Time for old-man-stories about CD-ROMs? Oh, oh!

In high school, I loaned my best friend my life savings, $7000, with interest, $6k of which was used to purchase a CD writer, which he was planning to use to run a data backup service for local businesses (the other $1k was used to buy RAM... I think maybe 16MB?).

Personally, I find several facts in that paragraph kind of remarkable.

In retrospect, I think the interest rate did not reasonably reflect the high level of risk involved. The CD backup business didn't work out, and we had to renegotiate the terms of the loan, but he did pay me back.