Comment by nobleach

I spent the last half of the 90's and the first part of the early 2000's building computers. Like the author, it started with a massively thick Computer Shopper catalog. Motherboard from TC Computers, 1.3GB Dirt Cheap Drives, 16MB of 72pin DIMMs from my dad's old Compaq. 486DX4 from some other seller. Man that was such a rush cobbling that thing together. But the bug stuck with me and eventually got me a job - which got me installing Novel, WindowsNT and eventually Linux! Then my boss sprang the big one on me, "you know, the real money is in software development". What a great trip down memory lane.