Antec, Inc.

http://antec.com

MSRP: $75

Somehow or another, a friend of mine had decided that the power supply on his computer was failing. Maybe he’d heard of someone else having power supply problems and thought it was contagious. Maybe his spider sense was tingling. Either way, convinced as he was that his computer was going to explode any minute, he just couldn’t bring himself to pay to have it serviced. So he bought the biggest, baddest, chromed-out power supply he could find and installed it himself. It was relatively easy, and guess what, it worked.

Most peoples’ stories would end there, but not Corey’s. Once he realized that hardware maintenance was actually pretty easy, his whole personality changed. At first it was subtle. He told me three times that he’d fixed his own computer. Then he sent me a link to a forum he belongs to, where he thoroughly detailed the repairs he made. (It was a music forum.) Then he started doing all kinds of weird, unnecessary repairs and upgrades to his parents’ computer, too. (I mean, really. Who would take the time to upgrade the vector unit on an 800MHz Pentium III?)

But lately it’s gone a little too far. He thinks he’s badass and he’s using the kind of ebonics that is only really spoken by North Buffalonian white people, only laced with technical jargon. He keeps sending me instant messages at work:

corey: yo holmes

dave: hey how’s it going?

corey: pimped my box

dave: what’d you do this time?

corey: rearranged my PCI cards in IRQ order

dave: …

dave: why?

corey: disk IO’s stupid fly now

dave: it’s a 500MHz celeron emachine

dave: running os/2 warp

corey: don’t hate on my box

Pros: Doing your own computer service can change your whole outlook on life.

Cons: It still doesn’t make you a badass.

Dave is Artvoice’s webmaster, and does his own repairs. Drop a line on the triple-dub: webmaster@artvoice.com.