Frolics part 3
I'm quite good with computers - by trade I build them, write software for them and fix them when they go wrong. And this makes it doubly infuriating when I fuck up.

A couple of weeks ago, I was building a PC for a customer. I knew something was wrong as soon as I switched it on, because instead of going 'beep' and starting up, it instead belched blue smoke.

Turns out that I'd misjudged the position of one of the (metal) motherboard supports, which had made contact with a pin somewhere on the back of the board and blown the whole thing to buggary.

Closer inspection revealed the memory and CPU were also scorched. That's the problem with PC building - it's very easy, but when something does go wrong it tends to blow up many hundreds of pounds worth of components in a split second.

Luckily, I sent it back to the supplier and claimed it was like that when I got it. So there is a happy ending of sorts.

There is also the story of the DIY Home Removal. My friend, who is just as cheap as I, happened to be moving house, and was loath to pay for a proper removal service. The solution seemed obvious - I owned a van at the time, so I would pop down and give him a hand.

And that was how I ended up moving the entire contents of a 2 bedroom house in a Vauxhall Astravan. Yes, that's basically a medium-sized estate car without back seats.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Sat 5 Apr 2008, 8:39, Reply)