I’ve been playing with computers a long time. I go back to Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) with mechanical teletypes and punched paper tape. My first personal computer arrived as a bag of parts and had a whopping 256 BYTES and require programming in hexadecimal.
Since then, the computers have gotten smarter while I’ve remained static.
Today my house is rife with computers. There are 3 people with laptops, including me, although I also get the leftovers and castoffs. There’s a ham radio/weather computer; if you want to know the weather in my world you can see it at http://wx.findu.com/ke8yn.
There’s my son’s gaming computer, my desktop and 1 iPad, 3 other tablets plus cell phones. That’s, umm, something like a lot of computers.
My son had picked out a new laptop for my wife, but after she tried it, she decided she like her old one better, so even though it was old, she went back to it and I got her new computer as my laptop.
(If you can’t follow, don’t worry, it’s not really important.)
In any case, my desktop computer began to act weirdly. This computer started as a Hewlett-Packard, but over time, the motherboard, hard drives, case, power supply, etc. got changed. It’s kind of like “Grampa’s axe.” It’s had three new handles and a new head, but it’s grampa’s axe.
I replaced it once, but my son adopted the new one, so I went back to the computer-that-used-to-be-an-HP.
That computer, my desktop computer, began to exhibit strange symptoms recently, especially after upgrading the operating system. I realized that it was time to replace it.
I perused the “barebones” computers to find just the right mother board, CPU, memory, case and such and made my decision. I chose a combination that would make my son jealous. I ordered it.
One point zero zero nanoseconds later, my wife’s laptop died an immediate and painful death. It too had to be replaced.
So, I’m spending the remaining portion of the weekend transferring files and settings.
And how did you spend your weekend?
sfnowak 
I started thinking I should get back into blogging and writing in general as I haven’t been thinking much of it and also haven’t really felt I’ve been accomplishing that much. Sounds like you’ve had quite a weekend!
Wow, they decided to drop at the same time?? Well that means you can take care of them at once… good timing on their parts!
I actually just got myself an Acer notebook over the weekend and am so pleased with it! it means I can do more writing at home (not that I have the time but it’ll be a good motivator) 😀
LOL, Steve, what memories you’ve brought back!! I remember that first computer. We spent what seemed like hours in your living room punching numbers into a numeric keypad, programming in a picture of the USS Enterprise (Starfleet, not US Navy 😉 ), only to discover that somewhere we had made a mistake and it came out lopsided. How far we’ve come, only to be doing the same thing – unexpectedly building a computer over the weekend. Like you have nothing else to do. Ever. Enjoy !!