My computer’s been sluggish.
Everything has been slow. Firefox, email, iTunes, everything. Plus, out of nowhere, it overheats two or three times a week.
I assumed it was just old, and had gotten filled up with a bunch of crap, as computers will. Little did I know the crap it was getting filled up with had come off my cats.
This afternoon, when it overheated for the second time in a day, I took the lid off, much as I would with the hood of my car, pretending I would be able to find something wrong. Well, the CPU was entirely covered in a snuggly blanket of cat hair and dust (pictured above).
Now it’s running fine.
Whoa. The cat hair appears to have knitted itself.
Either my cats or my CPU is pretty fuckin’ smart.
You would think there would be some other clear indicator when running the computer that it was just plain overheating.
Well, my computer is also usually completely silent and lately it had been running its fan all the freaking time. I should have put two and two together, but I’ve got two kids and a million screenplays to write and one just doesn’t take the time to wonder about what’s going on inside one’s computer, much less consider that it might be covered in cat hair.
Cats love the warmth of laptops, as some of them once did laps. So I guess some entrepreneur has to invent dog smelling laptop. That will be attractive.
Scott Adams believes it is actually that computers are cats natural enemies, he has some Dilbert strips with Catbert attacking keyboards.
The ironic thing is:
a) this is not my laptop
b) my cats don’t sleep anywhere near it
c) the fur covering my CPU belonged to a cat that has been dead for six months.
The Revenge of Lucky!
Ya, I worked with a computer engineer who had a guy once complaining about his computer being slow. They opened it up and there was an actual ant colony inside.
Though I heard this years ago, and now I can’t quite visualize how that would work…
Luckily, I am an expert on ants, and it makes total sense. Ants don’t need dirt to survive, only warmth (and something to eat). All that would have to happen is for a pregnant princess ant (that is, a queen who has not yet given birth) to seek out the warmth of a CPU to lay her eggs. I have heard tales of ant colonies inside refrigerator compressors, air-conditioning units, anything warm that doesn’t get moved around a lot.
why are you an—ohh, right!
Wait, I dont know the answer to that, why are you an ant expert?
Also, that we call them princess ants is pretty funny.
Dude, I wrote a movie called Antz. I had to become an expert on ants so that we could ignore all the facts about ants in order to make our funny talking ant movie.
And they are called princess ants. Princess ants are queens who haven’t left the nest yet. There is one day in the life-cycle where the princess ants all fly up into the air, become impregnated by the males (there are only a handful of males in any given colony, and their only job is to impregnate the princesses, after which they die) and then go found their own colony.
Ants are absolutely fascinating creatures. Did you know they don’t have brains, just nerve clusters in their heads that somehow manage to communicate with every other member of their colony? Did you know that there are ants whose job it is to stand watch over the colony, and then, when trouble approaches, squeeze a muscle in their jaws that makes their heads explode, releasing a cloud of pheromones that will alert the colony to danger? These and other fun facts can be found in E.O. Wilson’s The Ants. Wilson’s book and many others are available at your local library.
You wrote Antz? Getouttatown! Good stuff. That is what is written on the third sentence in your IMDB profile.
Btw, ants communicating with each other by exploding their own heads is fricking amazing! That sir, is something that needs to be included in the next piece of ant related fiction. Maybe not Antz II, as that is for the kids, but the new Incorrigible Ant Man would be the perfect place for it. Head exploding has huge possibilities as comedic or dramatic fodder.
eww.
makes my nose itch just to see it.
Cat hair, like Sand & Tinsel get into everything and stay there until you accidentally stumble across em’.
Sand & Tinsel sounds like the title of an LA detective thriller. Cat Hair not so much.
I love that movie! The House of Sand and Tinsel.
Just between you and me, House of Sand and Fog could have used a lot less fog and a lot more tinsel.
Dude, I wrote a movie called Antz.
If they ever make a reality series about your life as a Los Angeles screenwriter, there’s your title.
I had some friends that called me and said their computer kept rebooting. I cracked open the case and cat hair was caked in so bad that you couldn’t even turn the Video card fan and the CPU fan was just kind of leisurely rotating.
The answer is obvious — hairless cats.
Nice avatar, btw.
The company I used to work for made various bakery mixes, which meant they had the IT department’s hardware guy look into ways to keep the mix from caking into the various PC systems in the plant. Most of those options(like special enclosures) are probably a little overkill for cats.
I’ve heard of hobbyists using coffee filters or the like placed in-line with desktop system vents – and some desktop cases, have filters built in(that one is from 2004.)
One could probably do something similar with a laptop, with a bit of care and experimentation