Good position to take on abstaining from additional toys, especially with the economy on hold, waiting for someone to pull out the plug and spiral it dow even further.
Your second and third paragraphs strike a harmonious chord with me because they contain the essence of what I have recently done -- and am still doing -- in my "copious" spare time, and that is delegate CPU intensive tasks across separate machines plus spread internet access across multiple machines as well. Life was so simple and responsible-free in the days when all one needed was a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a simple modem conection to the world. Nowadays you not only have to defend youself from viruses but from unfavorable interactions of your own software as well. Plus with making videos, it's good to kick-off a video project on one machine and forget it while you go on and do your "human-intensive" work on another machine without fear that an inadvertant reboot due to software conflicts.
ASIDE: Remember Boch's ads last year in the Herald when he opened the Honda dealership right next to the Toyota dealerhip in the Norwood area and wrote full-page ads with humungous caracitures of the managers of each dealership duelling each other with swords???. Just like friendly software -- until one wants to rule.
Out of the recombination of old parts plus a few new ones, I have several boxes of spare parts left over. I still have several main items I don't know what to do with:
- A nice working AMD 1100+ computer, complete
- An Optra R+ laser printer (industrial quality)
- A 17" CRT monitor.
- A Compaq laptop with a DVD drive, internet connections, etc.
I seem to remember not yet making good on the promise I made to you concerning summer camp, so if you are interested in the monitor this could be my golden opportunity to square-up. All it needs is a damp washcloth to remove the dust and a computer to plug it into.