[OT] Personal Finances: Was The perfect MP3 player

[Steven]

Shane Hathaway wrote:

> Ross Werner wrote:
>
>> I personally think it's a great plan so long as you're still having a 
>> good time while you're waiting for that dream-filled day when you pay 
>> off the house/retire/whatever. Like I said before, if you're living 
>> your life in misery because you're saving so much money so you can 
>> have a debt-free future, then (at least in my opinion) that's not 
>> worth it.
>>
>> Of course, it doesn't sound like you're miserable at all :-) I 
>> imagine you have your own hobbies and you spend your spare time doing 
>> things that you enjoy doing, like posting to the plug list or 
>> whatever. It certainly doesn't have to be blowing hundreds on mp3 
>> players every couple of years. (That wouldn't make me happy, anyway.)
>
>
> Between the ages of 8 and 15, I only had about $10.  I spent a lot of 
> time figuring out exactly how to spend it.  That $10 was worth so much 
> to me that I didn't dare spend it on anything less than spectacular. 
> Not surprisingly, I never found the right thing to spend it on.
>
> However, my research to find the Spectacular Ten Dollar Thing became a 
> great hobby.  I got into electronics and software.  I loved the free 
> catalogs from All Electronics and other distributors.  My parents gave 
> me a Radio Shack 200-in-1 kit for Christmas once and I played with it 
> so much that I wore out all the springs.  People gave me worn out 
> electronic devices and I did dangerously fun things with the innards.
>
> Now that I have money to spend on a hobby, I've bought a few of the 
> gadgets I always wanted--but I haven't used them much.  It turns out 
> that I really liked building stuff; playing with a finished, polished 
> product often isn't very interesting.  While it's unfortunate that I 
> spent a bunch of money on things of low value to me, at least I 
> learned the lesson before I lost money on some silly music player. :-)
>
> Anyway... now I'm thinking about reviving the electronics hobby, but 
> this time with the help of some money: getting a real soldering iron, 
> a multimeter, maybe an oscilloscope, new components instead of 
> recycled resistors, some kind of computer control module, etc.  And 
> I'm going to have a lot of fun researching exactly what I want to buy.
>
> Shane
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>
Hey Shane-
Since you like building things so much, how much would you charge me to 
make an MP3 player out of an Altoids can?
http://web.media.mit.edu/~ladyada/make/minty/index.html
Thanx!