h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The only thing of note today was the tidying of this corner of the living room, looking for the missing stylus for my graphics tablet. I didn't find it.

I popped out briefly to borrow a can of WD40 from Mike the Upholsterer. I'd stripped this machine down to fit noise-absorbing foam all over the inside, and I wanted to lubricate the noisy fans before I screwed it all together again. I fitted the (£12 worth of) foam. I oiled the fans. I screwed it all together. The thing's just as noisy as it was before.

My Mac G4 is next to silent

Yup. But remember, this isn't a design flaw in my machine - it's a fault, and you can get faulty Macs too. One of the fans has dodgy bearings, and it's making a helluva noise. It didn't originally do that.

Aww I'm sorry Peet I was only teasing. It's just that I always think of you as King of all things Computer and I'm a numbskull in comparison when it comes to the bloody things.

Hope you soon get yours sorted.

Well, after being turned off for eight hours it's now pretty much silent. (A whirr and a hum, neither intrusive) I don't know if that's good or bad, though - it could mean the fan in question is no longer going round.

Ah well, it seems to be running OK, and there's a blast of cold air coming out of the front ports so I'll just leave it as is; there's an "over-temperature alarm" if it starts to have problems.

I spoke too soon. It started making noises like a being slapped inside the case for about ten minutes, and now it's progressed back to full "idling cement mixer" mode.

I sympathise Peet. I knew it was time to replace my old computer when visitors started asking if I had a breadmaker..........

Portia

This one's pretty new, though. (Athlon 64/3000, 1GB DRAM, 180GB HDDs)

I need to find a day or two when I don't need it and set about changing all the fans one-by-one till I find the culprit. It doesn't do it when it's on its side open, and the cabling's too short to get it out, opened up, vertical, so I need a lot of setting-up time free...

Peet

"Dram" is a word I recognise...............

I found someone called Jason who sorted it all a treat. I do realise that it's not a road you're likely to travel, though!

So - bonne chance - and maybe a small dram would help....?

Portia

Faulty Macs? Naah, never.

I wish. It's p*ssing rain outside, so I don't feel like dragging myself 3/4 of a mile to Haddows. I'm stuck indoors, listening to this throcking* computer.

(*Throcking - "...is a term taken from the Douglas Adams book The Meaning Of Liff. It means the sound of hitting a wooden bucket with a wet sausage or roughly the sound of Nigel Olsen's snare drum on 70's Elton John records.")

Martine, so the ones I know with only two out of three colours on their monitor are actually displaying a little-known design feature?

(I have a Mac with a blue-green screen; my pal Bob has a Mac with a shocking pink display. Neither of us can be bothered to do anything about it.)

Love the word 'throcking'

Getting back to computers I have this theory that the more someone knows about computers the more the computer wishes to play silly buggers with it's owner, and vice versa. They have a really wicked sense of humour.

The following text comes from a book of activities for teachers of English as a Foreign Language (Charles and Jill Hadfield: Writing Games, Nelson, 1990).

WARNING!
This machine is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need. A special circuit in the machine called a critical detector senses the operator's emotional state in terms of how desperate he or she is to use the machine. The 'critical detector' then creates a malfunction proportional to the desperation of the operator.

Rules for operating machines:

1. Do not use force. Threatening the machine with violence only aggravates the situation.

2. Attempts to use another machine may cause it to malfunction in sympathy. They belong to the same union.

3. Keep cool and say nice things to the machine. Nothing else seems to work.

4. Never let anything mechanical know you are in a hurry.

(Originally intended to apply to photocopiers, but equally true for many other types of machine, including computers).

Oh how true, Annie. Here, it's printers...