I’m sad to say that the time has come. The war must now escalate to untold proportions and extreme measures are being taken. The carnage will be great. Blood will be spilled and tears will be shed.

I am not referring to either the strife in the Middle East or the war on terrorism. I’m discussing the tech war that has been waged in my household.

The wife and I have finally decided that we are going to retire our 18-month-old computer. I stupidly bought a Gateway. That was a mistake. HUGE mistake. Besides the fact that their components have the dependability of a Yugo, their customer service sucks ass. Big hairy, unbathed Canadian lumberjack ass. In flannel boxer shorts.

In my defense, my previous computer was a Gateway P5-166. It had a blistering processing speed of 166mhz, 16MB of RAM and an ungodly 2.1-gigabyte harddrive. “How will I ever fill that????” I was a stupid, stupid man.

However, that little piece of machinery has never broken down. It still works, humming along like a trooper. Its counterpart, with an uber-fast processor, gobs of memory and RAM out the wazoo breaks down every two months, when it isn’t blue screening me to death. It assaults me with its inability to work.

Gateway, of course, has “fixed” it real good. They fixed so that it never, ever works. When I asked them if taking a computer into the shop five times in a year is an acceptable rate of error they asked me if I wanted it fixed or not. As if they were threatening me!

Ahhh . . . customer service. Theirs sucks ass, have I mentioned that? I remember the day when companies worked with their customers to make them happy. After all, they probably told their employees in training, “A happy customer is a repeat customer!” The only thing I’ll be repeating about Gateway is how their customer service sucks . . . I’ve mentioned that, haven’t I?

So, it has officially begun. My wife and I discussed our options and have decided that, since my livelihood depends upon this machine that, I will need to replace it. The expense will hurt our house hunting but I need the equipment for work.

Our options? Go to another national retailer and see what my options are, which I have and the computer I want will cost me roughly half the national debt, or build one myself.

Yes, you heard me right. Build one myself. Me. Build something other than sandwich.

I admit that it fills me with a little fear, but I will have some good help. John is acting as my consultant, telling me what sorts of processors to look at, and things to consider. And Geekfriend will surely help me construct, if not to assist then for the entertainment value alone. Of course I’ll need a good heat sink and will have to consider the buffer in the primary bus. Not only that, but I’ll have to look at USB 2.1 as well as which PCI slots I’ll fill and if I’ll skip the dependable LPT1 for a faster data rate of Firewire. Will I get a video card with 64MB of internal memory? It will certainly help system resources, but then I don’t play games much. Of course I’ll want a killer sound card. Will I want a DVD-R or just a CD-R? I know I’ll have at least two bays of drives, probably one with a DVD-Rom and the other with a CD-RW. I could always consider an internal zip, but that would be silly.

I, of course, have very little clue what I just said. However, I know I’ll have to make these decisions soon, because eventually I’ll have to mount the drive. At that point I will ask it, “Who’s your daddy?” If it doesn’t respond with my name I will return it.

Of course that isn’t how you mount a drive. You have to buy it wine first. Every good geek knows that.

The point is, I’ve entered a new level of geekdom. I am building things. Before you know it I’ll be implanting biochips in my kids’ heads that will make them clean the house. That, of course, will make me rich. Ethics be damned.

But I’m afraid that things are already getting beyond my scope. For example, I’ve already eschewed a normal computer case for a custom case. Will they perform any better? Hell no, these are like spoilers for cars! Check these babies out! They are cooooool, daddio!

Remember the days when men would stand out on the driveway looking at their muscle cars, discussing their performance as if they were high-class call girls? “Yeah, this baby has twin cams, a ceramic carb, duel exhaust and a fiberglass body with curves that don’t quit. When I stroke her she purrs like a kitten and goes off like a rocket!”

Those days are over. Now we men sit inside (we can’t go out without a sunscreen with lower than an 85 SPF rating) discussing our computers in the same way. “Yeah, she’s got twin processors running at 2.2 gigs a piece, but overclocked for better performance, a primary heat sink with top of the line thermal grease, duel OS that boot separately and an aluminum case, with viewable lines and neon to highlight her spinning drives. When I crack her BIOS she purrs like a kitten and goes off like a rocket!”

How far we have come to become more civilized.