Today (last night, actually), I got seriously raped by some hot grease at work.
I have 2nd degree burns covering a good 25% of the top of my right hand and going up my right arm.
It was/is an excruciatingly painful injury, but far from the worst pain I've felt.
I'll not be going to work today, that's for sure.
Also, I'll be asking to be given a different job when I come back for a while/permanently. I'm tired of being pwn3d by hot grease nearly every day, and this is the anvil that really destroyed the entire camel...let alone breaking it's back.
I've applied for a job elsewhere, as well. Better pay, fewer hazards. Can't go wrong with that combo.

Today is my anniversary with my fiance. 3 years ago today we had our first date.I must say it's been a good three years.

As you can see (via my nice MS Paint writing) the new fan is 80 by 25 millimetres. You can also see that it is mounted on top. I think little metal thing is a real nice touch, don't you?

The old fan was in the back. It was 40 by 10 millimetres. Far inferior to the monster that's on there now. I taped over the hole since the new fan is near the back, that way any air coming into the case will have to rush by the hard drive before being blown out. Clever, eh?

Here I show that I've taken the front cover off. This provides exponentially greater air flow. If you look closely at the bottom of the case, you can see the pin prick size holes that the air used to flow through.

All in all, it was a pain in the butt and a considerable amount of labour (before my friend lent me his dremmel that is), but I'm quite proud of it. And my hard drive now runs VERY cool.
Project costs:
Existing hard drive - $0
Existing enclosure - $0
Fan from defunct computer - $0
my time - $0 (approx. 7 - 10 hours for everything)
Total cost - $0

I have finished my project of modding my external hard drive's case.
Before I explain what I have done...let me explain how this came about...
Not long ago in this same galaxy...
FAN WARS
Episode I: The Thermal Menace
The great sith Phil has just realized that WesternDigital, a large, heavily populated planet in the external rim territories was beginning to heat up to a dangerous level.

Anywho...The 40mm by 10mm that the enclosure I purchased about a year or two ago has been on the fritz. It's been making noise and generally being annoying, but had still been pumping out the air just fine. About 2 weeks ago, I opened up the enclosure and about burned the skin off my hand. Okay, that's an exageration, but, who cares... So I figured rather than waiting around until it burned itself up and I had to buy a new drive, I would just buy a new enclosure with a fan in it.
Bad idea. Being broke, $40+ for a good enclosure was/is simply too large of an expenditure.
So, I cooked up an idea to just replace the existing fan. The problem is, at just FOUR dollars, it was still too expensive for me to do even that.
Not yet defeated, I realized I still had boat loads of parts from computers I've 'used'...err--destroyed--..
To make a long, boring story short, I found myself an 80mm by 25mm fan. Far too large for anywhere inside the case, so for the past two weeks, I've been modding the case to accept this new beast.
Perhaps tomorrow I'll take some pictures of this sweet new work of "art".
It looks pretty ghetto, which, to me, looks kinda cool...at any rate, the hard drive is staying quite near ambient temp now.

I finally got a job. I'm happy about the job, and rather disappointed about the pay.
5.30/hr to start out. I suppose I can't complain too much, as it is above minimum wage, but, it's certainly no where near enough to live on. God damn republicans, I hope they all die slowly and painfully.
I throw fish, chicken, and shrimp in batter, then into 350ºF/175ºC grease, and try not to splash it on myself.
I don't think I'll ever eat another piece of fish again, and I've only been working a couple days.