I’ve been thinking about writing more, but once again I found myself trapped in a loop of self-doubt. It’s difficult to have so many ideas and still feel unable to act on them—or to believe that, in the end, I have no knowledge worth sharing. I get stuck there from time to time.
I often feel as though I know nothing. The truth is that I know many things; they simply do not always seem to be the things people want or value, at least from a business or capitalist perspective. When I try to share what I have learned with my family, even just to reinforce it for myself, they often do not want to listen or do not seem interested.
I am a lonely person, and sometimes that is difficult to live with. The one constant throughout my life has been the computer.
Learning by Clicking on Things
I have used computers for as long as I can remember. In 1998, my father brought home our first PC, a Compaq Presario that was top of the line at the time. I was born in 1992 and was still learning to read and write, yet I was already exploring Windows 95, clicking through menus and learning by trial and error.
My father bought games for us, and I still have many of them. I drew in Paint, played Pinball, and later began writing in Word. I even wrote entire books—well, a Harry Potter spin-off—but I was writing nonetheless. Games such as Zoo Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon, The Sims, and the Harry Potter titles helped shape my childhood. I kept writing throughout my teenage years, something I have never quite managed to return to in the same way.
Looking back, that childhood curiosity never really disappeared; it simply became experience. I have lived through Windows 95, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and now Windows 11. For years, I assumed that I knew nothing about computers or how they worked. It turns out that I do. I had absorbed the idea that working with computers required being good at mathematics, which I am not, and that belief made me overlook the practical knowledge I had been accumulating all along.
Over time, that knowledge became increasingly tangible. I have built and upgraded computers, diagnosed some of the worst Windows problems, and grown comfortable using PowerShell. In 2022, after researching and choosing every component myself, I assembled my first PC entirely on my own. Still, I never treated any of this as a real skill. I assumed that “normal people must know how to do it too.” Yet I genuinely enjoy investigating those small, stubborn problems and finding a way around them.
Every Computer Gave Me a New Problem
That confidence did not appear all at once. It grew through each computer I owned and every problem it gave me. After the Compaq came a Dell Dimension 2000 running Windows ME. In 2004, I received the first computer that was truly mine: another Dell Dimension, this time with Windows XP Professional. Its Celeron processor was far from ideal for The Sims 2, but I played anyway. I developed a ritual: Disk Cleanup, defragmentation, and then opening the game to face its seemingly eternal loading screen.
When The Sims 3 was about to be released, I asked my parents for a new computer because the old Dell would not be able to run it. They gave me a Vostro with an ATI graphics card whose model I can no longer remember. It arrived with Windows Vista, and then the strangest thing happened: after I installed The Sims 2, the graphics card died. On the very day I received the computer, I had to call Dell and arrange for the ATI card to be replaced.
The problems changed as the computers improved, but the pattern remained the same: something would go wrong, and I would learn by dealing with it. After the Vostro came a Dell laptop running Windows 7, a definite improvement. In 2014, I upgraded again to a Dell XPS with an NVIDIA card and, if I remember correctly, a fourth-generation Core i5. Once I began playing Battlefield 4, I used my first internship salary to buy my first dedicated graphics card: a Sapphire R9 270 Dual-X, still one of the best GPUs I have ever owned. I still have it, and it still works. I gave the original XPS graphics card to someone in an online group whose own card had died and who could not afford a replacement.
Windows Should Never Be Trusted with Options
By the time I had pushed that XPS as far as I could—through Windows 8.1 and the Windows 10 Insider builds—I was ready for something different. I moved to the strangest Dell I had ever owned: an all-AMD system with a Ryzen 7 1700X and a reference-model RX 570. It made me happy for a long time. More importantly, it became the computer through which I learned that practical knowledge does not always look graceful while it is being acquired.
That lesson arrived quickly. For someone who was terrified of damaging hardware, I had what might have been the worst beginner experience imaginable. Every upgrade felt like a test designed specifically to confirm my fears. Fortunately, fear was never the only thing I brought to a problem. I was also creative—or, at least, very willing to invent solutions when the official ones refused to work.
Installing Windows became one of those problems. I owned several SSDs and hard drives, which meant the installer had options—and Windows should never be trusted with options. I could select the correct SSD, double-check it, and practically introduce the two of them by name. Windows would nod politely and then install the boot files somewhere else, like a confused delivery driver leaving my operating system at a neighbor’s house.
