How's your life going at 33%

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I too use Crucial memory and P4s. And my system is so quiet I can hear a pin drop. The box is very cool too. I started doing this years ago because I didn't want to be dependent upon someone to fix my system when problems developed. Now there's nothing I can't fix.

I've been building PC's since the 8080 was a "new thing", so I've tried to keep myself fresh by continuing to play with the technology and build my new machines. Like you said, doesnt save much money, but the quality is good and the repairs are easier.

I got off on the weenie PC thing for a while, made a nice shoebox machine for my home theater but I got tired of keeping up more than one machine. I also spent the better part of a week sawing up an old 100 disk dvd changer box and fitting pc guts into it to have it blend in better with the rest of my home entertainment stuff. Then I decided I didnt care much about that

Gosh I have so much software and find no trouble getting my hands on newer versions and newer titles due to my ties with the old company that I havent bought any retail in a million years. That would really jack up the cost.

I cant see myself replacing this beast for a long time though. I found through a lot of effort that the "sweet spot" in response time for most current software is roughly a 2GHz Celeron, and the P4 I have now only sees 100% loads when I'm encoding a dvd.

 

[Bob_Smith]

My first PC was a "Compuadd" 8088. I think they were out of Austin. It had a 20MB HDD and cost around $2,000 with a tiny B&W monitor. I thought it was incredible at the time.

 

[Roger_R]

Just wanted to say thanks for all of the help.  I've re-read a couple of time and will probably do again.  I guess theoretically, my lifestyle will not seem to change that much.  I've tried to calculate my withdrawal amounts to equal my current spending, though I have scrimped a little to save enough for ER and would like to open up just slightly.  To uncluemick's frugal examples I went through period of dumping clothes washer water onto my lawn to save on watering bills. I don't want to do this again.  I did enjoy and learned from Bob's appliance allocations.  Man, Bob - you have a lot of appliances.  Anyway, thanks.  Hope I can give something back in discussion or advice.  This is a great forum for me to spend some time with right now.

 

[wabmester]

I've been building PC's since the 8080 was a "new thing"

Wow! You must have been a precocious 12 year old!

The 8080 was intro'd in 1974. Even the 8088 was available about 3 years before IBM did the PC thing.

I considered going into the PC Clone biz about the same time Michael Dell did, but my dad talked me out if it. (I think the conversation went something like, me: "Dad, will you fund my PC Clone biz?" Dad: "No.")

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Actually I was 13/14 when I started building PC's and writing code. Precocious? Perhaps...

My very first was an Elf 6901 bitslice single board machine that had a keypad for input and an LED display for output. I "graduated" to a PDP-8/E with an ASR-33 teletype (WITH PAPER TAPE READER AND PUNCH!) shortly thereafter.

Introduced <> new with regards to real people. Intel was looking for industrial applications for the 80xx for some time before Imsai and Altair thought to create ready made homebrew machines. Ten Grand a pop for a box, an 8080, 2k of ram, 2k of rom with a monitor (OS - not a screen) in it, and then you paid extra for the cassette storage, the tiny basic (and I *may* be tempted by treats to tell you about the time I threw a certain harvard dropout named "Bill" out of the store after he demonstrated the worlds buggiest Basic language interpreter to me), and any other add-ons you thought you might like to fiddle with. That year an odd guy named Russ came in with what may have been the worlds first graphics card, called a Merlin. I couldnt think of a more worthless device at the time...:-/ All 160x80 pixels of it. After the upgrade.

 

[wabmester]

Heh, now you're talking some good geek stuff. I always thought the Elf was based on the 1802, though. I think I still have one in a closet somewhere. And I remember the big blue box well -- an Intellec, right? Ah, those were those days when men were men, and modems were 300 baud.

 

[Bob_Smith]

Man, Bob - you have a lot of appliances.

Roger, I plan to make up for all the appliances by cutting back on the clothes budget:

-- Two sweat-shirts
-- Two sweat-pants
-- Two pairs of white socks
-- Two underwear

I'd make it one each, but if I do that my wife wouldn't be able to resist me on wash days. I don't think I can keep up.

 

[renferme]

I have a friend who is not frugal, he's downright cheap.
Still working, but here's some of the things he does:
. buys used vehicles at a government auction.
. when the cuff on his trousers rips loose, he staples it.
. when he gets a hole in the sole of his shoe, he cuts a piece of cardboard and puts it inside the shoe.
. when a pair of slacks ripped one day at work, he took a magic marker and wrote on his pants " throw away ". A few days later we saw him wearing the same slacks to work.
. wears socks with holes in them. not small holes - BIG ones with the entire heel holed.
. he's 50 years old and still wearing clothes from high school.
. when a local car dealer was offering free hot dogs just to get customers into the dealership, he took his family to dinner there.
. all his clothes look like they just came out of the wash basket, never folded or hung. Completely wrinkled!
. when our 'group' goes to lunch together, he orders french fries and a glass of water.
This is all true! When we tease him about it ( and we do) he just grins.
.

