I got my first computer as a Christmas present from my wife in 2000. I thought I'd have go at building my own about a year and a half later.
It turned out very nicely, IMHO. Since then I've built several for myself, family & friends. I like to push my systems to see what they'll do. The first one, using an Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 1.6GHz. CPU ran very nicely for a couple of years overclocked to 2.24GHz. My current main rig is running an Intel Xeon E3110 CPU on an Abit IP35-Pro Motherboard (VERY enthusiast friendly!). The CPU is rated at 3.0GHz & is now running stably at 4.14GHz. I cuurently have 3 Hard Drives installed & I'm running Windows XP Pro, Vista Ultimate & Windows 7 beta on this machine.
I have done some computer repair for some friends. More & more I am getting requests to clean things up for people. I've learned quite a bit & I've also learned I still have a LOT to learn about this. I consider myself to be pretty good with the hardware side. I'm getting better at dealing with Windows & malware problems.
A while back, my boos asked me if I could fix a virus problem. I told him I could & he brought me me his home desktop system. It turned out that he he had a little more than a a virus problem - he had 392 infections. It took me while but aI managed to clean it up for him. It probably would have been far easier to reformat & re-install Windows, but I decided to clean it up as a training exercise.
I have visited Bleeping Computer numerous times & have found a wealth of useful information. I would like to learn more about solving problems & am willing to help out here also.
-Dave