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Ah, Spring. When young men's fancy thoughts are turned into a mess by love. Something like that. The point is, I spent much of the weekend in a preview of what, I imagine, old age is going to be like. Inability to think straight. Forgetting things that happened less than a minute ago. A little disturbing for someone like me, who is used to having his brain respond more or less exactly as he intends.
Anyway, let me "back it up", as they say, and take you to thursday at 4:00 pm, EST. I was driving the PD9K across the great untamed wilderness (corn fields) of eastern Indiana. I had great plans. Next to me was a box with an engagement ring in it. If you're in to "the stats", it's a platinum solitaire cathedral-style ring with a carat of diamond stuck in it. That's a story that starts in November or so, but let's just say there's a ring and move on. I had great plans for friday night. About that time, it occured to me that my intended didn't know that I was coming in on thursday. I realized that, rather than suprise her with my presence on thursday and then with a ring on friday, I could deliver them in one bold, potentially debilitating combo.
Then I began burning through my cell phone battery at a reckless pace, moving pieces around the board, preparing my various traps and snares. I enlisted the help of her parents and a few other people, and if she wants to talk about how good of an actor her Mom is, that's her business.
Anyway, I made sure that she was going to be free for dinner, and about 6:00 called to let her know that we were going to dinner. My plan almost backfired when she informed me that she already had plans with her parents, but that I was welcome to come along for that. Fortunately, I'm a smooth talker. And by "smooth talker" I mean "I told her to ditch her parents".
So shortly after 7 we're in my car and headed for the Oakwood Club. It's funny how, after all my planning, all I could think about is "will she notice the ring box in my pocket?".
Anyway, we arrived there only a minute or five late and shortly after being seated, there began a procession of servers with roses. Every 2 or 3 minutes, another of the restraunt staff would walk up to the table and hand the lady a rose. Yeah, I know, it's a little sappy. I'll do my best not to let it happen again.
After dinner (and let me tell you, Ruth's Chris has nothing on this place for steaks), I did what's expected of me, and got down on one knee, and almost got the ring box all the way open before she said yes. Almost.
Then it was time to hit the coffee and Bailey's, because my hands were shaking like mad. The moral of the story? There ARE certain times in your life when a little alcohol can make you a better driver. The key thing is identifying those times.
Oh, that and I'm in love, and now I have to get used to saying "fiancee". Creepy.
I feel a little dirty. Dirty the way I imagine Dave feels all the time.
My old CPU fan had to go. The level of vibration was out of control, and for the first 5-8 minutes after boot up, it sounded less like we were awakening a tiny altar of modern technological marvels and more like we were scrambling the standby fighters on the deck of the USS Constellation (CV-64).
So I bought a new fan. Specifically, the CoolerMaster Vortex TX. I wish I could say that I did hard-hitting analysis and did lots of reading to support my choice... instead I went to Fry's (my first time in a Fry's, actually), and then narrowed the fan selection down to everything that would work on socket A and didn't look too small or "shady". This left two fans. One of them a massive beacon unto the hubris of man's cooling aspirations; its 184 fins radiating outward, a copper turbine borne from the strangest dreams and wildest nightmares of Sir Frank Whittle's imagination. The other one was like three times that size. I got the smaller of the two.
Then began the great computer unbuilding. I had to remove nearly everything plugged into the motherboard. I kept in the case stuff (power, reset, hdd light), but only barely. Everything else had to be removed. I state this over and over only to point out how annoying that was. Anyway, the fan mounts through the motherboard via screws, which I suppose is better than the clip style... but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy the installation process. That being said, the installation of this thing was pretty easy once I resigned myself to removing everything.
Warning Sign #1: the fan has a 4-pin connector. My motherboard CPU fan connection point has 3 pins. A little reading, I learned that that 4th pin helps communicate temperature or control speed or something, but isn't that important - the fan will still operate with 3 pins. If only I had read the first part of that and not just the second.
Warning Sign #2: Fan speed during post: 1900 rpm. Fan speed after boot: 1900 rpm. Fan speed after 1 minute of Eve Online: 1900 rpm. Cpu speed about 30 seconds later: who knows, because it locked up hard.
Ok, I admit it, I wasn't tracking fan speeds the first time around. What you see above is a guess based on my dramatic re-enactment of the event 5 minutes later. A little (read: a lot) later, I read on the interwebs that if you only have 3 pins connected, it defaults to the lowest speed. Apparently the "fix" for this is to connect pin 2 (12v) and pin 4 (the temp sensor).
That doesn't SOUND like a good idea to me, but hey, why not. Fortunately I had a good supply of sufficient wire in the form of my old cpu fan. A little cutting, a little stripping, and now I have what feels like a very Rube Goldberg cpu fan setup.
It runs at 3200 rpm, no adjusting for temperature, around 36db according to the package (Still quieter than the USS Constellation fan), and maintains 59 degrees under 100% cpu load for the last 40 minutes or so. Seems stable... I'll keep it. If it catches on fire and burns down my apartment or something, I'll probably have to take it back though.