Or maybe you've gotten lucky with your board?
Could be just lucky. One thing about the Arduino is that it is inexpensive and pretty simple to troubleshoot and repair, so I'm one not to worry too much about trying things with it. Other then a bad FTDI chip I think I could fix just about anything possible that I might damage and in the mean time I'm having a ton of fun.
It's not like those first micro computers and boards from the late 70s and 80s where your initial investment was so high that one was afraid to attempt to mess with it at first. 
Lefty