A Better Title

Dear Diary,

I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to say “I miss you” to someone (in fact, anyone) when I actually mean it.

There was one time someone asked me when I would be coming back to Singapore as there would be some group gathering. I lightly asked the person whether the person missed me. I felt that there was no meaning at all in what I said; the sentence was probably there just to get the conversation rolling.

And then there was another time when I finally had a chat session with someone I hadn’t talked to for quite some time. But this time, the words “I miss you” was harder to form. A couple of times I just typed the three words in the chat window, hesitated to press the Enter key, and ended up deleting the whole line.

The first happened twice. I’m not that close to any of the two. The second happened a few times with my closer friends.

So when you read this and you think I might miss you, chances are you’re right.

On the other hand, I think I’m overstressing Elmyra.

I started a 3D rendering job last night. The scene was rather simple. Or at least I thought it was. Four transparent bottles with bumpy surface filled with a glowing liquid. Two bottles had their caps on, while one was half empty and the other one was toppled over. There were three lights, a white key light, an orange fill light, and a blue back light.

As I said, I thought the scene was simple so I pushed the quality settings to some high setting.

Apparently I thought wrong.

There’s no way the scene is simple as now, 24 hours later, Elmyra barely finished just slightly more than a third of the whole rendering process.

Actually, I don’t mind the waiting. Although I definitely can’t play any games, I can still connect to the Internet, read my mail, do some chatting or surfing.

It’s the heat generated that concerns me. And Elmyra.

You see, 3D rendering is not an easy task. It requires a high amount of computing power. This means a lot of electrons have to pass through the processor and the RAM. In case you don’t know, a processor is the ‘brain’ of your computer, it is branded something like Intel Pentium or Celeron, or AMD etc, and the RAM is the memory of your computer. Well, what does it mean then? Recall from our Physics lessons that these passing electrons generate heat.

So what does it have to do with Elmyra then? Well, try standing under the sun for one full day, and you’ll know what heat can do to a human being. The same goes with Elmyra. Being a laptop, it is probably a little worse for her. When you get warmer, you’ll perspire. The same goes with Elmyra, when she gets hot, she’ll start blowing air out of her vent. (Uh… the last sentence doesn’t sound quite right. But I hope you get my point).

Lucky for you human beings that perspiration is not a mechanical thing. For laptops, the fan may break down after a while, or dust may be blocking the vents, thus disrupting air flow to cool down the hot processor and other components inside. After this, what normally happens to human beings when they get heated and they do not perspire sufficiently, also happens to Elmyra.

She’s going to die. It starts with simple things like the operating system hanging, the blue screen of death, etc. but ultimately it will end with the demise of Elmyra.

I certainly don’t want this to happen. Elmyra has been one of my closest companions, more so since I came home after the ‘A’ Levels. She’s the one who patiently listens to me as I type my rants on and on. She’s the one who sings me lullabies during those sleepless nights. She’s the one who lets me play games, and almost never say a word to prevent me from doing so (unless she’s too weak for the game).

Maybe it’s time for me to get one of those laptop coolers like the Bytecc Aluminum Notebook Cooler or Heat-Pipe Technology Notebook Cooler or Antec Notebook Cooler Silver. They seem to be getting quite good reviews like this for the Bytecc cooler and this for the Antec one…

Hot,

bcc

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 19th, 2004 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.