- One of my favorite stories is from back in the 90s. A guy bought a 16-bit sound card for his computer, but for whatever reason decided he only needed an 8-bit sound card. Instead of taking it back and exchanging it, he figured all he needed to do was get a pair of scissors and physically cut the sound card in half.
- I once had a customer that wanted a light in her computer, similar to a computer she saw at one of her friend's houses. So she lit a candle and set it inside her tower case.
- An man purchased a laptop from me. He called about a week later and said that it would no longer boot up. He brought it in, and I discovered that sixteen nicely drilled holes were in the bottom of the case. I asked him about it, and he said the machine was too hot sitting on his lap, so he had drilled these "air holes." "Could that be the problem?" he asked.
- Once when I was brousing through a flea market, I came across an unusually large display of random pieces of junk that were for sale. The guy had a few computer parts lying in bins filled with brown water. His excuse was "The water will help it slip in better." I tried to tell him that the parts were all dead, but he insisted that they were fine and asked me to leave.