I could hardly wait for my new Linux PC to arrive. When it finally did, I ripped the cardboard box open, connected everything, pressed the power button and … was utterly disappointed.

I didn’t want an off-the-shelf PC, partly to avoid the usual Microsoft tax (aka. pre-installed Windows Vista) but mostly because I wanted a quiet PC. All the components (including a passively cooled graphics card) were selected with this goal in mind. Still, my PC sounded like a freaking lawn mower.

One option would have been to send everything straight back, but this would have been rather cumbersome; the other to take care of this problem myself.

I used to be a big fan of “McGyver”, hero of the eponymous 1980s action series. “Mac” was a wonderful person: a good-looking, daredevil who avoids conflicts and doesn’t wear firearms; instead he always carries a Swiss Army Knife and duct tape. He knows how to defuse bombs, how to hotwire cars and is able to fix everything with everyday stuff like paper clips. In short, he is a great problem solver, a great hacker and a great role model.

McGyver would not have sent back the PC — he would have taken care of this problem himself. So I opened the case and found out that — even though I had a passively cooled graphics card — there are four fans in my case: a power supply fan, two case fans (one mounted on the front and a larger one mounted on the back) and a CPU fan.

It turned out that the manufacturer saved a couple of bucks by using really cheap fans, so I ordered ultra-silent replacement fans; yet for my taste the CPU fan was still too loud. I measured the current that ran through it and did a quick calculation to find out which resistor I needed to slow it down to 1000 rpm. Alas, I only had two resistors that sustained the amount of current flowing through my fan: one that was too big (which prevented the fan from starting up) and another one that was too small (the fan was still sounding like a lawn mower). I could have ordered the perfect resistor, but this would have meant waiting a couple of days and paying 10 EUR for shipping and handling. The right “hack” was of course to connect them in parallel, which yielded a resistance very close to the one I calculated. After a little bit of soldering I protected the solder joints with heat-shrink tubing and — voila! — I had a decently quiet PC!

Too many programmers I’ve met are not able to cope with everyday situations. Maybe they know how to optimize SQL queries, but they can’t fix a dripping tap. That’s rather unfortunate as this means that such folks are forever dependent on others. On the other hand, I’ve often observed that principles from other fields can be applied to software development as well, for instance, to build better metaphors. Such metaphors play a major role in getting a deeper understanding of software development, which is very useful for explaining software issues to non-technical people. (As an example, I personally like comparing refactoring to gardening: if you don’t constantly take care of your garden by weeding, fertilizing, watering, mowing, it will require a huge investment in time and money later.)

So step out of the computer-nerd zone and rather be a “jack-of-all-trades”; try to be a true engineer, a person who is able to solve all kinds of technical problems with technical/scientific knowledge and creativity — for your own benefit as well as the benefit of the people around you, but also for fun and profit.

[update 2009-10-29: Alert reader Jörg (obviously a true engineer) discovered an embarrassing mistake: if you connect resistors in parallel, the resulting resistor value is of course smaller than the smallest resistor value of any resistor connected, which means that part of my story just doesn’t make sense. Damn! I checked whether the resistors in my PC are really connected in parallel — which they are. I tried hard to recall what the real story was but ultimately gave up. The hack works — that’s what counts in the end, doesn’t it? ;-)
— end update]