If you had a lot of money to blow right now...

['andersom']

I'd rebuild our house.

Why does it need rebuilding?

['andersom']

I would want to live in a place where the nights are still dark. 

So, a house in an area without street-lights, without huge amounts of traffic and without background light from other things.

[odeon]

I'd rebuild our house.

Why does it need rebuilding?

I'd like to make it bigger, improve the soundproofing and isolation, and we need a more modern kitchen.

[richard]

i'd buy a house so i would never have to pay rent again, then i'd probably get serious into card collecting the old stuff like ty cobb, christie matthewson and mickey mantle stuff

["couldbecousin"]

  I'd like to have a house in Telluride, and maybe another in Ripon, UK. 

[WolFish]

I would want to live in a place where the nights are still dark. 

So, a house in an area without street-lights, without huge amounts of traffic and without background light from other things.

Second that. When I lived in MA I lived in places with no streetlights, and in FL we had one on the whole street, around the corner. You could walk out and see stars. I followed Orion until we moved here.
It was also quiet since the houses were off the beaten track.

I would also go to Florida and buy a 1991 Toyota Camry (preferably white) with a sun/moon roof, air conditioning and luxury seats. One of the best cars I ever owned. You could put a million miles on those things and fix anything that went wrong yourself.

[Icequeen]

I would want to live in a place where the nights are still dark. 

So, a house in an area without street-lights, without huge amounts of traffic and without background light from other things.

I grew up in a place like that. I like a little bit of light.

SO's trailer up in the woods is like that, creepy dark...so dark you run up to the door at night because bigfoot is hiding in the trees waiting to drag your ass off into the woods and eat you.

Yes I do still use a night light. 

['andersom']

I would want to live in a place where the nights are still dark. 

So, a house in an area without street-lights, without huge amounts of traffic and without background light from other things.

I grew up in a place like that. I like a little bit of light.

SO's trailer up in the woods is like that, creepy dark...so dark you run up to the door at night because bigfoot is hiding in the trees waiting to drag your ass off into the woods and eat you.

Yes I do still use a night light. 

I grew up with darkness. Loved it. No curtains closed when I went to bed. If I couldn't sleep, I could see Orion move. Only 'disturbed' by the lights of cars passing by. But those were cool too, making patterns on my ceiling.

Never saw more shooting stars than when I was a kid. I love the dark.

[WolFish]

Let's put in a skylight - it's awesome when it snows and you can hear it falling on the skylight - when it's done you can see moonshine marking the patterns in the snow. For Py I would also build a couple of climbing walls - one inside and one on one of the outside walls of the house.

and just because i am geeky i would buy repair insurance for the house in addition to all the other kinds they make you buy.

how much money are we talking about, anyway?

[Gopher Gary]

how much money are we talking about, anyway?

A lot. 

[WolFish]

In that case I am going to buy more land and build a retreat center with full amenities.

Rough outline:
It will be a hike in center with a restricted handicap accessible (via atv) road.

I'll have cabins around a main center where there will be conference rooms, a video theater, a listening room and small meeting rooms. The area will be large enough to handle 50 to 100 people - no more than that tramping around in the woods (there will be marked trails). It will be open year round with some rooms reserved for individuals or very small groups and the rest available for larger groups.

There will be an exercise room, a small indoor pool and a hot tub. Might add a sauna later.
In addition to housekeeping staff there will be counseling staff, a concierge and a business manager with good social and business skills. There will be kitchen staff for larger meetings and a smaller private kitchen available for individuals.

[Yuri Bezmenov]

A nice big lot of land (10 acres or more) west of Redmond.

I'd build a big shop building and an energy efficient house on it.

Then I'd just play with my toys, drink beer and smoke some dank. 

[Lestat]

Telluride? isn't there a gold mine round those parts? IIRC the name comes from their being a natural gold telluride mineral in the region, that was easily smelted down.

I  would get my own place, somewhere with a large garage, and a shed like the one we have now, only I'd upgrade the machine shop, I'd love a large scale 3D printer, one of the ones that can print in titanium, build a laser spot welder, would love a CNC lathe and CNC milling machine; currently got an old capstan turret lathe, pre-WWII, was an antique when my old man got it as an apprentice, and he's a pensioner now. Setup entirely manual, adjusting screw stops for setting the tool cutting depth. Stil, it works,  and once past the pain in the arse setup its lovely to use.

I'd kit myself  out  with a MIG welder (actually thinking of buying one, I could save up, within my price range), and use the power supply to power a homemade plasma torch.

Plus I'd get somewhere with space to fit some HUGE fucking great electromagnets, to build  an isochronous cyclotron, something I've wanted to do for ages, plus  space for the hefty quadrupole and sextupole magnets for focussing the particle beams  for the experiments I want to try out,

In particular, I really want to obtain a radioisotope that ONLY has electron capture as its sole means of decay, and excite it to a Rydberg matter state.
In Rydberg atoms, the electrons are excited to higher and  higher energy levels, eventually to the extent where the electron cloud 'sees' the nucleus of the atom as a point charge. I want to try exciting such an electron-capture radioisotope of an element to a Rydberg state, because I want to find out if the radioactive decay could be halted, by more or less, dragging off the electrons so far that they become isolated to the extent that electron capture becomes impossible.

[Parts]

Large property like a farm with out buildings with some frontage on a well traveled road for an antique barn

[Yuri Bezmenov]

I'd love a large scale 3D printer, one of the ones that can print in titanium,

I hadn't heard they were making those now. I'd imagine it would have to be a sealed unit contained inside an argon purgebox. Whenever Ti gets heated up to melting temperature, it has to be in an oxygen free environment.

currently got an old capstan turret lathe, pre-WWII, was an antique when my old man got it as an apprentice, and he's a pensioner now. Setup entirely manual, adjusting screw stops for setting the tool cutting depth. Stil, it works,  and once past the pain in the arse setup its lovely to use.

Is that a benchtop model, similar to one of the Hardinge chucker lathes??




The first production lathe I ever ran was a British made Automatic Accuratool like this one.