You can permanently destroy a PicKit 2 programming pod in an easy un-documented manner.
1) Tie one or more pins of a PIC MCU to ground; it does not help to have MCU program use the pin(s) as inputs. 2) Program then power up the MCU with the PicKit 2; you may need to do power down and power up a few times. ZZZZzzzzzaaaaaa:P:! No Poof, No Frap, No Zap; it just gets killed. As far as i can tell the USP port is not damaged; my 1Gbyte stick still reads OK.And the damn pods are not cheap.