Sunday, February 19, 2006 - Sun, 19 Feb 2006

All is better now. It’s strange how I discovered what the problem was, which the 5 people at HP couldn’t direct me to: As I was preparing my old computer to take it in for repair, I realized that the thing I did a week earlier when the shutdowns started, was to move my old computer off my desk. When I did that, I moved my huge 19 inch CRT monitor next to my new computer. I now notice how much heat my monitor gives off. Those old things really burn up the watts. It seems that it added enough heat to cause the cpu in my new machine to detect a danger level and shut itself off - something I never realized that some of these new chips do.

For the last 4 days, I’ve moved my monitor a foot away from my new computer, and I haven’t had a single shutdown. I spent two of those days looking for a Windows utility that could monitor the temperature settings and fan speeds that my BIOS reports. There are several utilities, including some good free ones. But none seem to work with this crazy ASUS system board properly, not even ASUS’s own utilities. But as long as my foot-away technique works for me, I’m happy. Of course, the other alternative is to get a new flat screen LCD monitor which give off very little heat. Maybe one day I’ll treat myself.

But now I can get back to Behold again. I’ve lost a lot of time in development this month, and I’m sorry and I’m not happy at all about that. Getting the initial features finished so I can release the Beta is very important to me, and I know you’re all waiting for it as well. So onward I go.