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So here I am with my new new … um … new computer. The previous incarnation, as I suspected it would, did not find a hard drive after the last reboot. This sealed its fate and back it went to Best Buy to be exchanged. Of course, the Geek Squad guy plugged it and it booted perfectly. Again and again and again. The cpu not only booted without a problem, it stood up and danced the foxtrot, sang La Marseillaises and cooked a perfect two portions of Chicken Caprese with a spinach salad on the side. Fool me twice, shame on me, so I exchanged it for someone else's return.

Get it home, open the box. No cables, no wires, no mouse, no keyboard, no software, no speakers, but to their credit, there was a cpu in there. Well that's ok, I have all of these things and I've spent $100 in gas running back and forth. Plug it in and … Eureka! it boots first time. I stick the cd in to restore my dial-up connection and … and … "Modem not found". I know there's a modem in there, the phone line is plugged into it. Into the control panel to uninstall, reinstall the modem. "Modem not found".

Well, by this time, I was driven mad. Open the cpu, open the old cpu, swap out the modem in the new pc for the one in the old pc. Might as well swap out everything I can. Scavenged the old memory and installed it in the new pc, took the old hard drive out and put it in the new pc. Removed the cd player, dvd drive, sound card, 3.5 floppy drive and the evil graphics card. The old pc is now just the motherboard, the wires, the case and the power supply. Of course nothing worked. Why should it?

Obviously, since I'm posting this, I got it all worked out. I have 1.2 Gig of RAM because that's the combination that worked. Everything else will be set on a shelf in the basement should I need a replacement. Of course it will be there when I move out, but that's the next guy's problem. I fear that old hard drive is toast. All those songs, all those Favorites, my meeting rosters, my resumes, my taxes lost and gone forever. Oh my darlin' Clementine. What's going to replace the hard drive? Because I need it. Soon.