 

[renferme]

Bob Smith,
You know you can go 4 days wearing the same underwear : (1) Front, (2) Back, (3) Inside, (4) Out.

At that rate you wouldn't have to launder, but every 8 days.

 

[renferme]

Bob Smith,
OR, be like Kramer, and don't wear any underwear.
Kramer: " Jerry, I'm out there baby, and I'm loving it ".

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

YOU had a 300 baud modem? Lucky. After we were done sleeping by clinging to the windowsills and eating hot gravel for breakfast, we hooked up our andersen jacobsen acoustic couplers at a heady 110 baud and went to work!

If my memory serves, and this is a nearly 30 year old memory tainted by a great deal of chocolate pudding consumption, the 6901/6902 were someones second source for the 1801/1802 and were highly overclockable. Somebody and I cant remember who (but I'm thinking hitachi?) made a mainframe type machine out of a bunch of them around 1976-78ish. However I couldnt quickly find any reference to the chip at all.

Ok, you bunch of guys squinting at the screen, pointing and yelling "NERDS!!", cut it out.

Back to our regularly scheduled thread...

By the way Bob, I like good appliances too. I always spend a little more on good ones because it pays in the long haul. I just picked up a set of front loading washer dryers because they're so good to the clothes and use so little water and electricity that they pay for themselves within a short time. And I just bought a new refrigerator...my 18 year old kenmore is starting to make "compressor death imminent" noises. Got a nice bottom freezer energy star model that will pay for itself in the electricity savings alone in 8-10 years. By the way, sams club and costco have some fantastic prices on appliances. The new fridge was $100 cheaper than the identical model at Sears, who refused to honor their "price matching" policy. Delivery was half as much as well.

Referring back to the first page concerns about not wanting to go back to "beater" cars and living a pedestrian lifestyle, that isnt what this is all about. My last "beater" was a '97 Infiniti Q45 I bought for under $20k in 2000, did an afternoon of maintenance on and then drove for 3 years without problems. My new "beater" is a 2000 Ford Expedition, loaded. What I avoid is spending $40-60k on a car that isnt worth that, $200 for a pair of pants and $30 for a plate with a medium rare steak on it.

That having been said, I really enjoyed the "high flying" lifestyle for many years, but at this point I'm completely uncertain why that felt good to me.

 

[Skylark]

I take used up half dryer sheets and sew them together with lint to make my own underwear.

 

[Cut-Throat]

OR, be like Kramer, and don't wear any underwear.
Kramer: " Jerry, I'm out there baby, and I'm loving it ".

We call this going commando. Jesse Ventura former Governor of Minnesota, banned these also! - I went into the Navy the same month Ventura did and in Hot climes, it (underwear) was just in the way.

I am also free and loving it !!

I know - more information than you wanted to hear

 

[John Galt]

Hey Cut-throat! Thanks for sharing .

One of my favorite movies is "Predator" starring
the former gov. of Minn. and the current gov. of Calif.
Jesse used a line from the movie for the title of his book.
But, you know that.

John Galt

 

[sgeeeee]

I take used up half dryer sheets and sew them together with lint to make my own underwear.

I made a robot out of discarded microprocessors that goes around the house collecting lint. Then I sew the lint into underwear. Then after I've warn the underwear 4 times, I donate them to charity and take a write-off.

 

[Hiss]

Then after I've warn the underwear 4 times, I donate them to charity and take a write-off.

I was really starting to believe all this until Salaryguru said he donated his to charity. Now I know it's not true because charity doesn't accept underwear anymore. I think it all had to do with something about Clinton, but I'm not sure.

 

[John Galt]

Hey Bob_Smith, re. your post of 2-7-04, I agree that
many (most?) regular posters proably share these
traits. Personally, I admire "guts" over almost any other trait. Anyway, an aside which may offer some
insight into ER thinking (I know I repeat but after 500 posts it's not avoidable). During my career I was unemployed many times. Never dismayed, I always welcomed it as a time to recharge and find new
challenges/adventures. I know people lose their jobs and get depressed or even suicidal. For me it was always a nice interval. I enjoyed being unemployed, almost everytime it happened. But, I am a different breed of cat and certainly egomaniacal. Never met a problem I did not think I could lick with brainpower and willpower.

John Galt

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I take used up half dryer sheets and sew them together with lint to make my own underwear.

Ok after I was done laughing my ass off, the wife asked what was so funny.

From her: "I think you retired people have too much time on your hands".

I predict a lengthy "honey do" list to await my awakening tomorrow...

 

[BusyMom]

Another reference to used up dryer sheets - John Galt, you really are working on that book?!

