Easter Snow

Well it has taken 37 years, but I have finally seen snow. It had been trying to snow for a few days with some sleet falling from the sky on Saturday and a bit more on Easter Sunday morning.

While we were having breakfast, it started to actually snow but it was melting pretty quick once it hit the pavers and the concrete. Anything that fell on the wooden deck or on the ground near the railway line stayed so it did eventually build up a little bit in some places.

VISA Application

Well, Estee and I sent of the Application for a de Facto Visa for Estee to enter Australia. We, or should I say Estee, have been preparing the documents for the application for a few months now. We have had to collect information about our commitment to each other and prove that we have been living with each other in a loving relationship – which it is.

It has been rather stressful for Estee as she has been gathering all the stuff that she needs not only from here in the UK, but also from South Africa. This has meant asking her family to gather information from the local authorities such as police clearances and her birth certificate. We could arrange that from here in the UK for a nice price though and we did do this for the police clearance but it is still a long slow process to get this information.

The biggest pain was the need to have a large percentage of the documents certified by a solicitor or a Justice of the Peace. Now, in Australia, it isn’t too hard, you simply go to the JP – I knew a  few so that wouldn’t be an issue and they sign away for you – FREE. Here in the UK, they want to charge you 5GBP per page. Now, we had at least 50 pages to be certified so that was going to be extremely expensive on top of copying the whole file (in excess of 200 pages) and then posting it (100GBP*)  to the Immigration Agents to asses, clean up and submit to the Department of Immigration in London. Eventually, we discovered that we could go to the local court and they would certify the documents for free. Now, I don’t mind paying for documents to be certified within reason, but come on, 5GBP per page – a joke!

But anyway, it is all sent off now. Estee will have to go for a medical in the coming weeks and then with any luck we will have to buy a ticket for Estee – one way. Let us hope that it is soon.

* – We had to send the package to Australia as the Immigration agent we are using is located there although our contact is in the UK. It is just the way it works as the Agent who assesses it for us and submits the proposal has to be registered with DIMA.

Oh God … what have I done??

My computer has been running a little hot of late and the CPU fan has been constantly running. So after a little research in to the possible causes, I decided to clean the CPU fan. Now, how do you do this? Well, you need to pull your laptop apart!!!!

I have a Dell Inspiron 5150, so I went off to the Dell website and located the Service Manual and then proceeded to shut the laptop and pull it apart. Pulling it apart isn’t too hard to do, a little fiddly with some of the screws if you have big fingers but not too hard. After pulling out the memory, CD Drive, hard drive, keyboard, removing the display and then removing the top cover (referred to as palm rest) I was able to see the cpu fan.

I gingerly loosened the screws as directed too ( it has the numbers 1 – 4 so you don’t get lost) and then tried to pull it out. It was a tight fit so I had to pull pretty hard to get it out but eventually it did. I then pulled the fan out of the unit and cleaned out the dust. There were decent size clumps in there let me tell you. So I cleaned all that up and thought I was doing a great job.

Placing the CPU unit back on to the board was a little difficult to do in that it was hard to push it back in so it sat firmly as it had done when I pulled it out. I was able to screw the screws in though so this is what I did. Ensuring that all the wires for the fan and the touchpad and the monitor were all back in place I put it all together again. Great I thought all done now to turn the little darling on and get back to work …

Oooooppppppsssss … mmmm why isn’t the monitor coming on … indeed why isn’t the harddrive being read … oh dear what the @#$@ have I done??? Maybe I haven’t plugged the monitor in properly. So I pull it all apart again and check the monitor … check the cpu fan – it was running when I started it but check it anyway, keyboard is plugged in … try it again … nothing. Oh dear!! After going over everything again and fiddling with the CPU unit to see if it was seated correctly several times with no luck, I decided to go to the local pc shop and get their assistance.

They were helpful in that they checked if the monitor was the issue or if the memory was damaged but they never pulled the laptop apart. So no real joy here as I walked out the door other than the thought of spending $$ to get a new laptop. The new laptop was a good thing … the spending the $$ on the other hand wasn’t such a good thing.

When I get back home, I thought well, it appears to be broken anyway so I may as well pull it all apart and look at it again .. and again .. and again. After pulling it all apart and then staring at the motherboard and the place the CPU sits, I noticed a little screw with two padlock symbols either side of it. I turned it … oh that little block move! I placed the CPU unit back in the laptop, and it fitted much easier this time. Interesting. I turned the screw with the little lock around to the lock position and low and behold the CPU was difficult to pull out. Ah ha he said … So putting the necessary bits back together without doing all the screws, I turned the laptop on and held my breath …

Eureka … we have a screen and writing on it … it is working .

So put it all back together and make sure it is working and it does so this is great. I am so relieved. I couldn’t believe that it could have been such a little thing. Evidently, the CPU was not seated on the motherboard properly because I hadn’t unlocked the screw holding it in. This screw is hidden down the side almost under the CPU unit and it is not mentioned in the service manual. So, be aware that if you are pulling the CPU out of your Dell – or any other computer – and it is difficult to come out, look for the little locking screw and make sure you lock it when you put it all back together again.

I have downloaded the Dell Inspiron 1100, 5100 5150 Service Manual and made a little edition to the document. Now this is not the official document of course but it is all sourced from the Dell site unaltered except for my little note about the lock screw.