Eventually, I stopped trying to reason with it. I disconnected every other drive. No menus, no advanced configuration, no more opportunities for creative interpretation: just Windows and one SSD alone in a room. It was less a technical solution than removing every wrong answer from a multiple-choice test, but it worked. With nowhere else to put the boot files, Windows finally discovered the drive I had been pointing at the entire time.
Solving one Windows problem, however, usually led to another. My Windows 11 OEM license had originally come with my old Dell, and it remained activated after I changed the motherboard. Whenever I mentioned this, people insisted that it could not be legitimate—as though they knew more about my license than Microsoft’s own activation servers did.
The situation was absurd: Windows looked at my rebuilt computer and said, “Yes, this is fine,” while other people treated me as though I had forged the operating system in my basement. I could point to the activation screen, but apparently official confirmation from Windows was merely circumstantial evidence. The motherboard change behind that argument, however, had given me a much more immediate concern.
The Ryzen That Refused to Die
The license survived the motherboard change without complaint. The processor’s pins were less fortunate. During a motherboard swap at Christmas—because nothing captures the holiday spirit quite like dismantling a computer while everyone else is eating—I removed the cooler and discovered that the Ryzen had come with it, firmly attached by thermal paste and possibly spite. Several pins were bent.
At that moment, there were two possible responses. A sensible person might have admitted defeat. I took out an insulin needle.
One by one, I straightened the pins with the kind of concentration normally reserved for surgery or bomb disposal. Then I placed the processor back into the socket and turned on the computer. It worked. Against all reasonable expectations, the Ryzen had survived being ripped from its home, having its legs bent, and receiving emergency treatment with an insulin needle.
It was not even the last time I bent its pins. During yet another motherboard change, the processor slipped from my hands and landed on the motherboard in the worst possible position. If there was a single angle capable of producing maximum damage, it found it.
I picked it up and looked at the pins. Bent. Again. By then, the insulin needle and I were no longer performing emergency surgery; we were apparently running a recurring clinic. I straightened them one more time, put the processor back into its socket, and turned on the computer. Naturally, it worked. At this point, surviving my hardware upgrades had become one of its advertised features.
I assumed that was the end of the adventure. The processor had been tested, repaired, and granted a second chance. Then, sometime later, I removed it again and found a burned ant lodged between the pins.
There are moments in computer repair when technical knowledge helps. This was not one of them. No manual prepares you for discovering that your CPU has apparently defeated an insect in single combat. I removed the ant, inspected the pins, and wondered whether I had unknowingly purchased a processor or a very small electrical predator.
Once again, I reassembled the computer. Once again, the Ryzen started normally, as if nothing unusual had happened. Bent pins? Twice. Needle surgery? A repeat procedure. Incinerated intruder? Barely worth mentioning. At this point, the processor seemed less like a component and more like the final survivor in a low-budget science-fiction film.
Eventually, I gave the 1700X to my boyfriend’s brother. It is still working today, which means it has now survived being torn from a cooler, two separate bent-pin disasters, repeated amateur microsurgery, an insect-related electrical incident, and a change of ownership. I can only assume it will outlive all of us.
Maybe I Do Know Something After All
I think that is why I am so attached to that Ryzen. It is not only nostalgia. We have been through too much together. Somewhere between the bent pins, the needle, and the burned ant, I stopped seeing a computer as this precious sealed object that I was going to destroy if I touched the wrong thing. I learned that I could make a mistake, panic a little, find a solution, and fix it. If that processor ever stops working, I will probably keep it forever in a drawer with all the cables I refuse to throw away.
Now I feel confident enough to build PCs for other people. I know how to research the parts, put everything together, and deal with whatever strange problem appears afterward, because there is always something. I also run the Windows Preview builds on my own computer—the experimental version—and somehow make them work beautifully. Years ago, I was afraid of touching the hardware.
Now I willingly install unfinished versions of Windows. I am not sure whether that is personal growth or just a different kind of bad decision, but I will take it.
Maybe I do know something after all. I did not learn it in a classroom, and nobody ever told me that I was officially qualified. I learned by clicking on things, breaking things, searching for answers, finding ridiculous workarounds, and trying again. Sometimes the solution was disconnecting every drive until Windows had no other choice. Sometimes it was straightening the same processor’s pins for the second time. None of this ever felt impressive to me because it was simply what I did. But maybe that does not make it less valuable. Maybe the things that feel ordinary to me are still worth sharing. And maybe writing about computers is a good place to start.
