This is good for a laugh (if it's not happening to you)

Ok, I am a *very* inexperienced computer surgeon. Most of my experience is the hard way, trial and error, why didn't somebody TELL me you could put that in backwards, kind of stuff. So when my CD-RW drive wouldn't burn (it would play CDs but I kept getting a 'bad media' error when I tried to burn) I figured not all of the CDs I tried could be bad (sure, there were some cheap ones in there, but...). I took one to work and burned it there, which confirmed my suspicions. So I bit the bullet and bought a new Memorex 52x CD-RW to replace my 1 yr old Sony that came with the HP Pavilion computer. I was sweating those same bullets when I pulled the back off to replace the CD-RW, but after reviewing these posts, I figured I'd just put the new one exactly where the old one went, and not worry about settings unless I had to. And -voila- it worked! My 16 yr old son, who is *so* worldly when it comes to computers, knows all the latest gear and hardware and terms, scored 97% on the "Are You A Geek?" test, etc. etc., re-connected the cables, and we burned a CD. Yay! *BUT*...
Of course, it couldn't go smoothly. All of a sudden we had no sound. Plus (we use MusicMatch Jukebox for downloading music, must have something like 1 Gb of music stored on our HD) the MMJB was all of a sudden giving me an error code when I tried to burn a CD thru it--the code was "non licensed track, unspecified error." NOT a good message to get when you have well over $1000 worth of music on the !@#$@# computer...So I re-installed the MMJB and updated the code needed to access the music. Well and good, but I still had no sound. At least I could burn songs now, and play them on something else. But I still needed to find out why the sound wasn't working--my 11-yr old daughter wanted to play The Sims 2 and couldn't stand not hearing the music. So I searched the posts for more advice, but didn't find anything more specific than "update the drivers." Well, to make a long story even longer, I went to Creative's website and tried to find my soundcard (which is so old they don't make drivers for it anymore). I wanted to make sure I got the latest driver, so I pulled the side off the computer and double-checked the model number. Then...when I went to plug the computer back in and was re-connecting all the cables...I realized my brilliant Rocket Scientist son had plugged the speakers into the wrong port. Sigh. After I berated him for about as long as I spent researching why a soundcard would stop working after installing a CD-RW drive, I felt compelled to share my story with others and pass on the #1 lesson I learned from this experience: Don't let your 16 yr old help you make computer repairs; make him do them himself.
Hm, I think I'd like a new soundcard...