Dust and Fine Ash Everywhere

So, I'm running a headache now. Not sure why, not sure how.

But I've gotta write an entry for today to keep that streak going. So here goes.

I bought the HATTEFJÄLL office chair back in March. And it was only yesterday that I realise the back of the chair had five different height levels that could be triggered through a ratchetting process that involved lifting and releasing it. It was in the manual---but somehow, I think I didn't remember that bit at all.

That would explain why I was feeling really strange back discomfort, and why I could suddenly rest my head on the top of the back-rest.

🤦‍♂️

I was working on Eileen-II today when I started to hear some crazy mid-frequency vibration. There were only two things that moved within Eileen-II---either the left fan, or the right fan. I was afraid that something bad would happen, and so I quickly powered down and unplugged everything, before bringing out my screw driver to open up the rear.

As expected, there was fine dust on the fans. They were not clogging them to the point of non-movement, but since these fans were super efficient, any amount of disruption of their balance would cause loud and unnecessary vibrations. I cleaned it up with some cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol and put everything back together. Eileen-II has been operating really quietly ever since.

This was not the first time that such dust caused the vibrations. I think the last time that I had to clean things out was maybe about 6 months ago, while it took nearly eight months before I had to do that before.

I think there were two big contributions to this slightly more frequent occurrence:

1. There has been more construction-related things, as well as more incense burning as somehow some folks decided to set up some altar at the void deck under my block that wasn't previously there before. That latter meant that there were now three incense burners diagonally opposite from my window which were used to burn incense into some fine ash that would eventually blow into my room, as is the concrete dust from all the drilling. All these would eventually make their way into the fans through normal operation.
2. I keep switching out between placing Eileen-II flat on the table, and on legs, using the latter for all the situations where I would not be typing for an extended period. All that means that there was always movement which angled the fans in one way or another, which led to the layer of fine ash/dust getting more jostled about. That jostling could create the situation where some of the dust falls just in the wrong angle and upset the balance of the fan blades, giving that awful vibration noise.

There really isn't much I can do about all these---even when I was rocking a desktop, dust was always a problem. I can't stop people from burning all sorts of incense, and I do not know why people are suddenly setting up random altars at the void deck when there had been none over the past thirty years. I don't even know how such altars are allowed to exist in a common area that is not a designated Residents' Corner. I don't even want to get into the whole spiel of why people think it is a great idea to burn all sorts of incense that smoke like crazy immediately under an apartment block, where the wind will blow the smoke into the apartments themselves.

All I know is, my eyes are drying up, my nose is shot, I have a headache, and my laptop's fans were clogged with dust/ash that had to be cleaned out.

Till the next update.