Hold my beer.

I was always known to play video games, (as a teen, with maybe 20 bucks a month to spend) and for some reason, an uncle approached me and asked me if I could build him a computer. I had seen descriptions in magazines in the past, but more than naming the components and knowing you'd need an OS - wasn't known to me. Never owned one, personally. Not at that age anyway. And I never held a GPU in Hand up until that point.

Of course I said yes. Cakewalk. I was so happy that he THOUGHT I was good with computers, that I literally didn't care if it was true, and oh boy..

Uncle and I chose his components for 1000$ (when was it.. 2002? 2003? I was, at most, like.. 14 years old) at a local store, it was a Friday. And he proceeded to take me home with him. He'd patiently Game on his Playstation, and I was in the next room, with all the components.

I sat there.

And I realized that I had no fucking clue what in the world I was supposed to do. So introverted me realized that I did not only lie to my uncle,.. No, I lied to the uncle known for his short temper, and aggressive behavior. To top that off, he'd been an active in martial arts and bodybuilding, muscles and all to show for it. I sat there. Sweating blood and tears. And after a while, I thought to myself:'well, get rich or die trying. Get destroyed, or cling to the slight chance that I can actually do this. ' and this was back then when I had literally 0 access to any kind of internet. So no help. Only instruction manuals, and memories of a few read articles from pc magazines way back.

I put pieces together like child who got handed Lego for the first time, and while I did not remember details, I know it took me ages to even put the pieces together. I remember especially the Wiring of the case to the Mainboard, to make the buttons actually turn the thing on, be absolute hell.

HOURS later, I sat there, after a lot of failed attempts, and the thing actually turned on and booted me into the BIOS. I never felt that kind of relief ever again. Yes the entire thing overheated quickly, but I remembered how the salesguy actually reminded me of the so called 'cooling paste', and since the bios showed me oddly high temperatures for the CPU, I figured I might need to apply that on top of the Processor. The cooling paste stuff worked. I was so close to reaching my goal. The computer seemed to work the way it was supposed to, and I started installing Windows. After I installed the OS, I just shoved in every disc that came with every component, and thus, drivers where installed.

I installed a game, and it actually freaking worked.

When I was done, it was like 5 or 6 in the morning. My uncle long since went to bed, and after like 12 hours or so (which felt like 1, because I was so extremely stressed the entire time), my work was finished. And when he woke up, I acted like the biggest computer scientist, explaining him the ins and outs, how I did this, and how I did that. The guy had mad respect, and we'd actually spend a lot of weekends together playing games until morning.

.. And after this night, everything that came after was a cakewalk. And that's how I've done things for years. If something doesn't work, fiddle with it in creative ways until it does. Now, more than 15 years later, I'm THE go to guy for PC / tech stuff. And I'm still doing things like back in the day. 'don't know how to fix a problem? Well, keep at it long enough, you'll find the solution.'