So, when I got up last Friday, I heard a strange whirring noise. It sounded vaguely like a fan spinning up, failing, and then spinning up again. I quickly narrowed it down to the computer rack (it being about the only thing in the room with fans). Poking around a bit, I thought that I identified one of the fans that moves air out of the rack itself as the problem. Since I didn't want to just disconnect live power (sparks are bad), I shut off the ancient AT power supply that I use to run all of the fans.

After disconnecting it, I started the fans up again, but the noise was still occuring. Due to my position, however, I quickly discovered that it was the power supply itself that was groaning in pain. I lifted it up to examine it and it chose to spark quite brightly and release the smell of ozone. Unforunately, this particular failed device is a bit tricky to replace. I could probably just find a high-power 5v supplly to run the fans, but then I'd have to be careful to make sure that the devices are arranged such that they'll run (this could be an issue with a single rail source, maybe...).

This was not my only recent hardware failure. My RHIT laptop's fan is beginning to fail. It has recently taken to shutting itself down due to overheating, but now the fan has also developed a very sad noise when running at maximum speed. I suspect that the fan itself will only work for a few more months, perhaps a year at the outside. I should probably start planning on how I will replace it. Athough I have a newer laptop and it is good for carrying, but it isn't terribly powerful and its screen is microscopic in comparison. I've lately been using my laptop as a "living room computer" so that I can look things up while watching TV/playing video games and I rarely, if ever, move it from where it is.

It may be possible to replace the device with something other than a laptop, but that seems unlikely. Even the narrowest LCD panels are very large and also not designed to collapse on demand. Of course, some fools have decided that the 4:3 ratio isn't cool anymore so I'll probably have a lot of trouble finding a laptop with a screen that is acceptable.

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Also, I just hit level 1 in Project Euler. Of the problems that I've solved so far, I've solved about half the problems with scheme, half with perl and one with C. It turns out that C is still the best of the languages that I regularly use when it comes to deal with multidimensional arrays.

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