I had a dream. I dreamt I could order piece of a computer on the Internet and easily build my own machine. My family would live in a land of speed and magic.

That’s what I thought three months ago when I hatched this scheme. To make things worse, I told friends about it and even wrote a column. A couple of people I know asked me questions in the ensuing weeks. I had some trouble carving time into my schedule at first to set up the new system so I had a good excuse.

I finally had a chance one night to hook everything up. As I wrote before, I have done a number of upgrades on computers in the past, but this would be my first attempt at building one from scratch.

Naturally, the thing didn’t work on my first try. I got a whir from the fan, but the rest of the system wouldn’t start. I took a few deep breaths and headed to the Internet to see if I could figure out how to diagnose the problem.

I Googled and Googled and Googled. I asked friends who work with computers. I poked and prodded and sadly traced the problem to the motherboard, which meant I had to take everything out, package up the bad part and wait for a replacement.

After that interminable wait, I found out one of the most fun parts associated with buying things online. They sent me the wrong motherboard.

I never expected the process to go without a hitch. I had built in a certain level of expected stress. But this just drove me up a tree. How could they get one bad part, go to the shelf and grab a totally different model?

Luckily, it fit. But it didn’t work. Well, at least I didn’t think it did. The system started running, but nothing would come up on the monitor, and I couldn’t figure out the problem. So I sent the part back and used the refund to buy another one, only to get the same result.

At this point, I had wasted close to two months and had a very expensive coffee table sitting in my basement. If anything other than the motherboard had caused the problem, I could easily find a replacement part.

It had to come to this for me. I got cocky and now had to pay. So I schlepped the whole system to a computer shop downtown and hoped for the best. I was getting near the point where my investment would not have saved money over buying a similar system already put together.

Thankfully, the folks in town fixed me up with no extra cost, and I now have a brand-spanking new computer which kicks the butt of our old system. That old dinosaur now sits in the basement.

That got me to thinking about how I could salvage its useable parts. With just a few upgrades, we could have another spiffy new-ish computer. I think I can handle any problem that comes my way now. Just don’t remind me I said that when I’m crying over the latest snafu in this project.