It is positive to want to go first, provided the intention is to pave the way for others, make their path more easy, help them, or show the way. Competition is negative when we wish to defeat others, to bring them down in order to lift ourselves up.
Tenzin Gyatso
14th Dalai Lama
Have you ever had the feeling that when things go wrong, they like to appear in a cluster!?
Well, since Chinese New Year this year (February for the non-Chinese people out there), I have been trying to fix up two PCs for others: one was my former work-horse, stripped-down and sold, and the other was bought from a colleague since it has become a “white elephant”. For the former, prior to it being delivered I noticed that the BIOS was not retaining its settings as soon as power was disconnected - turned out to be a non-critical problem that has at yet no good solution for this series of motherboards from Asus - which after further tinkering was eventually replaced by a second-hand Gigabyte board. In the process, I managed to stuff up another Gigabyte as a result of failed BIOS update and blew up a PSU! Fortunately, the current incarnation seems to be pretty stable and I am not touching it any more… Well, as for the other, there were minor “inconveniences” along the way since this board (MSI Neo2) has only 1 IDE slot and most of my hardware was IDE and not SATA. 
However, as they say, all’s well if it ends well.
Recent acquisitions.
Hot water kettle, steamer and electric coffee percolator (at least this is what I think people call it?).
An excellent 3-part series on the boot up process of modern day computers, focusing on “Linux, Windows, and Intel processors.” Very worthwhile reading.
This guy is simply amazing!
Imagine if you were to be sponsored to travel across the globe AND to be able to do a geeky dance? Well, the result is the following video. Apparently, a third expenses-paid video has also been completed.
ps. Here is a bit more background information as reported on Australia’s The Sydney Morning Herald.