Dreamweaver was giving me problems yesterday so I rebooted. Or, rather, I turned my computer off and it came back up partway. The graphic image of your motherboard logo or graphics card that you see for a second before your system starts loading? It stopped there. That's kinda weird.

Memory was fine, checked it in different slots and tried different memory sticks.
Blew out all the dust everywhere.
Video card was fine.
Unplugged all the drives, same thing.
Had it down to either the power supply, the motherboard, or the chip. None of which I could easily test without buying the components.

Here's the difficult bit: Office Depot has a clearance price on an HP Pavillion computer that's better than what I have now: $399 after rebate. Tempting.

So. If the problem is my power supply, 30 bucks and I'm back in business. Still need more memory and my CD/DVD drive is busted, and my video card isn't robust enough to keep me in SecondLife without locking up. But my computer would be back up and running.

But if it was my motherboard or chip, odds are that I'd have to replace both and possibly update the memory (mine's DDR), and by that point I might as well buy the new computer. But I don't really have a spare $400.

But there isn't a computer shop nearby that's open this weekend. Nearest one is 45 minutes away. But they have a diagnostic service. But I'd have to leave it there for several days. But the computer at Office Depot goes off sale tomorrow. But it has Vista and I don't know if all my software would work with it. But it has a 500 gig hard drive and 3 gig of RAM, and assorted media goodies. But I don't want to spend the weekend setting up all my software and settings. But I don't want to spend the weekend driving around buying components and swapping bits out of my computer to see what works, But I don't have a spare $400.

I was about three annoyed steps away from buying the damn thing anyway, when my brother-in-law tried unplugging everything. It came up! We started plugging in things and finally found this: my Palm Pilot was in the cradle when I rebooted, and apparently my computer thought it was a drive and tried connecting to it, and stopped. No warning, no error messages, nothing. Weird. My Palm was plugged in and it brought my computer to a mysterious standstill.

So, problem solved. All it took was 24 hours of anguish and near-financial drainage to return to where I was yesterday. Go me!

If you've never lost a hard drive, the comparison isn't as odd as you might think. You're caught by surprise, shocked at the suddenness and unfairness of it. The feeling of loss, of frustration, of not being able to do everything you once took for granted; all that crashes down on you and you're left with a pounding headache and an unanswered plea to the deity of your choice.

Although in my experience, with a computer crash you tend to kick things more.

Last night I was too stunned to react. Flipped the switch a few times, listened to my hard drive go click, click, click, and gave up. Wandered listlessly around the house. Considered going my traditional computer repair route but couldn't find the hammer. Spent some time cursing creatively. Sacked out and watched six hours of network television, which is never a good thing to do if you're already depressed and looking for something to make you feel better about life. My wife tried to cheer me up but quit when I kept trying to move her around the room to get a stronger network signal.

What makes the feeling worse is the knowledge that it was preventable, the nagging suspicion that you asked for this, you idiot. You know all the stuff you're supposed to do so this doesn't happen. You should have eaten better, you should have exercised more, you should have protected your surges, you should have performed regular backups. And I work with computers for a living, which just grinds in that extra little salt-in-the-wounds annoyance. It's like being a nutritionist with scurvy.

And it's just sitting there. You know, deep in your heart, that if you manage to turn the computer on in just the right way it'll work. It usually takes 30 or 40 tries and a few more kicks to get past that stage.

I've got my software, and a lot of the things I do is online somewhere so getting all that back is no problem. I even backed some stuff up sometimes, which will be a big help if I can remember where the discs are. But the last few years of e-mail, my contact lists, my working files . . . without warning I lost a lot of my memory, leaving me grasping, confused, and in need of meds.

(I also lost my drafts for today's column, so you narrowly missed hearing my dazzling pearls of wisdom on such heady topics as CBS printing its advertising on eggs and Don Knotts' widow objecting to a proposed statue of her husband as Barney Fife. Even disasters have their upsides.)

Today the long, painful, expensive road to recovery begins. I'll start assessing my system, trying to see what still works and what doesn't. I'll seek professional help, which has its own horrors. I won't have to deal with medication, or physical therapists bending my untoned self back and forth, but I will have to suffer the PC guy who tries to retrieve my hard drive data snickering at my musical tastes and loudly asking why my collection of educational films all have "Brandi" in the filename.

I'll also have to open my computer box and move things about, which never goes well for me. You know that car commercial where it drives by and other cars crumble and fade into dust as it passes? I have that effect on computer innards. The merest glance can melt circuit boards and short wires. Easy, illustrated installations with only two instructions (1. Plug this in. 2. Smile proudly.) invariably require three frustrated tech support calls and one shameful retail exchange of the still faintly smoking component.

