I offered to keep my nerd-posts to my original blog, but Jess said, "If you're still going to post to your old blog, there's no reason to have a joint blog." So, I'm posting a nerdy post to start things out.
The video card in my desktop has been dying slowly over the last couple of months. I was hoping it wouldn't die on me completely, like some of my hardware (I'm looking at you laptop), until I had finished my thesis and moved. Well, it honored that request and lived not a minute longer. I got my computer out and setup so I could make some bookmark changes to my thesis so it can get approved by the electronic submission people, and the fan wouldn't spin at all.
Needing to make these changes regardless of fan operation, but not wanting to run the system without a fan on the video card I had a problem to solve. I have 2 old little fans that I took off of broken motherboards. These have been sitting in a "nerd box", as Jess refers to it, since my electronics lab Physics course. I took off the dead fan and determined that the possible replacement fans wouldn't quite fit and the electrical plugs were slightly too large. So, with some creative adjustments (cutting off the circle of plastic that goes around the outside of the fins) and a little extra force on the electrical pins I got a fan in place and it spins. I probably shouldn't be playing any graphics-intensive games until I get a new card, but I can at least make changes to my thesis and browse the web.
Here's the mess which is my video card:
