The Project

Guess what I'm going to do today... I'm going to frustrate myself! Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well, if you only knew! Even though it's Sunday, and I could be sitting around, relaxing, and watching TV, I'm going to do something that I'm sure will have me pulling my hair out and wondering why I didn't just stay in bed. Today, I'm going to build a computer for my girlfriend.

Now, it wouldn't be so bad if I was taking a few hundred bucks down to my local computer retail store to buy brand new parts. In fact, it would be a absolute pleasure to pick up a nice P4 3.0 processor, motherboard, 2GB of DDR RAM, DVD-Burner, and a 19" LCD Flat Panel monitor... (Oops! Just started drooling on the keyboard...) However, since champagne wishes and caviar dreams don't exactly match my beer and potato chips budget, I'm gonna have to settle for a little less...

So, instead, I'll rummage through the parts I've tossed into a box each time I've upgraded my computer. Let's see what we've got here... Hmm... Well, looks like I'll be building a sweet PII 500MHz (smokin'!) machine with 192MB of SDRAM (sigh..) and an 8x CD-Burner. Wow, it's depressing just reading over what I've just written! Oh well... What are ya gonna do, eh?

I've always said that putting a computer together is like playing with Lego... You just snap the parts together, and there you go. Of course, installing Windows is another thing... Anybody wanna guess how many network cards I go through before I find one Windows will recognize? Then I'll have to sit through about 2 hours of Windows Updates... Then a whole new install when I realize the hard drive is bad (isn't that why I bought a new one in the first place?)... Girlfriend asking, "Is it almost done?" for the tenth time... More Windows Updates... I think you see where this is going, and I'm willing to bet that a few of you have been there yourselves.

So gang, wish me luck... Once more into the fray... If I'm not back in a week, tell my family I love them and not to eat the tartar sauce...