(Whine whine whine!)

Saturday afternoon I turn it on, it boots up in its normal cranky stubborn manner, and then.................

Inside the case I heard an unusual ping, the screen froze, then went blank. As I reached for the power switch my string of four letter words was interrupted by the odor of burning electrical something. (whose bright idea was it to control off-on with the BIOS anyway?) Then the power supply fan started blowing smoke out the back. After all the excitement, my roommate tends to be a tad on the excitable side, I pulled the cover. It’s toast, badly burnt toast at that. From MOBO to floppy drive Poof! That P-III chip is a beautiful shade of charcoal-black

Good thing I back up often, the weird thing, put the HDD into my roomie's system as a slave, the OS is hosed, but looks like my files are recoverable. Now, sharing a system between two confirmed net junkies and writers? Add the fact the other one uses it to for work? Doomsday will appear a minor brawl.

That’s twice its happened to me in the last couple of years! I'm adding an ABC fire ext to my list of absolute necessities for a Computer cubby.

Anyone want to buy a rather large doorstop?

Looks like I'l get to do a complete system upgrade a little sooner than I had planned. Too soon, winter is not a good time for someone in the marine business to make a major purchase. If I send all my kids a copy of Tiger Direct's catalog with the one I want circled along with a christmas card, would that be tacky? ;~)

I've seen some systems out there really cheap with good speed and memory Sans Operating system. A local discount chain has a name brand 2.4Gig, 512MB Ram 60Gig HDD with burner, 17"monitor keyb. mouse and all for $469.00. No operating system. I can't build one that cheap! A 2.4 Gig Celery chip with a decent MOBO is almost $175.00, add in memory and all the rest? Way over!