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To: lurqer who wrote (1430)	1/20/2001 1:04:47 AM
From: abuelita	Respond to of 104155

You made me smile, lurqer. I'm happy for you and I can hardly wait to be there. Man, I've got so many things to keep me busy, well, I'll probably wish I was still working - not! Soon, baby, soon. Good night folks. Have a good weekend. rosie

To: lurqer who wrote (1430)	1/20/2001 8:46:25 AM
From: Clappy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 104155

I always have had more interests than time. Man, can I relate to that! It can actually be considered one of my major faults. I find that these interests actually get in the way of work. The internet has made it so easy to delve into learning about new and exciting interests where it has become very difficult for me to follow through on some of the things that I would enjoy exploring further. I have a million examples. Here are a few: 1) I built and rebuilt and upgraded the first few PC's I've had over the past few years. It often took hours or days to get them working properly. Even then, I was never satisfied. I was always trying to tweak it to get more horse power out of them. I've gone through at least 3 motherboards, various sound cards, video cards, RAM, power supplies, hard drives, etc. Through it all I kept the huge tower that came with it. I practically wore out those tiny philips head screw holes inside from removing and reinstalling different components. At one tine I had three disk drives all working in perfect harmony with each other. Last year (late 1999?) I got a new Gateway with all the bells and whistles (DVD, CD burner, huge amount of RAM, newest PIII) but was I happy? No. After shelling out big bucks for it, I had to try to fit in some of the good stuff from my ol' self made roadster (or should I say toaster)... That was well over a year ago and now I find it to too slow for my liking, but I don't have the time to screw around with it any more. (Funny thing about all this is that I just finished reloading Windows '98 this morning after my PC blew up last night and refused to fully reboot because I updated some of my drivers...) Anyhow, I was going to make it big as a PC builder or a trouble shooter for people with PC problems, but then I discovered the internet... 2) I used to have my own website. This was back in the days before I discovered how to waste perfectly good time researching stocks on the internet via Yahoo and it's message boards... I was the 1st electrical contractor (or any tradesperson for that matter) that had a website on the internet. If you went to Yahoo or Lycos (way back when they were new) and typed in electrical contractor or National Electric Code, My page popped up as the very 1st link. It was pretty cool. I even created a page where other electrical contractors could find lots of useful information. I was getting lots of hits. I even had a write-up in a trade magazine that I get. I even had the balls to offer the magazine to put their stuff on-line. They weren't quite ready to put their trust into the hands of some tool-belt-wearing-butt-crack-showing electrician. :^) These were the days before Corporate America ruined a lot of the internet for us. Away went a lot of the cool, interesting, homemade sites. (There are still a lot of cool ones out there, but they are much harder to find...) Anyhow, I was going to make it big as a website designer, but then I discovered stocks... 3) It appears that stocks have kept my interest the longest because there are an endless way to make and lose money with them. There are so many companies with promising futures to learn about. It's fun trying to figure out who may have the possible edge over the other competitors. Unfortunately I found out the hard way, that this has little to do with making my portfolio larger especially during the past year...<g> I guess the reason why the stock market has kept my interest for so long is because it is impossible to figure out. It's always changing and always presenting a new challenge. To me, money is only one part of it, figuring it out is what really drives me. It's a tantalizing game of strategy and wit. It's a constant challenge. Perhaps this view of it is a crazy way of looking at it. Maybe the market is not able to be figured. Perhaps we are trying to apply logic to the unlogical... It might be better to invest in a mutual fund that mirrors the S&P 500 and spend more time trying to figure something else out... 4) I actually began doing research on how to build my own robot (using a lot of my old PC equipment and printers). old printers actually have a lot of good parts to do this. Servos and step motors, gears, rollers, etc. Ever take apart a disk drive? Way too cool. Inside you will find the strongest (non-electric) magnets I have ever seen. If you put two of them together, it is very difficult to take apart. If you put one close to your T.V. picture tube it will do some pretty cool maneuvering of those little electrons... (DON'T do this! It could ruin your TV...) I even went out and bought a $100 Lego robot kit in the guise that it was for my 3 year old son <g>. I had big plans to build something cool with it. You attach a programming device to your PC which you can program the thing to do a series of steps. I never actually built anything with it, because I had jumped on to figuring out how to incorporate my old PC with my other robot parts... (My wife saw the huge Lego kit still sitting in the closet after a month and she returned it to Toys R Us and bought the kids some stuff they could actually use...) I never did build a robot. Perhaps someday... I watch that show Battlebots with envy... 5) 3 years ago I bought a 1968 Pontiac Lemans Convertible. This occurred