I nearly made my HDTV (the center of my universe) completely worthless. While playing with the color decoder by hooking it up to my computer, my whole place lost power. It is not wise to be reprogramming its EEPROM (the RAM ((like a computer's RAM)) where the TV's instructions are stored. As in, "What should I do after my power button is pressed?") when you lose power. Thus, when power was restored (and after a loss of two pounds of flop sweat) I turned it back on.
The result was, in a word, heartstopping. A $2,000 TV that I saved years to buy now looked as if the top right corner of the screen had been peeled back like the stay-fresh cover on a can of peanuts.
Imagine, if you will, taking your TV, breaking it diagonaly from the top left to the bottom right, and then curling the top part backwards until the top right corner was behind the middle of the screen. Now sit down and watch it. Truly a sight to see.
Upon further reflection... I see no reason why anyone would care about my TV. I got it fixed after much consternation. Still, if I only wrote stuff people would care about, then I would have never started this site.