good morning friends,

tonight are the oscars, and having seen so few of the movies nominated, i will probably give them a pass. this last week has been constant computer repair. my younger daughter has been using a compaq desktop that i put downsatirs for her when i bought my newer computer. she asked me one morning if i had turned it off. i hadn't. "well,' she said "it is off and will not come back up" i have an old gateway that i have been using for network storage due to a failed video card, so i opened up both cases and started poking around. my older daughter called while i was doing this and told me that her computer "made a popping sound from the back and shut off and smells hot."

this gave me three computers on my desk in various degrees of disassembly. i bought one power supply and a cmos battery. a couple of days later, i have rebuilt two working desktops out of the parts from three that were not working.

now, if i can just win that bid on ebay for the parts i need to fix one of the laptops..........