That growling/grinding I kept hearing? It was the right cooling fan. I noticed that when checking the fan speed, the right one was considerably slower than the left one, when the noise was going on (left: around 3000rpm, right: 900rpm). Mr. Giantpaper thought that the fan motor was dying, but just in case it wasn’t, he decided to apply some machine oil just in case.
It worked. 😮 I guess it took a while for the oil to lubricate the entire thing, because after turning it on after putting it back together, we heard a constant low hum from the right fan (sounded like r-r-r-r-r-r, like it kept hitting something). It went away after about an hour. Now I can’t hear the fans period. :O The laptop also stays a bit cooler now. It’s still a little warm, but not cook-eggs-with-this hot like it used to be.
We got a new router. Our internet kept going out (even though this is FIOS). The last time this happened was about 4 years ago. Yesterday, my mom and dad spent a few hours talking with some Verizon customer support people, talking about switching the old router for a new one. The customer service person thought that…ummm….our connection is too slower, let’s upgrade you to another plan (for more money), which we declined. I guess it’s some kind of ploy for ISPs to let connections to get worser and worser after several years to get customers to upgrade (happened to us…four years ago and also happened to Mr. Giantpaper and his parents).
But when we set up the router today, we could connect to the router itself, but the wireless internet thing was not working! :O (As in, all computers connected wirelessly said they were connected, but opening a web browser gave us a server not found error). The CD that came with the router had nothing but manuals in PDF form and an exe of Adobe Reader. We ended up fixing it when my mom redid the whole router setup.
(Since the router is in his room, W88 connected his computer via ethernet, so he had internet.)
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I found out how to access my desktop’s (WinXP) DVD drive from my laptop (OS X) (which is handy for computers that are DVD driveless). They have to be in the same workgroup. Not sure how I would go about it if the operating systems were switched. But assuming OS X is the receiving end (where you need the CD/DVD), you would press Cmd+K like you were connecting to an external server and in the text field, type smb://[your computer name]. Not sure if all Windows computers would start with smb://
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I finished The Longest Journey (made by Funcom, who also made The Secret World). It was pretty epic, but not sure what I think about the ending, that left some things unanswered (like…is X really dead or who is Y?). Now I think about, I probably should’ve gotten Dreamfall (the sequel) during the Steam summer sale. I didn’t think I would actually finish it so soon. 😮
Probably the thing that bugged me most about the game was having to run back and forth in between locations to finish a puzzle. It’s not like in other point and click adventures I’ve played (like ones made by Pastel Games where the player character is you and is not shown on the screen, so you don’t have to wait for the character to run from one side of the screen to the other or wait for them to go down the street, go up the stairs and into the elevator).