Noisy fans
I was having random crashes with belgian for a little while, usually when I wasn't around to see or hear what was going on. As they got more frequent I wound up experiencing a couple directly and hearing something go wrong. A couple nights ago I ran the machine with the cover off and waited for trouble to start. Meanwhile I was doing some backup just in case it was the hard drive failing. Fortunately it was not the hard drive, but the CPU fan had clearly seen better days. Most of yesterday belgian was off.
Last night jmaynard and I drove up to Mankato and I got a new fan at Computer Renaissance.[1] It was installed last night and set up in the simplest way, always on at full speed. It's certainly effective, but it is also rather loud. As this is a fancy fan setup, it can be used in adjustable speed manner, which I plan to do tonight. Since belgian doesn't have the fastest, hottest CPU and I don't really push it that hard, things can be a lot quieter without problem.
[1] The store is quieter than Best Buy, the people seem more helpful, and they don't do that annoying we-think-you're-a-crook inspection at the door. Even if it costs me a couple more bucks, which I doubt, it's worth it.