After I retired in 2014, I wanted to give back to society for what was a decent career (electrical engineering). I chose cat rescue, so I have a 'Cat Tuesday' every week where I feed feral cats in the morning and rescue cats at pet stores in the afternoon / evening. It's one day a week that I commit to helping cats, as they are very special to me. We have three cats in our home and two outside that adopted us (they have heated beds by our front door in the winter months). It's a sad fact that I don't game very much anymore, mostly due to my right wrist that was damaged in a 1983 motorcycle accident and that same arm was broken in early 2019 when I fell on black ice while walking in the woods. As we get older, age starts to creep up on us and so you need to do your favorite things while you're still healthy. I do enjoy building computers though. I usually build one a year because I love to create things.
I have a brand new hobby, started about 5 months ago while remodeling my son's room. Since, for now, he wants to be a jet fighter pilot, we themed his bedroom with jet fighters' posters and models hanging from the ceiling. Fighters include classics from the Vietnam era to post-cold war, like the F-4 Phantom, F-16 Falcon, F-14 Tomcat, A-10 Hog, etc.
So I went all out and got an airbrush kit, bought a few kits, paint, cement, tools and started modeling. (I did some modeling when I was a teenager, but not at this level). Here are a few pics:
I have to say it's a great hobby (as playing chess, I'm hooked). I do it at night, when the kiddo and wife are asleep. I spend an hour or two in the garage building and painting...it helps me relax and get away from it all (I'm sure you know what I mean).
By the way, this is a great discussion @Key-J ! I enjoyed reading everyone's replies - great people, great hobbies, thank you all!
This whole fiasco with chip shortages and crazy prices kinda pushed me away from my 20+ year hobby as a PC enthusiast. My second passion is cars, so I've had 3 different Mustangs in the past 2 years. My latest, which I bought about 6 weeks ago is a 2003 Mustang Mach 1. They were a limited edition model only made in '03 and '04. I have some plans to upgrade it when spring comes. I also plan to travel around to some car shows and meets around my area. I've also started to revamp my basement gaming setup. Covid put a huge damper on hosting LAN parties, so I'm hoping to have my LANcave re-done by the time most of this is 'over'. It's going to be focused on 'retro' PC gaming if you want to call it that. I want to focus on games from about 1999 to the mid to late 2000's. My kids were fairly young then, and we had LAN parties all the time. We all agree that most newer games can't hold a candle to older games for LAN parties. We play lots of FPS and RTS games. With my LANcave version 1.0 we'd sometimes have LAN parties 4 or 5 times a week. The most PCs we ever had gaming at one time was 19. Great time! Included a link to an old Imgur gallery - https://imgur.com/gallery/pCJYT
@red5 - We have similar interests. I'm not so much into cars anymore though. I did help a friend rebuild a Sunbeam Tiger (maybe 1967 or 1968?) in my parents garage back in the late 1970's / early 1980's, but I mostly just drive around to support cat rescue activities now. I was studying to be an auto mechanic in high school and then the first year of community college when I switched to electrical engineering as a career. That took another four years of university to complete, plus two years of night school to get my MSEE while working as an engineer. I do like hosting LAN parties though and this COVID-19 issue has impacted that quite a bit. I'm thinking about a Labor Day LAN party at Big Al's Computers this year. I hope I can make it happen.
