When you almost put toothpaste
on the cotton swab
you intend to use
to clean your ears

Just a quick post to apologize to everyone for the lack of posts, e-mails, responses to comments, and so forth that has occurred lately -- with the laptop fans making these highly disconcerting sounds, I've been kinda scared to use the machine and have turned it off at almost every opportunity. That said, last night I successfully disassembled the laptop, removed and cleaned the fans, and reassembled the machine, so I'm confident that I'll be able to do it again when my replacement fans arrive sometime next week. And then, barring any other unforeseen technical difficulties, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming!

I hope everyone's 2009 is off to a great start.

...but maybe now I can join the IT Crowd! Funniest. show. ever.

Yesterday my laptop started making this weird noise -- a faint whine with stuttering interruptions, almost like high-pitched radio static but nowhere near as loud. At least I think it started yesterday; since I often wear headphones when at the computer, it's entirely possible that it's been going on for some time. Anyway, I googled laptop noise issues and came across a suggestion that I clean the fans, so I grabbed my canned air and blew the dust out of the machine and cooling stand. That caused the machine to stop for a little while -- though it could just as easily have stopped due to the reboot, or because I had the computer off for a bit, or whatever -- but it started up again a little later. Fearing hard drive issues, I ran the dskchk utility. It yielded no errors -- not that that necessarily means anything -- so I don't think the hard drive is failing.

Once the dskchk utility finished, I promptly turned the machine off and went to bed. Now I'm using the laptop again -- and after about 20 minutes of relative silence, the noise came back. I really don't know what to make of it! I'm thinking the fans might be dying on me, though that wouldn't explain why the machine is running several degrees cooler unless they're spinning faster in their death throes or the winter is responsible for the temperature drop. (I'd attribute it to the reduced amount of dust, except that the machine was apparently running cooler even before I broke out the canned air.) According to Notebook Hardware Control, the CPU is even running cooler than the hard drive, which almost never happens. Granted, I'm usually running Firefox with upwards of 50 tabs open and right now I've only got four, but still.

Don't die on me, laptop! 🙁

EDIT: I'd forgotten that I had 18kfanGUI on here! After doing some tests in which I manually stopped and sped up the fans, I have confirmed that the noise is coming from the second one. I guess that's good, since it means the hard drive is mostly safe! And the machine is running pretty cool now what with the winter and the cooling stand (far cooler than it normally ran before I got the stand), so I don't think I'm in any immediate danger of frying my hard drive. Just the same, I'll probably order a new fan this week! It looks like they're about $50 refurbished from Dell with only a 90-day warranty and far cheaper on eBay with a 30-day warranty, so I'll likely go with the latter option. I'm tempted to grab some other upgrades while I'm at it!

So I finally got my holiday cards sent out yesterday -- obviously they will be New Year's Day cards, since they probably won't arrive by anyone's religious (or not) December holidays of choice. They may not even arrive by then, and I'm almost sure the package I sent won't, but ah well.

What struck me most about this year's holiday sending of cardboard cheer was how mechanical it felt. The first year I really sent Christmas to others, I made a whole big production out of it. It may not seem intuitive given my general dislike of holidays (Halloween being the obvious exception) and growing distaste for religious affairs, but I really do like Christmas. While people pay lip service to Jesus Christ and the virgin birth and all that manger crap, Christmas is really about Santa Claus and buying toys and sending presents to others to spread cheer and show your appreciation for them. And unless you're a totally stingy bastard who never receives presents from anyone and/or completely despises toys -- which I am not, at least with respect to the receipt of presents and the hatred of toys -- it's hard not to derive some warmth from that!

So my first year with some "disposable" income -- and aided by the free shipping and low price guarantees of DeepDiscountDVD (now DeepDiscount.com) -- I sent out a ton of presents. Almost everyone with whom I'd engaged in extended e-mail/blog communication got a DVD. I think I averaged something like $8 per DVD and sent out over $200 worth of stuff. And it wasn't like I chose the DVDs at random, either -- I spent quite a bit of time poring over the lists of discounted DVDs in order to select titles that, based on blog posts, photos, offhand comments, and so forth, the recipients might find interesting, amusing, or both. (more...)