Building your own PC is a fulfilling activity yet must not be undertaken without the proper knowledge and tools.

I built my own PC 3 years ago. I can officially say that that PC is dead and buried. So I built another one, buying new parts and recycling old parts from the dead PC (like how a person donates some of his organs upon death). I can say that the operation was a partial success. After assembling the parts, I tested it and it worked. My brother even played Ragnarok. Afterwards, I cleaned up, close the casing lid, plugged in the USB devices, and tried it again. Nothing.

So I checked out what’s wrong. Only to see the power supply unit produce smoke. Yikes. Two scenarios: either there is something inside it that caused it to produce smoke (highly probable because when I took out the casing from its box, 2 cockroaches sped out of the box); or it was overloaded (almost all the power pins were used).

Since I would be at work the next day, I would have to return the power supply (bringing the entire unit in the process) at Monday. Tsk tsk.

Update:

Older brother had brought the new PC to the shop, and had the power supply replaced. The old hard disk showed signs of dying; good thing I bought a new hard disk. But I do have to salvage data from that old hard disk. Gee.

Update: (8/30/05)

There was nothing wrong with the old hard disk. I just don’t know if that technician is really a technician or what. Formatted the new hard disk, and I’m ready to roll.

After a successful IPO and Google Earth, the nerds at Google Labs seem to on full steam ahead. Joining the IM fray dominated by Yahoo!, MSN, and ICQ, Google releases Google Talk.

Google says about Google Talk:

Google Talk is a simple and free way to talk with and send instant messages to your friends. Like Gmail, Google Talk uses Google’s innovative technologies to help people communicate more effectively and efficiently. Think of it as Google’s approach to communications.

The new Yahoo! Messenger BETA allows YM users to call other YM users, therefore some might say Google is not offering anything new to consumers. The only beauty of this is that, when you invite a non-Google user, you are actually giving him or her a Gmail – you read it right – Gmail invite. Yep, that’s 2 GB of free email space.

It remains to be seen whether this product would be successful or not. And since Google Talk doesn’t display ads (unlike YM and AIM), the business model is suspect. And since it is in beta, this no-ads policy might still change.

This is not a valid Yahoo! site. This site will apparently accept your Yahoo ID and password and when you click on Sign In, no page will appear. It will rather send your Yahoo ID and password to a certain email address. Be aware!

http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/forun_amex/login.html