what’s that funny smell? oh, it’s nothing, it’s just my computer melting
So I’m sitting at the computer late this morning with a client, looking over some of the sample logos I’ve been doing for his upcoming website (he has this notion of making the logo look exactly like the Sapporo beer logo, and I was feeling very smug that I totally nailed it) when the following exchange occurred:
Me: do you smell that? A sweet smell, like honey.
Him: it is the growing season in this hemisphere of the planet, Captain. There are doubtless many pollen aromas.
Me: (distracted) It was many years ago … on another planet …
Whoops — not that one. Actually, it went like this:
Me: Do you smell something burning?
Him: Dude, how do I know? It’s your place.
Me: Holy fuck, it’s coming from the computer!
Him: Cool. Did it melt?
I turned off the computer in a panic and got down on my hands and knees, inwardly cursing myself for letting so many weeks go by without vacuuming away the dustballs. I was sure that my lack of cleanliness had resulted in a a dustball the size of a tribble getting jammed into the CPU fan, grinding it to a halt, turning my CPU into a silicon swamp.
It wasn’t the CPU fan. And no dustballs were in sight. Instead, what I discovered was the graphics processor fan blades hanging askew and lifeless by a thread, dangling from the card’s heatsinks. Wonderful.
Fans do this. They start making weird noises and then they just … die. And this one died, the tiny little motor melting away to nothing like Toht’s face at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Okay, I thought. Don’t panic. It’s an nVidia 6600GT, a popular card, not too recent to be scarce and not too old to be forgotten; it’s easy to get replacements. I’ll rush out and get a new fan.
Four computer shops and more than four hours later, without having had any luck in finding a replacement, and I realized that I could well end up with a weekend without a computer, without the soft glow of its gentle company, without the tools I needed to chase after work I was already hopelessly behind at. Jesus, without Oblivion.
Fine, I thought, as I stood in my local PC Club, the clock by this point well past 6:00. Nobody has my exact model of fan? I’ll just get another fan and jury rig something. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just get me through the weekend until I can call up my card maker and have them send me the replacement. And then get through the extra couple of days until the replacement arrives.
I grabbed a cheap-o three-pin fan (sized for bios chips, I think), took a few minutes to chat geek-style to the two guys on duty at the shop, then drove home, determined that, if MacGyver could build a flying dirigible out of an old shoe and some toothpaste, then I could coax the wrong model of fan into my GPU to keep it going until the real replacement arrived.
So here I am. It’s approaching midnight. The soft glow from the computer monitor is warm and inviting. There’s a faint whiff of warm, toxic plastic; a comforting aroma. All throughout Los Angeles people are partying, going to movies, eyeing up potential conquests. But not me. I’m staring at the GPU core temperature readout in my Geforce 6600GT properties dialogue box. It’s resting gently at 47 degrees Centigrade. Warm, not too warm. If I reach my hand down into the case (which I’ve left open) I can feel the gentle breeze from my makeshift GPU fan. A cheerful breeze. The heatsinks are still there, snug and warm but not hot, not in danger of melting like cheese all over the GPU.
For a few hours today I was in a panic — the panic of nearly losing a loved one. But like that time on the island when Sun used aloe vera to make Shannon’s asthma attack subside, I made do with what I had to hand. To make everything okay. That’s what people do for their loved ones.
I just took my computer’s temperature again. Still 47 degrees. The fever is gone. The crisis, for the moment, is over. I can go to sleep now, knowing my loved one is healthy.