There Is No Fan

A little bit of play on words if you're a fan of the movie The Matrix.. There Is No Spoon. For me, there is no fan! Lol.

I'm well aware that I'm very fortunate on so many levels for the work that I do. One of those areas where I know it's fortunate is that the company's I've worked for over the past few years have supplied the hardware, on loaner of course, for the people that work for them so that they can work fully remotely and have the tools they need to be successful. This is not the case with a lot of places but here, that's a standard and it's really nice.

With those warm and fuzzy thoughts aside.. let's get into what this post is about. The docking station that I got with my company hardware has been driving me NUTS for years, since I got the damn thing!!

I never thought how annoying it would be to have something like this happen until it happened. The docking station here, a Dell product, connects my laptop to a few things like the power supply, my 3 monitors, my keyboard and my mouse. It would also directly connect to my router if I were so inclined to do things wired instead of wirelessly for internet connection. I'd like to get there one day.. but you never know. So this docking station is obviously incredibly handy and useful for so many reasons. It's a central hub to connect all my peripherals and be a productive and good worker. That is all great, except the docking station was freaking broken but not in a visibly detrimental way. It was all about sound!

The fan on this thing DID. NOT. TURN. OFF. EVER! It was THE most annoying thing I have ever experienced with my technology for work lol. It was something that I dealt with for several years and knew that I needed to get it sorted out but for whatever reason, I failed to do so until I was strung out and exhausted from the back to back and endless meetings I've had since I did my recent project Go Live. I guess I was on my last mental straw.. and this thing was just a freaking wind tunnel right below my monitors, near my headset and that was it. I was determined to figure out this piece of crap and get it to stop running the fan all day every day!!!

With a quick search online.. this is a common issue with the particular model. Most of the time they will replace it because it's under warranty. My case? Warranty expired JANUARY. I was like fuck, of course hahaha I suffered through this decibel-destruction of my eardrums for years and when I finally decide to do something about it, I'm a month too late. That was a pain in the ass for sure.

I was reading through some comments and feedback people had online and there was one dude that really stuck out to me, because it was the only one that said this. "Can't have a broken fan spinning 24/7 if you have no fan 😀" and I immediately said YES! Let's take that fucking fan out!! The thing wasn't under warranty anymore anyways so my company essentially didn't care. I was free!

I immediately looked up how to do it, saw how easy it was to pop the case off and went and got my son who I knew would LOVE to do something like this! He was sooo excited and ran upstairs with a screwdriver in hand ready to pop this shit apart! It was really cool haha.

We got the device open, I had him help me pull the pin out of the fan connected to the board and he got a new toy for a few days. I think it's likely still down there in his toy box somewhere but it was a quick solution to what was an agonizing problem on my ears and mental state over the past few years hahaha. I wish I had taken these steps sooner!

The fun part about it was my son got a little educational lesson, which I try to do every single day multiple times a day, and he was happy as a clam to be a part of my solution. He loves learning things which is crucial and he's been really into taking things apart so I immediately knew that he would love this little task. Sure enough, he also took apart one of his toys when he went downstairs lol it was a wonderful break from the work day!