Experience is measured in the amount of equipment destroyed

It's been joked that experience is measure in the amount of equipment you've blown up. That's sort of true... if you work with a lot of stuff you're eventually going to break something, especially if you're learning something new or using something new to you.

Which comes to me putting in a new cooler in my main rig. I upgraded to a Xeon chip for faster performance but they tend to run a little hot. So I bought a slightly oversized cpu cooler - a nice big fanned heat sink with an attached fan.

And... being the fumbled fingered person I am... plugged the fan in the wrong way.

No smoke, but the motherboard stopped booting, or stopped booting correctly.

It took me a while to figure out the problem but too late! The fan - it is fried.

While I wait for a replacement to arrive I've got my rig on it's side with the cover off while I keep a window with the cpu temperatures open. If I'm just writing it's running cool enough without the fan. Getting on to Second Life... that gets a little tricky because of all the graphics. Web browsing is a bit of a crap shoot: if the site has a lot of video ads it cranks on the cpu.

I might cobble something together using the broken fan holder and attaching a smaller fan. It might be tricky but it should work for the moment.

Breaking things sometimes gives you the experience of troubleshooting and repairing what you've broken.

-m