The Mad World of Computers

The land of computing systems is a bit like the land of Old Testament gods: Lots of rules and no mercy - and no common sense.
The words of my former lecturer still ring in my ears. And during the last few days they have been proven accurate more often than usual. Let me explain:
A bit more than a week ago my office PC started acting up. Whenever I was playing a CD using Windows Media Player the computer not only crashed, it powered down - as if somebody had pulled the plug - and rebooted. Talk about strange.
Over the course of a few days this became a consistent phenomenon. I notified our Technical Services team and we went through a few simple things like checking cables and upgrading Media Player to version 10. That didn't do it. So then, last Saturday, they formatted the hard-disk, re-installed the operating system and all the software.
That did not actually make it better but worse! Now it would also crash even if Media Player was not running at all. So, I spent all of yesterday struggling with a PC that would spontaneously power down and various pieces of software that would close or malfunction for no apparent reason. What a day!
The guys from Tech Services then decided to put together a replacement PC for me since the original one obviously needed maintenance. I received the replacement this morning. It promptly started exhibiting almost identical behaviour to the original one. Only this one would crash to a blue screen when starting up and reboot immediately. Now both me and the technician were stupefied (and still are).
He acted quickly, though, rounding up another PC for me (a brand new one this time). I also got a new mouse (yaay!).
Let's see how this one does. It is after all only lunchtime. It would be so ironic if we found out it was a faulty power cable or something of that sort. I am almost prepared to resort to supestition now believing that me or my desk or the place where I sit are jinxed. It all started so abruptly. There you are thinking you understand computers, expecting they will behave in a logical or consistent way. Think again.
... no common sense.