I have your typical C++ experience taught in an engineering curriculum and rather enjoyed it; my brain definitely works in algorithms. I'd love to try the more web-centric platforms around now (eg., perl, php, javascript, etc.) but I really don't have any idea how to start.

Not criticizing WM here, but as a hardware-oriented engineer, I'd love to hear a post-mortem on this issue. Perhaps it's as you say and the promised PSUs are different then the prototypes; but either way, as someone who has a myriad of different design requirements (including electrical safety) I'd love to hear where WM thinks things broke down.

EDIT: The particular reason I'd love to hear a post-mortem on this is because I work for a mega-corp that is supposed to have the process to prevent such a mistake. Although all of our hardware undergoes both design testing and factory acceptance testing, we still manage to miss our share of mistakes. I would love to hear what WM thinks they missed.