lol indeed... BSCpE and half of an EE degree lol ;-) so I should hope I know what a capactor is

I was refering to what exact effects it has in the system... hypothetically speaking that cause the problems and by noise I mean the signals degrade enough that they don't jive with the on off voltage of some transistors somewhere on occasion.. because it does work *sometimes* but there is something going on during the system startup that makes it at least more susceptible to these problems.... still happens while the system is running though eventually.

And trust me you still learn all about bypass capacitors in EE lab ... that and don't use the crappy breadboards in the kits they gave us!