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you forgot the most important step - ground yourself in some way, especially in the winter (dry air) and especially on carpet or if you're wearing clothes that can produce static electricity. One little spark can wreck your whole day. What I generally do is plug the power supply into the wall and then touch the case every time I move. Plugging it in grounds it, and that will dissipate the static electricity.
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Damn, beat me to it.
Yeah, I can't emphisize this one enough. Every year, as part of my job, I have to go through ESD (electro-static discharge) certifications. Even a static discharge so small you can't even feel it is enough to completely destroy electronic circuits, or significantly weaken them. The biggest problem is that you probably won't even notice that something has been fried until several weeks or months later when you start seeing random crashes or other quirkiness. If you are doing this kind of thing in the winter, I really suggest you use an ESD bracelet. Its just a piece of elastic that holds a metal contact to your wrist... a wire runs from the contact to an aligator clip which is attached to a ground. You could make one pretty easily, but if you do this kind of thing often, it would be well worth the investment.