Or your most memorable one? The one that embarrasses you to even think about? What did you learn? Did you use Knoppix to fix it?

Here's my story.

One summer day in '92, we bought our first PC. I wanted a Mac, but the wife insisted. It came with Windows 3.1...and if you think Win3.1 was a dog, you should have seen Win3.0. Anyway, after we set it up, I sat down to play, and she left on an errand.

I knew next to nothing about Windows 3.1 besides how to use the GUI, and I soon uncovered an intriguing drop-down dialog that would let you change the graphics card driver (the list was in the form "Graphics card X - Screen resolution Y - Bit depth Z"). I didn't stop 'n' think about what might happen if I chose one corresponding to a graphics card that I didn't have...and soon I was staring at a black screen. The first day, and I've already BROKEN THE COMPUTER! What will my wife say?

I did what any newbie would do: Reinstall Windows. But that didn't help. And the wife was coming home. Tick. Tick. Tick.

I finally admitted defeat and called Microsoft tech support. The tech guy's name was Ray. You could tell Ray was an uber-geek because he said "DOT" instead of "PERIOD". He also refused to give his last name. Wise man. Who knows how many people would drive up to Redmond, look him up in a telephone book, and totally stalk him if he did?

Ray stayed with me past his quittin' time, and walked me through the solution. I was expressing my profound gratitude and saying goodbye as my wife walked in. Whew.

I've had worse disasters. One time Norton WinDoctor decided that all the COM/ActiveX CLSIDs in my registry were invalid and deleted them. Or the three separate occasions I tried installing LILO (once) and GRUB (twice) and ended up with an unbootable PC. ("Backup"? What is this thing you call "backup"?)

But that experience taught me a valuable lesson about how talented I am at screwing up computers.