On the plus side, I now have a reason why I haven't responded to any of the e-mail that has been piling up in my inbox since my last system crash in 2002. And I can take the plunge and buy a whole new system, an option I was regrettably not given after my mini-stroke (probably not in my HMO).

Soon, probably by this weekend, I will have figured out what's broke. With the help of friends and extremely patient salespeople I will have fixed this computer and/or assembled a new one. I will have gone through the mind-crushingly tedious period of reloading my software, options, and preferences. I will have learned to move on despite my debilitating episode and the resulting limitations. And I will strive to calmly accept my losses, no longer frantically trying to pry open my old hard drive with a screwdriver to scoop the old files out.

I probably won't back up anything, though. I'll be too busy researching the Don Knotts statue.

You never felt it, there was no odd tugging at your wallet. But unbeknownst to you, your name is whomping up a staggering mound of debt and your credit rating now has a radioactive shelf life of 4,000 years.

"I never even guessed until the men from the collection agency showed up at my door with baseball bats," you'll say. "They told me I owed $476,000 for office supplies I never ordered! And that I owed another $13,000 for shipping and handling! Also, my kidneys."

Someone out there could be living high on the hog with your name right now. They could be ordering champagne every night, a new airplane every morning, and maliciously Super-Sizing their fries at every lunch. They could, in fact, be having more fun with your name than you ever did, which just adds insult to penury.

There are several useful techniques for preventing identity theft, none of which I have ever used because no one wants my identity. Just follow these handy steps to ensure that your identity is completely safe.

Never give out your personal information.

Ever. Under any circumstances. Burn your insurance card, shred your wallet, punch anyone who calls you by name in the face. Systematically go through every official document that contains any data about you whatsoever and destroy it immediately, even the phone number on your dog's tags.

Change your name.

Ha! Can't steal what they can't find, can they? Be anyone you want to be! As long as it's not you.

Pick a new name every month, the stranger the better. Criminals, being a cowardly and superstitious lot, are less likely to steal an identity that makes their fellow crooks laugh at them in the locker room. Become "Thaddeus B. Wickleberry," "Amelia Phoot," or "Amanda Huggenkiss." Who would dare steal those? Personally, I think this is what "The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" had in mind all along, and there's certainly no other excuse for Dick Butkus.

Constant name changes can even be an advantage in other areas of your life, especially the dating scene. Why not take your name from one of the Romantic poets and become Big Freddy Keats or "Scooter" Lord Byron?

Beat them to the punch.

If someone's going to get all the goodies and totally ruin your life, why shouldn't it be you? Blow your own money away! This is the technique my family has chosen, and it's working wonderfully well. It's based on the same concept as driving a crappy-looking, theft-proof car, only we've driving a crappy-looking, theft-proof credit report.

By trashing our own credit, we have the same debts and total lack of financial security that we'd have if our identities were stolen, but we get to enjoy weekend vacations and the entertainment systems ourselves. Let the ID thieves be the ones to look embarrassed when their credit application sets off warning klaxons! Let the ID thieves be the ones to get the "sorry" letters from banks and the apologetic smiles from car dealerships! Hah!

In fact, if enough of us stay dangerously in debt it could serve as a deterrent to would-be ID thieves who feared ending up with a worse credit rating than their own. That's my goal, and I urge you to do the same. Impulse buy your heart out, keep your identity safe, and help the economy in the process.

Follow me! I'll be under the name "Amelia Phoot."

He announced his heartfelt desire by running up to me and declaring, "Dad, there's an optical scanner that replaces your Windows logon, it reads your eyeball instead of asking for a password. It's only $200!"

And do you have any use for this whatsoever, real or imagined?" I asked.

"No!" he said. "But I have to have it!"

And so his descent into computer modification ("modding") begins. Already his computer glows an unearthly orange, giving his perpetually darkened room that retro X-Files feel. The side of his case is transparent so casual onlookers can marvel at the wires, I guess, and eerie blue light comes out of the personalized fan grill.

He hasn't said, but I suspect he won't be happy until his computer spins in place, extends spikes to thwart his little brother and glows different colors to match his remote-detected mood. Actual computing seems secondary.

He's not alone. Anything you can think of to do to a computer, someone, somewhere, has done it, and then painted it black.

Want to fit all of your computer hardware into a four-slot toaster? Been done. Want a computer case made entirely out of Legos? Already old school. Do you fancy cherrywood and old radio knobs? Do you prefer your computer to look like a DVD player, a humidor, or an ammo case? Are you in desperate need of a PC that frightens your cat?

