Lucky Me!

This is kind of long, so bear with me.

Last weekend I spent both Saturday and Sunday moving my rig into a water-cooled Kool-101 case that I won from another web site a couple of months ago. I had just received my new Abit KG7-RAID mobo and 1600+, which I had unlocked.

I took the PSU from the Enermax case I had reviewed in September and put it in the Kool-101 along with the KG7-RAID, 1600+, and my Ti4200. The first thing I learned about water-cooling was that the damn tubing takes up a lot of room in the case! The tubes were on top of everything, but I managed, thanks to a removable mobo tray, to get it all assembled.

I hooked all of the peripherals up in anticipation of seeing how close I could get to 2 GHz with my unlocked 1600+ (AGOIA) and the water-cooler. I pressed the power button and heard one long beep, repeatedly. I had heard a response like this from a PC before, when I had inadvertantly left some extra standoffs in the case when changing mobos. It was the sound of the mobo being shorted out on something.

So, to make this a little shorter, after trying for two days to get the water-cooling going, nothing. I put the new stuff in the old case, figuring I'd just have to settle for pushing the 1600+ to 2000+ levels, and I got the same long beep. :x I was not happy! So, I began the process of taking things out to see what the culprit was this time. Things weren't going well, but I was not going to be without my computer!

While troubleshooting the short in the mobo, a different issue arose. I had just removed the sound card (after having pulled the NIC) and pushed the power button yet again. I got the now-familiar and much-hated long beep. I had just pushed the power button again when I heard a soft popping sound, followed by a very acrid burning smell. This had just gone from bad to worse, the Enermax 350 watt PSU had just gone to crappy parts Hell!

It didn't go alone, however. In the brief instant between working and not, it sent a surge through the motherboard. This surge took my poor, virgin, unlocked 1600+ to fried CPU Heaven (or Purgatory, I'm not sure). The surge also took my malfunctioning motherboard the rest of the way to not functioning at all. And, as I discovered yesterday, the surge also ruined my Ti4200.

None of this is good news, obviously. Most of you (the ones that haven't fallen asleep) are wondering why in the Hell I would title this topic 'Lucky Me', aren't you? Well, I've so far been able to RMA the mobo, CPU, and PSU and have sent in an RMA request for the Ti4200. I had my old Epox mobo and 1800+ to use still, so I have a working computer.

"But, ldonyo," you're perhaps saying to yourself, "RMAing toasted parts is not luck, it's a matter of hiding the things you did to the parts so that you can say they were DOA!" In this you would be correct. The lucky part comes from a Microsoft day-long class I attended yesterday for work.

For those of you that haven't seen my profile, I work as a Programmer/LAN Admin/SQL Server DBA. I go to a lot of Microsoft seminars and events because of my job. At yesterday's event, everyone that attended received a retail copy of Map Point 2002 and a little (practically worthless) toolkit. There was also a drawing at the end of the day with seven prizes available. As there were only 28 people in attendance, the odds weren't bad that I would win something in the drawing. I'm lucky that way.

The prizes up for grabs were two copies each of Windows XP Pro and Office XP Standard (the version without Access), an Optical Mouse Explorer, and three games.

The first person picked took the mouse.
The second person picked took one of the copies of Office XP.
The third and fourth people picked each took a copy of XP Pro.

I was chosen fifth. I took the other copy of Office XP.

"But, ldonyo," you're now saying, perhaps a bit perturbed that you've read this far down and all you can tell is that I'm a few cans short of a six-pack, "how in the Hell is winning a piece of software going to make up for losing an entire weekend and several hundred dollars worth od computer parts?"

I didn't keep the software.

I've been doing this for years, because I'm lucky and I don't usually want the software I win. I now take the Microsoft software I win (or get just for showing up) to Circuit City. Once there, I claim it was a gift that I can't use and that I would like to exchange it for store credit (if you don't have a receipt, they'll only give you store credit). Once they verify that the Item I'm handing them is something they sell (which I've already done), they issue me a gift card for the amount, plus tax, of the software I've returned.

This is the lucky part:

For the two items I returned yesterday I received a gift card worth $750.00.

I am now the proud owner of a built by ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, a Samsung 1.3 megapixel digital camera, a Western Digital 80GB HD with the 8MB of cache, and another 256MB of PC2100 DDR.

Lucky Me!!!