Well, I finally had a good amount of time to mess with my computer. I can't get it to show anything on the monitor. I can't even get the monitor to go from orange light to green light. I tried the onboard video card and also a legit video card. I re-mounted/re-seated everything including the motherboard. I unplugged everything that isn't absolutely necessary for the computer to boot. Nothing. I exhausted the entirety of Evan's Troubleshooting Guide with no results. It's not getting far enough to even give me an error. I don't know if my motherboard got fried in a power surge or some other freakish incident.

As cool and fun as this linux laptop is, I need a computer with Windows XP in order to work on photos, videos, and music.

I'm starting to think that maybe building your own computer isn't worth it.