The ship of Theseus problem is in its simplest form: “If you were to replace every plank in a ship over time would it still be the same ship?”
My first computer was named bluebeast (if you have any comments about whether naming a computer is weird, save them until you can passably describe the interrelation of DNS, DHCP and the SMB protocol (optionally successfully configuring the SAMBA implementation)). It’s first iteration was in a full height (read: huge) server box that was a very distinct blue, hence bluebeast; it was first booted at the end of 2002 largely built from components provided as Christmas presents. It’s first major upgrade was Christmas 2003 (freshman year of college) consisting of a DVD burner, a doubling of RAM and an addition of some 300GiB of hard drive space. Moving back to California for the summer, I discovered that moving the case back was impractical/expensive, so I tossed it. Over the summer I acquired a low end PCI card allowing for dual monitors. At the end of sophomore year (Summer, 2005) I moved to Seattle and my computer did not boot again. It wouldn’t even POST, implying at the very least motherboard failure.
Finally I discovered a deal compelling enough to justify resurrecting the beast. New motherboard and cpu for 80 bucks, and the motherboard was low-end enough that it would take my old DDR memory. The main goal of this machine was to serve as a glorified stereo, being able to play my Yahoo music software over my 5.1 system (which has also been mothballed since my sophomore year), but then I realized that it was a huge waste of an Athlon 3000+, 768MiB RAM, 400GiB HD system to simply sit there playing music, especially given that it’d be running Windows (DRM is your friend). I have therefore decided to build it out into a full blown windows media center editio box. Unfortunately that means I have another 200 bucks minimum that I have to drop on it, but I think the ability to use a remote to control 40GiB of music + TiVo functionality + DVD playback should be worth it.
Next friday is my last day, so if you want anything that Microsoft sells at a profit, tell me and I can get it cheap.