The Dell Vostro 220 Gets a Name and a New Kernel to Tame its Annoying Fan

The first computer in the draisey.ca domain, the dell dimension L600cx had an exceedingly boring name --- I called it della. Boring. The new machine has a far better name --- it is Thoron. What a heroic sounding name. It is really a decay product of Thorium with a half-life of 5 seconds and should properly be called Radon 220, but Thoron sounds just right. Neither della nor thoron are reachable from the internet except by mail, though I may eventually add them via ip6. That has been a pet project I have put off for a good 5 years. It is about time I hardened my network and give it a shot. The fan has been really annoying with sudden surges to full speed for no apparent reason, but strangely it would only perform its worst gyrations when the machine was the least loaded. I have recompiled the kernel with dynticks disabled hoping that will workaround whatever faulty logic is ultimately causing this. It seems to work so far but being the coldest day of the year I could be deluding myself.