Ramblings of an (In)sane Snow Leopard

For the past couple days, I've been having an issue with my laptop seemingly overheating whenever I try to play certain games. About ten minutes in, and the entire thing shuts off, which, through searching for other people who had experienced the same problem with the same game online, and also from remembering both Trish and Naomi having the same problems with their laptops, thought that maybe there was dust caught in the vent grille. Unlike either of their laptops, however, I wasn't able to find disassebly instructions for mine, but I managed anyway. Remove the battery, hard drive, and RAM, then take out all screws from the bottom (being sure to keep them sorted out), pop off the cover (the bottom), and either use compressed air to blow out both the inside and outside of the fan, or unplug the fan from the motherboard, unscrew the screws securing the heatsink and fan, remove the entire assembly, and then clean out the fan. The only thing about the extra steps is that it requires removing the old thermal paste and applying a new coat to the CPU before putting the heatsink back on, but thus far, everything appears to be working just as it was before. I left one of those games running for nearly twenty minutes while I was washing dishes earlier, and there were no problems that time, but there was also not a lot of dust (that I could tell) caught between the fan and grille, making me think that maybe this laptop (the CPU, specifically) has a lower temperature threshold. Fine if it does, because I know how to fix the problem if it starts acting up again, and now, well, now what I want is to - when I finish writing this entry - take my oldest laptop (the first one I got) apart again, to see if I can track down whatever kept it from working when I did the same before. I remember it POSTing fine, but not doing anything after that, so maybe I forgot to reconnect some part of the hard drive. In any case, that is what I have planned for tonight. Great fun and all that, but it beats being bored and going out for snacks for something to do, and it also keeps my mind off of August, even though I'm significantly more certain about how I feel regarding plans. In sum, keep Sunday and Monday free indefinitely. If those people from Ottawa want to do something on one or both of those days, then we can do that (but not me if it's something I don't want to do). If they don't want to do anything, then we can probably take Sunday to rest from the furmeet, and go out somewhere on Monday. Simple, yes? What I really need from this though is to know that Dan is with me on it - that he's going to go into Sunday and Monday with me, instead of either going along with what I want to do, or doing what he wants independent of my feelings. The continued problem exists of that he won't be back until Monday, and having to wait kind of gets to me whenever I think about it, but tomorrow is Friday, and starting then, I work until Sunday, so that should be enough to keep me occupied.

It looks like this is going to be one of those disproportionate entries though. Other things I could talk about include going to Heart and Stroke today, a couple more emails from Brandon, and the state of my finances now that I've been paid, but I think I'll leave those until tomorrow, and if I still want to write about them then, will put them in my next entry. Otherwise, it's time to get to work on that old laptop. It would be quite neat if I could have it working again within the night~