one long winter after football season had ended. Instead of being able to watch football on Sundays, I got caught up in watching a show on TNN called "The Shade Tree Mechanic". Two dudes would show how they did certain repairs on older cars. It didn't seem very difficult. I was always one to change my own oil and belts anyway. I figured I could tool around and buy an old classic type of car and restore it. I searched the internet and local papers for prospects. After countless e-mails and phone calls I located a convertible way out in Long Island. For under 2 Grand I was able to get my hands on a fire engine red, muscle car from the late 60's. The body was in pretty good shape. Only a blister or two in the paint and a rust spot here and there. The rag top had a few holes in it but it could "easily" be replaced. According to the dude, the down fall was that the timing chain was bad and the engine had not run for well over a year. He had tried to fix it himself but had gotten discouraged and bought a Chevy Citation instead. So he handed me a box of engine parts and the radiator and I had the car towed 150 miles home on a flat bed truck. Eventhough the huge engine was halfway dismanted, I could hear it purring... Mind you that I really had no idea how to fix a car except for the basics. I didn't even know what the engine was supposed to look like because most of it was aready in card board boxes... Like a 3D jigsaw puzzle...with missing nuts and bolts... I bought a few service manuals. I say "a few" because I discovered that the motor must have been replaced at one time with a 1972 Pontiac V8 motor and a two speed "Power Glide" transmission. This took a lot of detective work. On the internet I was able to find out what the various serial numbers on the engine and dashboard meant. It took me approximately 2 months of tinkering and scrounging parts on my time off to eventually get it running. There is so much room under the hood of an old car compared to today's cars. You can see the part you need to fix and actually reach it without taking apart the entire car... I remember the day that I finally turned the key and got the engine running. The feeling was incredible. It was a distant second place to the feeling I had on the days that my two sons were born. I had such a big smile on my face. I remember yelling up to my wife in excitement and joy. She came out to see smoke pouring out of the broken tail pipes and busted mufflers. I think everyone in the neighborhood knew that I had gotten that old car running from all the noise it made. Eventually I patched together the mufflers and tail pipes enough to take it for a ride. I compounded and waxed the old paint job and got it to shine bright like the chrome bumpers. I remember the first time taking it out. I had the top down on a beautiful spring day. I was driving the country roads near my house and passing the rolling hills of the various neighboring farms outside of our small town. I had Allman Bros. in the old tape deck and the pedal down. I enjoyed the heck out of that ride. I would occasionally take it out for rides on nice weekends. A few times I had to have my wife come and jumpstart the car (once at the gas station and once across the street from that same gas station... I don't drive any where near that jinxed gas station with the car any more...) Actually I haven't driven anywhere with that car lately. The last time I had it out, I made it back to my road when the brake line got a crack in it. I just barely was able to get to my driveway with any braking power. I actually had to use the emergency brake to stop in my driveway. I see what the problem is, but I just don't have the time and energy to take apart everything just to get to it. So now it sadly sits gathering rust until spring or summer... 6) There are a lot of other good examples but I think I'm beginning to run out of bandwidth... <Clappy saves the story of the large back porch he added to his house to replace the old rotten deck that was there...> <He files the story with the huge vegetable garden he plans for this coming spring...> <Mrs. Clappy begins to shudder as she realizes that football season will be over next week. This is usually when he begins learning about a new hobby...> <She remembers the time that he almost bought a 26 ft. sail boat for $500 that had been recently patched with fiberglass, cleaned and painted. The only problem was that every single piece of hardware had been removed, it was out of the water and didn't have a trailer other than the cinder blocks that were holding it up...> True story. I came very close to buying it when I used to live on Long Island... I still think about how nice I could have made that boat...I was going to sail it to the Florida Keys...or beyond... Anyone have any hobbies? Whew, Lurqer. I think you struck a nerve... -Clappy@IWishICouldMakeMillionsOnTheStockMarketSoICouldHaveMoreTimeForHobbies/WorkIsNotEnjoyable.com P.S. I recently started watching that show on The Learning Channel called "Junk Yard Warriors" (or something like that). Anyone ever see it? Oh boy does it have my wheels turning... They give the teams of contestants 10 hours to build some sort of predefined machine using nothing but the various parts found in the junk yard. So far I've seen the shows where they built a dune buggy using a motor cycle engine, a hover craft, a diving helmet with air pump, and a motor boat (using the top of a van and a motor cycle engine)... Then they race to see who's contraption was designed and built better... <...Clappy begins looking on the internet for a place where he can get a junked motorcycle...It seems that those engines come in handy...I wonder if there is a way to hook it up to some of those old PC/robot parts...> <g>