It was the last week of my intensive care rotation, and I’ve come to realize that most ICU patients just tend to deteriorate slowly over time. They start with a little hypertension and heart failure, then get some community-acquired pneumonia, goes into respiratory failure, gets mechanically ventilated, gets ventilator-associated pneumonia, becomes septic, goes into shock, then develop acute renal failure (or as we would write, a pt w/ HTN, CHF p/w CAP + resp failure, now on AC, c/b VAP, SIRS, and ARF). In ways, my aging desktop has become like my very own ICU patient. First, my data was corrupted, so I thought there were just some bad sectors. But soon, my motherboard started misbehaving, then my power supply was blown. I ultimately had to order new parts, including a new processor, motherboard, memory, video card, case, and power supply. Last week, it felt like a multi-transplant surgery as I reconnected the vital components. Finally, with a new Athlon 64 X2 dual-core 4600+ CPU, XFX nForce 590 SLI mobo, 2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000 DDR2 RAM, PNY GeForce 7900GS PCI-E video, and a pair of WD 250GB SATA HDs in RAID 0, powered by a CoolMax 500W PSU, and encased in a jet black Antec tower, my computer is about to be brought back to life. Say hello to Vader.