Quick Notes About the PC and the Fire

You might want to skip this if you have no interest in my computer problems or the fire. If you do have any knowledge of these things, though, feel free to throw me some advice.

Changed out the hard drive on the PC last week, did a clean install of the OS, played around for a bit only to have the thing crash on me. On reboot, it was exhibiting the exact same behavior that it showed with the old hard drive.

Damn. Some other hardware failure then. Motherboard? Video card? Hell, everything tests fine, but there's obviously an issue that isn't software related.

Damn.

I hooked up the old blue and white G3 to take the place of the Gateway, even thought that means I have to use one of the smaller keyboards and the "no-button" mouse for now. At least I have a box that works again, and I should be thankful for it.

I'm thinking I'll probably dismantle the PC--taking out the hard drives, the CDRW, the sound and video cards, the NIC, and the memory--and build myself something new with a nice chassis and nifty new motherboard.

If you have any suggestions for bare-bones kits that come in good, easy to upgrade chassis, do me a favor and let me know. Price is a big issue, but I figure that since I can scavenge a lot of the parts, I should be able to keep the price pretty low.

On another note, the house is mostly cleaned up from the fire in the apartment building last week. The smoky smell still clings to everything, but I now have clean clothes, and the smell has faded quite a bit. I still feel like I'm living in a campfire, but it's getting better...

Thanks to everyone for all the thoughts, suggestions, and offers of assistance. I appreciate it more than you know. As I said last week, I feel lucky in comparison to others who have dealt with much, much more.

Thanks, all.