After my gift guide, you probably figure I got enough cool stuff this year to last me a while. And it’s true - I really don’t need anything else for Christmas, because I feel like I’m the guy who has it all (in the stuff department, anyway).

And yet there was one thing missing that I needed to fix. My computer, a several year old frankenstein of parts that was suffering both hardware and software failures, performing random reboots, and pretty much making me not want to spend time on the internet (the horror!) had to be replaced. And so, with the magic of the Christmas bonus, I set out to cure what ailed me in the world of computer hardware.

Last night, the boxes arrived, and I carefully unpacked their bubble-wrapped contents from beneath packing peanuts drifting in their cardboard containers like new-fallen Christmas snow. Motherboard, processor, memory, hard drive, DVD burner, beastly graphics card, operating system, new case - it was all there.

I dumped the packing peanuts into a garbage bag and carefully cut and unfolded the box on the dining room table. It was the first time I’d attempted to build a new PC from scratch in years, rather than just doing patchwork upgrades, and I wondered if I still knew what I was doing well enough not to break things. Formats and standards have changed. Connectors looked different. The video card was huge. The heatsink for the processor wouldn’t stay mounted to the board. I had to re-install the drive rails on the DVD drive four times.

But finally after enough tinkering (read = hours of puzzle solving) it was all together in one beautiful, black-enameled package. I brought it downstairs, pulled a couple of old peripherals I was keeping from my old PC, installed them, and fired it up. Tinkered with the BIOS settings. Installed Windows Vista (keeping my fingers crossed that it sucks less than everyone says…I know it’s the future whether we like it or not.)

It was beautiful. Quiet. Fast. The graphics were gorgeous - forget XBOX 360 or Playstation 3.  And I can actually do OTHER things besides playing games.

I sat there in satisfaction. I was the proud owner of a brand new PC with an Intel Core Duo 64-bit processor, 2 gigs of DDR2 1066 RAM, a 512MB Overclocked XFX GeForce 8800GT Extreme Video Card, a 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM SATA drive (with an additional 300GB Western Digital EIDE for storage), a dual-layer DVD-RW drive with lightscribe, all wrapped up in a midnight-black Antec Sonata III quiet case with a 500W power supply.

Geeked out, I looked at the clock. 3:15 AM. And work was only a few hours away. Suffice it to say that today, I’m tired - but very happy. It’s nice to get something you’ve waited years for and have it work the first time after building it yourself (thanks St. Jude - I was praying I wouldn’t have a dead board on startup, and you came through for me!)

Filed under: Gadgets, Geek Stuff