The part about your dad's Packard Bell locking up every time you loaded it in front of your uncle Ray really got me, because that is just how life works. You never find out something is broken until you are trying to show it off to somebody. Same thing happens with me and my printer, works fine all week, then my sister visits and it jams on page one. That 12 year old telling you your page would crash Netscape is a good reminder that the person who knows the most about something is not always the person with the most years behind them. Kids in those days were messing around with HTML on WebTV while the rest of us were just happy the internet worked at all. I wish I still had my old zip disks, pretty sure mine got tossed in a move along with a shoebox of AOL trial CDs.

Kept a log like that once too but honestly the plug wearing out is just normal, not a badge.