I have a handful of good news, though it's not quite as good as I was hoping.

I managed to get hold of a small tube of thermal paste, and after I applied it to my computer's processing unit and heatsink, it instantly began to report lower temperatures than it had been operating at before I'd done this. Instead of the idle temperature being 51°C, it is now an average of 43°C - 51°C is now the temperature I see when the system is running a large program, and incidentally is the same temperature my netbook reports. And of course, I am no longer having problems with the processor's fan grinding.

Of course, these results aren't quite what I expected, although I have been advised by the retailer I bought the paste from that it is best that I use a more powerful Power Source Unit; I've had problems with the computer suddenly restarting itself.

On another note, over the next few months, I will be devoting much of my free time to my writing, composing stories for several respected members of...

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Throughout my membership on this great site, there are a lot of things I have noticed on this site, from rule-breaking to flame wars, from friendly group meetings to all-out disputes, from the good story to the badly-written post. I pay my way by making contributions to this site, especially where my uploads and roleplaying are concerned. In all, I think this is such a great site, and like I've said several times, I'm very proud to be a part of this community and am truly glad to have found this website. From the time I've looked around it, this community has helped me discover for myself who I really am sexually. For that, I feel very honoured.

But I have to say, while it's a known fact that women are outnumbered here, a number of you need to pay more attention to exactly who you are talking to, and above all, grow up. Some of the behaviour on this site I've seen towards the female members has been utterly and completely appalling. A few times, I have become enraged enough to respond...

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Well, I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is, I removed my fan and heatsink again, and I gave them a good clean. I also found that I hadn't put the fan back on properly when I'd cleaned it previously. The computer now boots up without any grinding; I tried to start it up by connecting each component one by one. It only began to grind when I connected the hard drive fans, so for now, they have been removed (overloaded power supply maybe?).

The bad news is, my computer now runs at higher temperatures than it was before I did this. The BIOS reports the core temperature to be 51°C; before this, it was 34°C. But when I boot into Windows XP and leave that idle, temperatures reach 60°C. At one point, it reached two degrees below the shutdown temperature I've got set: 73°C. But I've found out through a search engine that I need to get hold of some more thermal grease, and apply it each time I take out the heatsink for cleaning. I'm told that a make called Arctic Ice is mea...

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For the next few weeks I will be online less frequently, because as of today, my computer is in no fit state to operate. I've found that the problem isn't what I first thought it to be; my power supply unit. It turns out it's actually the fan above my processor again. I tried to switch it on this afternoon, and the unit made this piercing screaming sound that I've never heard any device make before...except maybe a hard drive, but that was on a YouTube video. (I tried powering it up without the hard drive or the fans fitted underneath it and the noise continued, so that can be ruled out). The fans inside were spinning, but I'm not sure now if my system can be salvaged, because this was going on even before I replaced the fan in January. And the grinding continued from the first booting of the system with the new fan. I've tried refitting that and the heatsink, but with no luck; this makes me quite worried about trying to use it at all in case all hell breaks loose. I know that saying that...

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Okay, now I've been pretty much absent for the past two weeks. I've now got started on my list of story requests, which has meant that I've devoted a lot of time to getting these planned out and started, and I once again apologize for my infrequent responses. However, I may send some of you roleplaying with me a message stating that I may have to put some threads on hold, because I'm currently taking on six threads at the same time. They're now starting to become quite difficult for me to manage and keep up with, and because of this I'm just not connecting with the roleplays and their atmospheres. I would rather write a more meaningful response to few threads rather than try to please a large number of users in a number of roleplays, because this way it means I can get into it more, really appreciate the magnitude and atmosphere of the roleplay, and of course respond more frequently. In short, until all of my existing, active roleplay threads are finished, I will not take on any new roleplays,...

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