house as the truck comes to a
> tenuous stop.  I chocked the wheels and the driver calls a wrecker.  An hour
> later the truck is halfway up the driveway, chocked and safe.
>
> So what does the driver then do, you ask?  He proceeds to follow the wrecker
> up the driveway against instruction, stalls the engine on the GMC 7500
> flatbed, which has no airbrakes, and proceeds rolling back to the house.
>
> I am standing directly behind about 50' back thinking that this just cannot
> be happening.  I dodged being hit by about 8 to 12 inches.  The truck plows
> into the parked 4Runner, destroying the front end as the driver attempts to
> avoid leveling the house, veers off to the right, all this backwards, flies
> into the as-yet dry pond I excavated about 6 months ago, the back slamming
> into the opposite embankment and decelerating the vehicle from about 35 or
> 40 mph to zero in well under 1/10 of a second.  The front wheels flew at
> least 2' off the ground as the entire chassis bent in ways never intended,
> the remaining energy directing the cab rightward about 15 feet.
>
> I was certain the driver had been killed, but he survived, if with a goodly
> showing of his own blood as his head went through the back window.  That the
> steel was not driven through the cab and subsequently through the driver
> seems convincing evidence that someone was watching over him.
>
> A small fleet of wreckers showed up and in about 6 hours they actually
> managed to themselves get stuck in the mud, but eventually got themselves
> and the delivery vehicle out.
>
> So my driveway is damaged from the steel chocks scraping as the wreckers
> skidded under the stress of the cables, one of which broke unceremoniously -
> nobody killed by the whipping cable, but I was standing only about 40 feet
> away, thereafter increasing my interval of observation.
>
> Garden nuked, car nuked, potato bed nuked, tillable ground seriously nuked.
> House slightly damaged.
>
> All in all, the day seemed pretty to have passed well.  Nobody killed.
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-- 
Saint Phlip

So, you think your data is safe?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html?hpt=T2

Heat it up
Hit it hard
Repent as necessary.

Priorities:

It's the smith who makes the tools, not the tools which make the smith.

.I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary
notices I have read with pleasure. -Clarence Darrow