>old workstation from surplus and put it on my dorm room desk as a server.

Our dorm did this, with competitions to see "who could upload the most torrent traffic" [i2hub fiber between universities was just becoming popular]. Eventually the MAC address would be blacklisted, and all you'd need to do is replace the NIC and you'd immediately be "back in business."

>I got to play around a lot with of tech stuff that would have otherwise been out of reach

Memories, and it goes by so quickly (my ranting is from two decades ago). Then life gets serious =P