March 15th, 2018:

	I went on a rare spending spree today.  It's not often I'll do 
that, but the missus insisted I buy something for myself for a change.  
I've been trying to practice what our former church referred to as "good 
stewardship", and maintaining the things I own, rather than toss them out 
and/or replace.

The first thing I bought was a 133MHz CPU card for my Powerbook 1400.  My 
PB1400 has a cacheless 117MHz CPU, so the new CPU should provide a 
significant boost to my retro mobile art studio/writing machine.

Second was a rare 40mb RAM card for my Powerbook Duo 280c.  I bought my 
280c for a song on eBay a decade ago, advertised as "non-working"... 
probably because the seller lacked the power adapter.  Luckily, I had an 
extra, and the Duo powered up just fine.  Problem is, it didn't have a RAM 
card, only the 4Mb on the motherboard.  Using Virtual Memory made the 
machine usable but slow, so I kept an eye out for a cheap RAM card all 
these years.  Now that I have one en route, I'll have to figure out what 
I'm going to do with this 'book.

Next, I snagged a couple of Sun NVRAM/IDPROMs that have been hacked to use 
a coin-cell battery to keep power.  The 25+ year old batteries in the 
original Sun NVRAM chips are reaching the end of their service life, so 
various hacks have been implemented over the years to help them "remember" 
settings.  My namesake Sparc IPX was hacked by my pal Slam:  he scraped 
the top of the NVRAM chip to expose the two wires, and soldered in a AA 
battery holder.  It was a good solution at the time and has worked well, 
but I wanted a more elegant solution, so when I saw these for sale on 
eBay, I snapped them up... one each for my Sparc IPX and IPC.

I also stocked up on bike tools, too.  I want to get deeper into bike 
mechanics this year, so I'll be able to fully maintain and repair my 
ever-growing bicycle fleet.  I finally splurged on a good quality grease 
gun, so I can maintain/replace bearings, etc.  Probably a good idea, as 
the bearings on my mountain bike/commuter haven't seen fresh grease since 
the mid 1980s!  Had to grab an offset brake wrench, too, as my brake 
adjusting skills are rather lacking.  All I really want now is a decent 
set of crescent wrenches, but that I can grab anywhere.

I'm thinking of joining the Right to Repair movement.