i hate hardware   (geekin, random re me)

I am posting this from my workstation.

So I am apparently retarded and awesome for kind of the same reason. My workstation is loud. Less so now, but it's still loud. It was louder before. The other day, I built a MythTV box and it was really loud so I bought a Zalman CNPS6000-Cu CPU fan to make it quieter. Then my MythTV box was really quiet. Quiet enough that I could hear my other computer (my workstation) a lot more. So I ordered a Zalman CNPS5700D-Cu CPU fan for my workstation. Then, in the middle of a workday...

during my lunch break, I decide it would be a wonderful idea to install said 5700D-Cu cooler to make my workstation quieter. But afterwards it doesn't turn on.FUCK. The CPU fan turns on, but the motherboard doesn't beep at all and there is no video signal. I spend about 3 hours trying to fix this, but nothing works. I am completely stumped.

I assume either my processor or motherboard got fried. I order a new processor and motherboard from NewEgg. They get here today (Ok, technically yesterday) and I start testing my old components to see which is broken, CPU or motherboard. Keep in mind that I fucking hate "debugging" hardware (yes, the origin of the phrase 'debugging' refers to hardware, blah blah), so I am drinking some fantastic wine while doing this. No, I don't spill it into my computer case, as "hilarious" as that would be.

So I put the old CPU into the new motherboard. It does the same shit. No beeps, CPU fan turns on. I screw around with my hardware for a little while longer, looking for anything that might be wrong. Eventually, I look directly at the bottom of my P4 2.4G processor. Is that a bent pin?! Wonderful. It is. And of course, now when I think back, I can remember wondering why the processor feels weird when I seat it in the socket.

Somehow, ONE PIN out of the 42 thousand on the back of a socket 478 processor managed to bend itself in the most inconvenient way possible. How do I fix this? I have no fucking clue, I'm a keyboard jockey. Kevin suggests using a plastic mechanical pencil to bend the pin back into a close enough position that it will be accepted into the socket. I (of course) continue drinking copious amounts of wine, because otherwise, it will go bad. Wine can do that, I think. Why am I drinking wine? I don't even really like wine. It's Ok, I guess.

After about an hour of gingerly prodding the 1/42000 pin into its original position, it seats correctly. Everything starts working perfectly. Now I have an extra motherboard and processor just waiting for me to spend more $$ to get them up and running. Dammit.