If you haven't had a good laugh today I suggest you fix yourself a refreshing beverage and read this. If it doesn't make you laugh I will refund your money in full.

OK, so I have to apologise to all who have responded to me and not recieved replies. I am sorry for my apparent rudeness, I have been offline for a while now and here is why:

There is a lesson here for all of us: Do Not Forget the Fundamentals.

A few months ago my local power grid was struck by lightning; the result of this was a lot of fried computery and modemery. My modem was a victim of the blast and never recovered. It was a sad day when we had to replace her but it had to be done.

After that I bought a power board with a failsafe circuit-breaker in it and hooked it up in line with the power board we already had. itwas easier than buying a new extension cord and saved many valuable minutes of my life.

Of course recently my PC "Mother", has been playing up and finally stopped working a couple of weeks ago. I sent her to the shop to be repaired and was told after a week that she was all good. I returned her to pride-of-place on the desk and fired her up.... no result. Swearing and curse words uttered.

The boffin at the store told me she probably needed a new mother board as she was pretty old (3years) and prolly burned out. Alas, a new mother board was expensive because it required a new power unit and attachments because "they don't use that system anymore dude, it's practically a museum peice" 

It's only 3 years old!!!!!!

Anyway, it turns out that I work with a boffin who likes nothing more than to build, disasemble and rebuild Pcs. Go figure, some guys are just like that I guess. He volunteers to help and I take the stack into the office for a week of surgery. it was quite distressing seeing 'mother' all laid bare like that in public for all the world to gawk at. My friend passing comments like " man this is old-tech" didn't help either. Anyway, after a week of this I was convinced that I should get another motherboard and that one of the other guys I work with (Dispatchers lead lonely lives people, remember that next time you dial the emergency number) happens to have one that:

"will work at twice the speed of the old one and is only half the size but will work with that power board and is even fitted with the latest flitzgurtle flashing paper farnarckling diode."

My immediate response to this offer was: "uh ok, can I buy that from you?"

I parted with my 60 shekels and felt confident that these two wunderkinder could prolly get mother back together again. I was also told that the screaming sound she had been making was due to a jammed fan bearing... OK then.

So tonight I returned home with mother wrapped in a blanket to keep the cold out and placed her ever so gently on the desk and proceeded to wire her up. Visions of Dr Frankenstein exclaiming "It's alive!" flooding into my dusty brain and a sly grin my face as I set up my 'creature of the night' to see what marvels she would now be able to perform with her new tubing and wizardry hooked up.

.......

A lonley and solitary "BEEEEEP" was her only reply to my proding.

.......

I hit the wall -literally- with my head.

It ocurred to me then that perhaps I had missed something. Some tiny little thing, some insignificant thing that would make all the difference. I unplugged everything and tried again. No better. I slowly replaced all the plugs and wires and waited for the one thing that would make her wake up. Nothing.

Then, I took out the power board from the powerpoint and moved the desk closer to the outlet.I plugger mother directly into the outlet, I pushed the start button.

The shining light and choral singing that emerged from my PC stack told me that I had forgotten the fundamentals.... I should have checked the $4.95 Woolworths powerboard first!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH.

In sport and at universities as well as the armed forces and the business world, trainers always teach you that when you are solving a problem, always start from the bottom and work up. It would have saved me time, money and most importantly face if I had simply started from the bottom and worked forward to the expensive end. So here I sit, looking sheepish but satisfied because while it took a fortnight and a bag of cash, I have this very quiet, very fast and very new computer to play with. More important though, I learned a valuable lesson.

Goodnight.