Would we, the producers of this show, ever commit such a flagrant breach of professional responsibility as to commandeer this broadcast medium as a vehicle for a personal rant? To those of you who didn't answer "hell yes" without a moment's hesitation, we'd like to extend our warmest welcome-- you're obviously new here. Regular viewers are aware that AtAT's main production system, a PowerTower Pro named "Victoria," went belly-up last Friday and has yet to be resuscitated. When last we issued an update, we had tried replacing the motherboard battery, removing the level 2 cache, and holding down the motherboard reset button for longish periods of time-- all to no avail. The system still doesn't respond in the least to attempts to power it up. So our latest action was to take the advice of a couple of viewers who suggested carefully opening up the power supply and checking the fuse.

Well, as far as we can tell with an unfamiliar and ancient multimeter, the fuse did appear to be blown, so we set off to buy a replacement at Radio Shack. To make a very long and infuriating story short (our cardiologist has advised us not to dwell on this particular experience, for health reasons), we tried two different Radio Shack locations, neither of which had the fuse in stock, and neither of which was confident of being able to special-order the part in less than "five to ten business days." It was at this point that we decided to go to Micro Center and just buy a whole new power supply. (The fact that we were perfectly willing to spend, say, $60 on a new supply when a $1 fuse may have fixed the problem may give you some idea of how frustrating our Shack experience was. Whoops, gotta watch the pulse rate...)

Now this is where things get truly surreal. Micro Center, a vast warehouse of hardware and software beyond the dreams of geekery, had only three power supplies on the shelf. This is a store that's so huge and well-provisioned, it actually has a whole huge room just for Macs, peripherals, and software. It probably stocks three dozen different kinds of internal CD-R drives, but for some reason the power supply selection makes us think of the Mac software rack back in the Egghead brick-and-mortar days. Worse yet, only one of those three power supplies is an ATX model that will physically fit in the PowerTower Pro. And it vents out of the top instead of the sides or back-- meaning that, if we were to install in into our system, it'd likely burn out in a few hours anyway.

More than a tad annoyed, we decided to try our luck at that Hades of computer retail, CompUSA. If things were surreal before, this was the point at which they got truly Kafkaesque. After combing the whole store twice and not finding the power supplies, we took it upon ourselves to ask for help. This turned out to be a serious tactical blunder, and we're now increasingly convinced of two things: 1) the stereotypical male aversion to asking for directions is somehow tied into a gestalt eon-spanning memory of a poor CompUSA shopping experience, and 2) the average CompUSA employee is hand-picked to be as unhelpful as possible.

We tried a few experiments, such as standing near a group of idle saleshands while looking as lost as possible; as we expected, this elicited no reaction. Actively attracting the attention of one of them and asking where the power supplies were resulted in a twenty-second blank stare. Once the inquiry had finally travelled the length of this specimen's nervous system at the speed of sludge through a straw, he slowly led us to-- a wall full of UPS units. "No, not uninterruptible power supplies," we clarified. "Just power supplies. The kind you put in the computer itself." Twenty seconds later, he replied that he had no idea to what I was referring (actually, we believe the exact words were "Me no see power supply. Fire bad!") and sauntered off.

Fascinated, we tried a second salesperson. This one actually claimed that CompUSA doesn't carry power supplies-- a statement we consider equal in outrageousness to claiming that Starbucks doesn't sell coffee, but frankly, by this point we were too exhausted to argue. Holding grimly onto the knowledge that we could always order a power supply over the 'net, we shook our heads, marveled at Apple's unyielding attempts to engender a positive Mac-buying experience in such an unfriendly atmosphere (it must be like growing corn on the surface of Mars), and made our exit.

Anyway, we've since recovered from that little ordeal. We broke open a power supply from an old 7500 and found the exact fuse we needed, but alas, Victoria remains powerless. Our next step will be to order a suitable power supply from a vendor who offers next-day delivery and a decent return policy, just in case Victoria's problem turns out to be a dead motherboard after all. And we'll continue to count our blessings that when we have to deal with computer superstores, we're generally able to confine ourselves to the familiar trappings of the Mac sections. Who knew shopping for a power supply at retail could qualify as a thirteenth Herculean labor?