First, we successfully changed my brake pads on my front disc brakes.
Back when I did the oil change, it ended up taking much longer than I
expected, however the brake pad replacement took much less time than I
expected! Perhaps more importantly, the amount of money saved versus paying a
mechanic to do it is tremendous in the brake case, and not so much (or
even negative if time is included) for the oil change. I was further pleasantly surprised by the AutoZone lifetime warranty for
the brake pads, where they'll replace them free for life as long as you
don't wear them down to the bare metal. In any case, it's one thing to take a bunch of mechanical engineering
classes, and another thing entirely to get your hands dirty and figure
out how various car systems are really put together.

Pair of jack stands at Harbor Freight:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=38846
$20 (were on sale), but have provided hours of entertainment, education,
and lots of savings already just by doing the oil change and front brake
pads myself!

Second, NerdKits did end up buying the Smithy CB-1220XL lathe/mill combo
machine I took pictures of in this earlier post:
http://blog.compumike.com/lathemilldrill-combo-what-do-you-think
We've got a lot of work to do to dig in, clean it up, and get some
tooling so that we can be useful, but this opens up an exciting new.
Quite an adventure in Fred's new (old) pickup truck to move the thing!