Skylark - you posted re:guy who made more but saved less...isn't that amazing? I think the spendthrifts are really uncomfortable being reminded that they could do better. I have a sibling who is like that - used to drive me nuts but now that we are older, I just talk about how our ER is closer every day...drives him over the edge....and saves on my Christmas shopping list! I remember a huge issue over my family's vacation to Hong Kong ($1500 for air/hotel/b'fastx3 people for 1 week) and how it wasn't fair that all he could afford was the super satellite pkg and dinner in a restaurant 3x a week.....

 

[Telly]

Wow, a lot of posts on all the topics in this thread! I'll throw my $.02 on what I can remember:

I'll pass on the hog butchering

TH, I hope that stucco exterior isn't the synthetic stucco that traps water behind it so well. Many lawsuits on rotting with it.

I don't think I've seen a water heater last 20 years (unless it didn't have water in it ).

A rule of thumb is that the average car loses about 50% of its value every 3 years. Almost all of the new cars and trucks that I have bought, I or we hung on to for years. But for those so inclined, keep buying new cars and get rid of them after 3 years or so. We like you!

Tankless water heaters are a European invention, due to high energy costs there. They dream of being able to splurge and have a stable hot water source like we do!
The output temperature of a tankless heater is very flow-dependent. Low flow, high temp. High flow, low temp. And you add the temperature increase onto your inlet water temperature. So if the tankless can add, for example, a 40 degree delta at a given flow rate, but your inlet water temp in freezeville USA is only 50 degrees in winter, that's only 90 degrees out of it.

1802? That was the RCA COSMAC 8 bit CMOS processor! That's back to, like 1978.
And loved that 8080. Circa 1977, we found that there was no illegal opcode filtering in it. A noise pulse induced into a bus could create an illegal opcode, and the CPU would go off into la-la land. That was a long time ago!

 

[TheFIREman]

I have a friend who is not frugal, he's downright cheap.
Still working, but here's some of the things he does:
...
. when he gets a hole in the sole of his shoe, he cuts a piece of cardboard and puts it inside the shoe.

Reminds me of a story I once read about one of Japan's wealthiest men. He used to buy his shoes at the discount store and then when he got a hole in them, he would put a band-aid over it. The only thing he got wrong was that he worked so much that he could never remember the names or ages of his children. Now that is certainly grabbing the wrong end of the stick.

 

[unclemick]

The wrong end of the stick was the part she threatened to use on my head if I went too crazy on frugal experiments. Also - "You can't take it with you".

 

[John Galt]

Hello BusyMom! Re. "the book", I have the chapter
structure all worked out now, and about 50 possible titles bouncing in my head. May actually start writing
soon but don't hold your breath. BTW, two things I have been told for years are "You should write a book"
and "You should be on the radio". Maybe I'll start when
I am too old to ride the motorcycle.

John Galt

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Re: water heaters...yep, i've had several that went 20+ here in california. Probably a combination of warmer temperatures and low water heating temp...the higher you set the water heater the shorter the life. The one in my first california house (1992ish) had a date stamp of 1974 on it and was still there a few years later when I sold. My old house in new england (1985ish) had a 1969 stamp on it and didnt start leaking until 7 years later. Unfortunately it was in an upstairs closet.

Just as an FYI to water heater buyers...this is not 100% the case but for most water heaters the difference between the 10 year and 15 year (or whatever) is what you pay for the unit. You're financing the warranty.

In any case, the water heater in california is usually in the garage as opposed. I'll wait until it starts leaking a lot before I replace it.

The tankless units have their plusses as long as you install them in an area that doesnt freeze, and to get the extra temp boost you may install two in series.

re: Stucco. Nope, this beast is the old style 3 layer stucco over an inch thick, laid on galvanized mesh over heavy tar paper over sheeting. You can hardly hear any exterior noise inside this house, and the temp insulation characteristics are terrific.

The EIFS stucco system you mentioned is a sheet of foam insulation covered with a fine mesh. Its nailed to the sheeting and then a thin layer of stucco is sprayed to it. The original problem is that any water that got behind it was absorbed by the foam and the original designs didnt have a drainage system. The newer EIFS, properly applied, has the ability to drain some water, but basically you just need to fill any cracks or separated seams with a nice elastomeric stucco patch every couple of years. My dads house uses EIFS, and its a very good insulator and quick and cheap to install on a house.

re: cheapness and shoes. I just had a sole separate on a pair of sneakers. I could reglue the sole on, but they're a little beat. They've gone in and out of the trash three times now. I think I'll reglue them and make "yard shoes" out of them.

I would also like to point out that at this time I am clad in nothing but used dryer sheets.

 

[fire5soon]

I would also like to point out that at this time I am clad in nothing but used dryer sheets.

On special occasions you could actually wear a new dryer sheet. Chicks dig Snuggles.