My Laptop Gets a Blow Job

My laptop was getting more obnoxious by the week. Progressively getting slower, taking longer to boot up, taking longer for pretty much everything except aggravating my temper. All the symptoms of a STD. But my battery of free security programs found nothing. I caved in and bought Spysweeper. It found nothing, either, and just made things even slower.

I started noticing it felt hotter than it used to under my right wrist. Well, okay, I thought, it is over five years old, after all. Probably getting ready to blow the power supply or something. Before it could do that, though, it started just shutting itself off. They’re made that way, y’know, to automatically shut down when the internal temperature gets too high.

Of course, by now I was primed to use the imminent demise of the machine as an excuse to get a new one. Even started checking the BestBuy ads every Sunday. But, the damn thing wouldn’t die; just kept after my goat. Last weekend I asked my wife if it would upset her if I got out the .38 and shot it. She said it would. So, I scrapped the notion of putting it out of my misery.

Today it shut itself down before I could print a letter I needed to get out. So I turned it over to have a look at the fans. A busted fan could certainly cause overheating. Couldn’t tell anything from squinting through the tiny holes except the blades looked kind of dusty. I grabbed a can of Dust-Off and shot a blast at each fan. The first result was a major cloud of dust flying out the vent. The second result was one of the fans didn’t spin. It occurred to me laptops maybe store up dust as well as desktops, despite what seems to be a fairly enclosed structure. And it occurred to me I might need to replace a fan. Fans are what I’ve had to replace the most on all my computers.

I can see you’re about to fall asleep so I’ll cut to the chase. At home after supper between Olympic events I removed as many panels as I was comfortable removing and used about half a can of Dust-Off blowing into strategic crevices. In the process, I not only blew out more clouds of dust but also dislodged a major dust-kitty that I had to slowly work out with tweezers from behind one of the fans. Yup, it was actually keeping the fan from spinning. Got it all back together and the difference is incredible.

Sounds way better, stays way cooler, runs way faster, hasn’t shut off. Keeping fingers crossed, of course, but it’s looking (and sounding) like I’ll have to spill a cup of coffee into the keyboard if I’m gonna get me a new laptop in the near future.

Stinkin’ dirt, anyway.

Safari for the Rest of Us

I discovered that Safari is available for PC’s. I’ve been using it for a few days now, and rather like it. It seems to be faster than IE, Firefox, and Opera as well as other browsers using IE and gecko engines such as Flock and Avant Browser. Well, maybe not faster than Avant Browser, but I like Safari better, regardless. However, I’ve grown rather attached to Flock, due its “networking” and media oriented features. The main drawback with Safari is that almost all plug-ins work only on Mac installations and, of course, none of the Firefox plug-ins I’ve gotten accustomed to will work on Safari. I particularly miss the Google Toolbar and Web Developer Toolbar. But, for sessions when all I need is speed, Safari is becoming my browser of choice.

Jayhawks on Parade

We had a little parade in Lawrence a couple weeks ago. It consisted of a police car, a fire truck, some of the band, some of the cheerleaders, and a few convertibles carrying the chancellor, the basketball coach, and the basketball team. Nothing visually spectacular, but I have never seen so many people crammed into downtown. The parade ran from 7th Street to 19th Street. Originally, it was just going to 11th Street, but they decided there’d be too many people to cram into five blocks. I think they were wrong. There were too many to cram into 12 blocks! It took about five minutes for the parade to pass by us; it took about an hour to get out of downtown. I think the entire population of Lawrence was there!

I uploaded pictures Becky took at the stadium on Tuesday after the game, plus pictures from today’s parade, to HarpShot’s Photos at Flickr. I also uploaded a video to HarpShot’s Videos at Google. Unfortunately, when Becky got to the stadium Tuesday, it was so full she ended up in the nosebleed section and, in any event, it’s hard for her to see over people’s heads. At the parade, it was hard to see much if you weren’t standing in front of the throng, which we weren’t. Nevertheless, it was all fun! I should mention that the Lawrence Journal-World’s parade photo gallery is much better than mine.

Bandolero and HarpShot Love Those Jayhawks

So while watching the NCAA Championship game HarpShot’s amigo Bandolero upgraded his WordPress Blog to version 2.5. What a weird thing for El Bandolero to be doing. But, if not, Bandolero would be jumping out of his boots and holsters from the excitement and anxiety. In fact, game not over yet; it’s in overtime. Will Jayhawks pull it out? El Bandolero says: Rock Chalk! And HarpShot seconds that.

Stick It

In the Chappells Blog I recently wrote about Knoppix on a stick, and mentioned winPenPack where you can get a whole collection of portable apps installable on a USB stick, a/k/a flash drive. In the Knoppix article I wrote about having/escaping the Linux wireless connection conundrum. The evening I wrote the article, it connected with ease. The following evening, however, I just couldn’t find the right sequence of clicks to get a wireless connection.

Being frustrated with the inability to get Linux connected to the internet, I went back to Windows and went to one of my favorite hangouts — the Sourceforge site. Sourceforge is essentially the home of the Open Source Community. It’s more than just a place to get free programs. It’s a place infused with the energy and mindset that made the internet what it should be. A person could write a lot more about that, but I’ll save it for another time.

While perusing Sourceforge I came across the Portable Apps Project, also to be found at its own Portable Apps Website. I think Portable Apps might even be better than winPenPack. I downloaded the standard suite and installed it all on one USB stick, and then downloaded a bunch more portable apps to add to it. Having already done a couple of installations of winPenPack and, therefore, being already familiar with how much can packed onto one little USB stick, I was nevertheless again amazed at all the stuff I put on it, and how much space is still left. I was hard pressed to think of anything more to add, that I might conceivably want to have on it. Yet, a visit to the PortableApps website just now revealed several new additions to the list of available apps, particularly, several new games.

Like winPenPack and Knoppix, PortableApps is all free stuff. BTW, I’m back on Knoppix/Linux this evening, while also watching a little March Madness, though I’ll likely be paying more attention to the TV and less attention to the monitor tomorrow, when KU will be playing. Rock Chalk!