I hate computers sometimes.

The game was supposed to be down for only a 1/2 hour, but my maintenance took 2 hours. My apologies.

Video card fan (at -9 hitpoints and not stabilized)...replacement didn't really fit, so I improvised, keeping the old heat sink. Of course, the new fan used a 3-pin power connection, while the old one used a 2-pin connection...enter my amateur wiring skills and the video card has a new fan.

Noisy old CPU fan...replacement fan/heatsink didn't fit with the 5 1/2 year old processor/motherboard. Ended up giving the old one a very thorough cleaning (and some new thermal paste stuff) and plan to do some research online to find one that will fit properly.

Dusting...when you run out of handy "canned air" stuff and forget to buy it for a month or so, things get mighty dusty in there. You know it's bad when you have to wait for the liquid inside to rebuild pressure three times before you're done.

Reminds me of when I did a refurbish I did on a computer I once had. eMachine with funky sized everything. Couldn't find any fans to fit properly....

Ended up slicing up an oil funnel, and fastening it to the fan with superglue, and attached the smaller end of the funnel to the old fan casing with a few strands of sturdy wire.

i try my best to avoid getting into the guts of my machine as I have had all sorts of tomfoolery ensue whenever i open the case. Things like cards and even processors getting loose (even though the machine was not jostled in the slightest) causing random crashes and blue screens until I go back and reseat every single thing on the board, RAM suddenly requiring me to up the voltage by .5 volts in order to run stable for no apparent reason whatsoever (was working fine for a month before i opened the case), and of course the late and great favorite of the hard drive failing completely after I went in and moved it to the rail right above the one it was on (while being extremely careful to avoid ESD).

I am good with PC hardware, but it seems to hate me, so I dread opening up my machine.