You're in luck, my friend. Do a search online for "computer mods" and get examples, step-by-step details, and helpful tips on everything from how to turn a teddy bear into a network router to how to subtly alter the lines of your case with the artistic application of a hammer.

Or you can cheat and just buy stuff from the mod section at the local computer shop. There are personalized fan grills, LED tubing, glowing USB cables, see-through acrylic cases, even gold anodized screws. Replace your old hardware and make a sweet machine in minutes!

Of course real modders will look down on you, the way custom car owners scoff at the weekend driver with a personalized license plate cover.

I can just imagine hordes of hardcore modders gathering in a circle in the CompUSA parking lot, showing off their machines under the streetlights and complimenting each other on their innovative use of Dremel tools, plumbing fixtures, and Bondo. These are people for whom a UV black light is an essential component, people who probably drove to the parking lot sitting inside their computers.

I have to admit, I'm jealous. The only computer options I had (besides "having one" and "not having one") were different stickers for the front and the color mouse pad of my choice. Otherwise I had PC beige, and that was it. Now I find myself idly wondering if my wife would be comfortable using a computer built into an espresso machine.

Will this be the new extravagance for aging geeks? I can laugh at 40-year old guys suddenly buying cowboy hats, sports cars, hairpieces and trophy wives, but I can also see myself emerging from my own mid-life crisis with a computer that hangs over my desk from chains and has a Terminator fist coming out of the side.

Well, why not? Why shouldn't my computer reflect the personality I want to pretend I have? Why can't I paint it construction orange or tie-dye the whole thing? Why not load it with so much chrome I can't plug it in, or replace the power supply with a V6 engine and an ignition switch?

It's still cheaper than a trophy wife.

I am a fair hand at learning software. Give me a new program, and inside of a day, I'll have mastered it, or I'll be able to fake having mastered it, which is almost as good. It's said that the fastest way to learn a new program is to first screw it up royally and then have to fix your mistakes, and through years of practice I have developed this tactic to a fine art.

Yet the illusion persists, and so every now and then a coworker, a friend of a friend of a friend, or a casual acquaintance I haven't heard from since 1987 will sidle up, looking sheepish, and ask if Intel's new 3GHz Pentium 4 and 875P chipset will work with ATI's new Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. The answer: I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

The innards of my computer are a complete mystery to me, and one I have no interest in cracking. I work in an office where new advances in computer technology are regularly discussed, and when the topics start turning to numbers, processor speeds and brand names I just continue to smile politely and hope no one notices that my eyes have glazed over into the glazed, yeasty goodness of a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

When I need to commit a hardware upgrade, I do the same thing you would do: I sidle over to a computer-savvy friend and sheepishly say that my computer is broken, please make it go. He'll roll his eyes and ask why I don't do it myself, since plainly any 6-year-old could handle setting up a four-station wireless network, and then, as always, I'll have to remind him about the smoke test.

"Smoke test" is a term my computer-savvy friend Dan has used for years. It refers to the point in computer hardware installation when everything has been plugged or attached or crammed back in, and the computer is turned on. The joke is that if no smoke comes out, you did it right.

Five years ago, he helped me install a new hard drive and sound card, watching over my shoulder with the amused expression of a parent watching his toddler tie his shoelaces to each other. I followed his instructions precisely and stepped back. He plugged it in, grandly announcing that the smoke test had begun.

My computer started smoking. A lot. And made little hissing and popping sounds besides.

After frantically yanking the cord out of the wall and cracking the smoldering computer open we found that I had contrived to somehow plug a power thingie where a data thingie should have gone, despite the complete incompatibility of the attachment thingies, and was consequently pumping 120 volts directly into my sound card.

I still don't know what that means, only that it seems that you shouldn't do it.

Dan seemed profoundly disturbed by the fact that the smoke test failed and was therefore no longer a joke. There was a definite sense of loss, I think.

I suggested that he change the name to the 'smoke with hissing and popping sounds test' but his world had been shaken enough. He knew I was intelligent, and therefore surely I could install a simple computer component, so my continued ignorance of things electronic had to be a deliberate ruse of some kind. Meanwhile I kept fanning away smoke.

So a word to the wise to anyone preparing to sidle at me. I may look like a computer geek, act like a computer geek, and have all the subtle social graces of a computer geek, but I haven't the necessary skills for a computer geek. My advice for even the smallest computer hardware task: buy a new computer that already has what you want.

Or you could go ask my friend Dan.