After much stress and gnashing of teeth, I determined that my Core 2 Duo CPU was not compatible with my motherboard.  Apparently only the P5N32SLI SE supports it.  Sigh.  Anyways, a quick trip to Fry's later and my new motherboard is installed.  Lo and behold, all my other components appear to actually be working!

So I quickly start up a format of the large-ish hard drive I bought to go with it.  It is merrily grinding away, a few hours in, when my two boys wander into the study, and quicker than I can respond beeline over to the new PC and press the reset button.  Ah, well... as my wife often says, "Good thing they're cute.".  Indeed.  My re-format is going on currently, but this may delay me actually getting the thing running until tomorrow.

The comments on yesterday's post make some good points about building your own machine.  I decided to try it this time because not only was it a decent cost savings, but I decided that as a computer professional it was silly that I felt so out of touch with the state of hardware and wanted to get my hands dirty.  So in that regard, I consider the extra cost of the duplicate components I bought a sort of "tuition fee"... though I'm still hoping to get my money back on returns from them once things sort out.  :)

I do have to say, it's a huge boon having lots of good friends at work and around the 'net who have done the whole PC building thing before and could offer great advice.