So... quiet... the fans have stopped!
I came home today to a very quiet house... because my computer was not on. Nor would it turn on when I tried all the usual things. The UPS (uninteruptible power supply) was, ironically, interupted i.e. not on, either, but it came back on without apparent incident and all outlets on it appear fine as the monitor works in each of them. I can only assume my computer's power supply just suddenly gave up and died. Granted, I pretty much leave it on 24-7, so maybe the power supply had just had enough. I'll order a new one tonight and hope that resolves the issue. Until then, I'm on the old laptop. Dell Inspiron with a Pentium III (600mhz I think) chip and 256MB RAM. It's a bit slow. Oh well.