So my latest project has been cooling down my laptop, which has resulted in me being off of the computer for uncharacteristic amounts of time during the past few days and made my work this morning particularly hectic. Monday's undervolting with Notebook Hardware Control ran well into Tuesday (if I'd known it would take that long, I would've waited), but the CPU appears to be running 5-8 degrees C cooler. No change in the HDD temperature.

Then I tried fooling with I8kfanGUI, but I kept wondering why the CPU temperature wouldn't stay constant and kept making the fans turn on and off. Apparently the fans on the laptop are supposed to remain on at all times (or at least that's how the system is designed), so the program was sort of counteracting the design by turning them off. I wish I could keep them on always and have the program up the fan speed at a lower critical temperature, though, because with the undervolting the system never hits the necessary temp (around 70 C) necessary to send the fans into overdrive. I'd like to see them get antsy around 60 C, but hey. Maybe I can mess with the BIOS values...

Anyway, I also purchased a cooling pad to use with the laptop, but I had the good fortune of ordering a defective item so now I have to go to the post office to ship the sucker back. I generally like buying things online -- it's so convenient and things are often discounted and come STRAIGHT TO MAH DO', but one problem is that when one does get defective products one ends up paying double shipping and having to go out anyway, which sort of negates the advantages. Ah well.

To people I owe e-mails -- thanks for your patience! Until next time, BE COOL.

My shower gel-filled Dalek arrived last week! It is very cool. 🙂

Bacardi does not like it, though.

...something fairly crappy happening, which in this case involved the spilling red alcohol all over my carpet (not to mention the various papers and pieces of mail nearby) just three minutes after 11 PM. Not a huge deal, but still. SO CLOSE! Bleh. 😐

I don't feel like doing anything today.

Today, 25 years ago, my life began!

Well, nine or so months prior, according to the good pro-life folks.

I will now celebrate with a couple of drinks and a trip to outer space. 🙂

Another lengthy comment response to one of TAB's posts that became an entry of its own, though this one is significantly shorter:

I disagree with this post -- it's not actual geeks that people regard as being sexy. It's just the look, which arguably has more to do with the rise of emo culture among teens and geekish metrosexual styles among adults than professional success in IT fields (et cetera).

Artists and eccentric actors and offbeat comedians have sex appeal, sure, but these guys aren't true geeks. Note that the truest form of geekery is hardly creative, because the geeks are generally too busy worshipping at the altar of something else to make their own contributions. It's possible to be geek-y without being a geek (and nerd-y without being a nerd, et cetera).

By the way, speaking of geeks and their interest in comic books, I saw something at Best Buy today that I thought was rather neat -- all of the issues of the Ultimate X-Men comic on a single CD-ROM for $10. Given that most of the people who buy comics probably don't even actually read them and that the people most interested in reading them probably wouldn't even want to buy them, the Internet has made it far too easy for folks to simply download titles every month, but releases like this may prove an effective alternative. True, people generally don't want to pay for what they can get for free, but $10 for 70+ issues is a damn good deal -- and one that comic fans could enjoy without feeling like they were cheating an industry that they love. Hell, if I were into the Ultimate X-Men comic (I am totally not), I'd have picked it up without hesitation. Well, there might be some hesitation -- the files are apparently in PDF format, and I generally hate Acrobat. The CDisplay Comic Reader is a much more pleasant program to work with.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.