Greg wrote on 06/03/12 at 08:28:32:


Exactly. I spend most of my time either working or raising my kids, but still make time for a couple of mostly-neglected hobbies.

I keep a couple of large fish tanks

I do the usual man-of-the-house fix up work, keep a small garden and like to fix up motorcycles

I make wine. Which is an excellent hobby for the procrastinator because it doesn't hurt anything to let it sit... oh, what a shame, too much fermentation!  

RC Cars, Helicopters and Airplanes. Its a full time job repairing my UhOh's. My son is a very talented driver, we're on a race track about every weekend.

I am 62 and can still hear 14000 cycles on a good day. Before I dropped the dime on the speakers I have now I asked on an audio forum if they were worth my while at my age and quality of hearing. Good speakers do a lot more than reproduce the frequency extremes, I was told. They reproduce better ambiance, image better, have better dynamics etc., etc.
So I bought 'em and they did sound a lot better even though I could not hear the highs that my previous speakers did not have.
The best tweak I ever did was to put dedicated power circuits, with isolated grounds, to the components, eliminating all the noise on the household power supply.
Dead quiet background now- no hiss at max volume at all.
As far as breeding stuff in an aquarium, I left a 35 gal alone after the last fish died- for 5 years now. It grew some interesting stuff before the water evaporated to the point that the remainder was so "hard" that nothing would grow. One of these days I am going to start it back up and put some "easy care" fish in it to inspire my grandson, who has shown an interest in fish. He has two small tanks, one with a beta, and another with some platies. He is 6.
Oh.... and you are always an audiophile on a budget unless you are filthy rich.
In th early '70's I priced out the most expensive system you could buy.
It was $65,000. Now you can spend that on a couple of cartridges for your $200,000 turntable.

I went whole hog. When I finished the basement I built a dedicated listening room to the Golden Rule proportion, to eliminate standing waves., with the dedicated circuits. A 20 amp for the amp (pun intended), one for the CD player, and one for the turntables, pre-amp, and tuner. I have acoustic treatments all over the place, double dry-walled walls, which are lagged to the concrete walls where I could, an acoustically designed ceiling, lead filled racks, air suspension platforms for the CD player and the better of the two turntables, a three stage isolation stand for the amp, home made interconnects for some of the stuff, (the ones from the pre-amp to the amp cost $800 in materials alone, using the best wire I could find at the time). It took me nearly 40 years to get it as good as it can be, with many trade ups and experiments, and modifications. Waiting for someone to trade in something I couldn't afford new. For a while I designed and built my own speakers, but I was never happy with them. It is to the point now that I would have to spend a LOT of money to get a little improvement, so I guess I'm done.

I thought I read "Mixed Marital Arts"!  

Another fitness dude! And certain types of chemistry can be quite fascinating!