I do. It's off, for the first time in months. I go to turn it on, and hear that pesky whine noise from the power supply. This makes me frown. I unplug it, flip the voltage selector back and forth a few times, plug it back, same thing. I frown bigger. Because, you see, the computer is old. The power supply is AT. I haven't an extra one. But look! ATX power connectors on the motherboard, too! I have an ATX case with power supply! I am saved! No shopping trip!

Now I get a hard drive fail, and only three keys on the keyboard work. I ask what happened. Someone directs me to the wet spot on the carpet next to the computer. Knowing full well that the computer is housebroken, I knew it hadn't peed in the floor. So someone had spilled water on (and apparently in) the computer. Further inquisition (which nobody expected) led to the admission that there were popping noises heard.

A shopping trip, after all. Now, I am no computer nerd. I haven't been to a computer store in...hell, I've never been to one. What little I buy, I get either through our vendor at work, or online at ubid.com - so I turned to the one name I recognized: CompUSA.

Yes, many things have been said about this chain, most of them very uncomplimentary. But I found the salesperson to be QUITE helpful, as I know next to nothing about what to buy and that sort of thing. I needed a motherboard (and a new CPU, likely, because my setup is only five years old). New memory too, I'm sure, because who uses PC100 anymore? Heck, who uses SIMMs? Nah, it's all DDRAM. Bah. And a new sound card and modem because, well, they're ISA and those seem to be about as unfashionable as parachute pants. So I tell him this and, much to my surprise, he didn't try to sell me more than what I needed. Nor did the cashier tie me down and poke me with red-hot pokey-thingies until I agreed to their service plan. Hell, I might have even gotten some decent prices on all the stuff I bought.

$415 later, I've got a new motherboard, but don't ask me what brand because I don't care about that stuff - it's new and it's got onboard 6-channel sound, which is good because I'm saved a soundcard. I've got a new CPU, an Athlon XP 1800+, and I have no idea what the plus is for. Maybe it's really good at math. I've got new memory, 256 meg of DDRAM, and there's a 2100 in it somewhere, too. It sounded impressive. And I've got a super-cheap CompUSA-brand Winmodem, because I can get a real modem for $40 from work. Or less, actually, since we usually throw away modems when we get them.

And in a few minutes, after I'm finished burning this CD full of .mp3s and other biggish files that I wouldn't dream of downloading over a modem, I'm going to go home and see how much of this stuff works.

And it's not even lunchtime yet. Harrumph.