Warning: Macs May Cause Irritability

I'm a pretty technically oriented person, and anyone who knows me will attest to that. I can fix nearly any problem that comes up on a PC, and I'm pretty good on the Mac too (I have worked as a Mac technician at a school - though for only a short period of time). So why am I having such a hard time fixing my Mac at home? It's simple. Apple has created a method of causing their computers to self destruct. Oh and also Macs suck (YES I am allowed to say that because I use Macs as much as I use PCs, every day of the week, so don't think that I'm just some PC guy who has never used a Mac before). Here's the run down. My wife was given an iMac quite some time ago, and it has been running OS 9 quite well since I did a clean install on the drive. Lately, I have been considering making the update to OS X and just yesterday was given a copy (yes a legit copy before someone out there calls the piracy police). I want to set up iStore because I bought my wife an MP3 player for Christmas. Some of this story will make me look like an idiot, but that's okay, read on if you will. I read on the install notes that if you have an old firmware version, to update it before installing OS X. It ALSO said in the install notes that if you DO have an old firmware version, you will be prompted and will not be able to install the software. No biggie, right? So I boot off of the OS X CD and everything seems to be in order, no prompts, and I start walking through the install process. I wanted to partition the drive, so I did, and then erased the contents of both partitions and proceed with the install. THEN, only after all of this, I get the dialog that tells me I have to update the firmware, AFTER I already partitioned and removed my OS 9. Why, oh WHY Apple did you not just add something to the installer that would check the firmware version, apparently half of the people updating have had this same issue - and the ones that follow. I boot from the OS 9 CD and reinstall. I downloaded the firmware update, and then it tells me I need to update to OS 9.1 before I can update the firmware, so I did that too. And now at this point the computer decided that it wanted to kill me by giving me an aneurism, so it shut itself down, and since, I have not been able to get it to boot up fully again. Read on. So, I zapped the PRAM, as is a common practice to resolve simple issues with Mac boot problems, and then read online about 10 minutes later "Do NOT zap the PRAM, as this will only worsen the problem". Great, nice move. So then I read an article about resetting the PMU (I think that's what it's called). It's a small button on the mainboard, and I found it and while searching for it I kinda pressed it. So then I remembered that you're supposed to hold it for about a half second, so I did that. Then I read online about 10 minutes later "Do NOT press the PMU button more than once, as this can fry the mainboard on the computer". Great, nice move again. At this point, I am at a loss, what else could go wrong? The computer will start to boot, but the monitor will not come on (apparently something to do with the OS X installer setting the screen refresh to some level that the built in monitor cannot handle, and this is resolved in the firmware update that was supposed to be done before all you-know-what broke loose in my Mac). And on top of that, the computer will NOT boot beyond about 5 or 6 seconds. I press the power button, the computer starts up (no monitor display) and then after a few seconds, it just shuts off. Anyone in the Charlotte/Lee/Sarasota County area of Florida that wouldn't mind coming to fix my wife's iMac? I can't afford to pay you, but I'll buy you lunch or something, but we have to eat at Burger King or something, I hope that's okay. I cannot get it to boot any further than this, no matter what. If I can get it to boot and not shut down, even if the built-in monitor doesn't work, I can likely fix it. I have a few other options that I will try when I get home (external monitor, leave unplugged for a long time, remove battery, unplug components, programmer reset, boot into firmware update mode, etc. etc.) If that doesn't work, I guess I'll be practicing my hammer throw tonight - I need exercise anyway.