I've caught a bug...

Called building computers. A friend here brought a Compaq computer with her to her previous country (Niger). It was one of those computer in a box deals. She took it out of the box and it wouldn't work. The IT staff looked at it for twelve hours and couldn't figure it out. Fast forward two years and she's now leaving Tunisia. She advertised this computer for sale, I asked her how much. She said, well, it doesn't work, but I'll sell it for $100 (she paid well over $1000). She also said, come over, take a look and see if you want it. Sure enough, it took me less than five minutes to diagnose and fix the (first) problem. The harddrive power connector wasn't fully seated. The IT guys in Niger should be shot for not first "checking to make sure its plugged in." As annoying as it is to get that as a first question when you call a tech support line, sometimes that is actually what's wrong. She was astounded that I got it working and said "just take it." So I did. Turns out that the harddrive was bad anyway--maybe from all the "troubleshooting" the Nigerans did. Plus there were some other things going on. So, I decided to get a new motherboard, (mudderboard--as Dylan says, and as I would have said when I was his age--mudder dear!) and some other new things to "pimp my computer." All the stuff arrived in the mail and the kids and I put it together Monday and yesterday and it works just fine. I'm trying to hook it up with wi-fi, but my stupid Tunisian ADSL modem doesn't seem to want me to be able to do it--but for under $350 I have a pretty decent new computer. It's not real high-end or anything, but with the mods I've already made (overclocked it to 115%--added a graphics card and added memory) it's as good as the machine I already had. Anyway, I'm itching to build more computers now. It was a lot of fun--in fact I priced all the pieces and found that I can build a decent machine, word processor, email, web browers, limited games, for about $320 (that includes the monitor and everything). I think that Sofia needs one with a pink case and Dylan needs one that has a bright green alien on it. :)