My partner is a computer nut and has built them, fixed them, bought and traded them for years. I've been very spoiled by his in-house tech support. As such, we've got more computers and parts floating around here than most small businesses own. In addition, our next door neighbors are a  great gay couple, one of which works for Microsoft so he and Robert talk a lot about computer stuff and he gets us all kinds of hardware and software at a discount.

So Robert comes in this  morning and tells me "John wants to see if we want to buy something from him." Now I've been through this song-and-dance before (and it's very cute) from Robert. I'd be fine if he would come in and say, "John has another computer related gadget or item that I want to buy from him, OK?" and I would have no problem with it, but Robert worries that he's asking too much so he makes a case for why he wants to either trade or buy something.

Our neighbor called to tell Robert that he had done some freelance work for a guy and had been paid for some of it,but had agreed to take a Blade Server as partial payment and now realized he didn't really have a need for it. So he asked Robert if he wanted to buy it. Robert took down the specs and looked up the thing on the internet and found that with all the hardware and software on it, it was worth about $2200. Our neighbor wanted $350 for it so I told Robert it was fine with me if he wanted to buy it from him. So we are now the proud owners of an IBM Blade server. I'm not sure what he's going to actually do with it, but he's already brainstorming about the possibilities.