My dad acquired a dozen identical PCs from decommissioned office equipment at his workplace (very old machines slated for disposal). As a kid in a rural area, I had neither the money nor the means to obtain the necessary router to build the Beowulf cluster I'd been mentioning on a random IRC channel. Then, one day, a quiet "greybeard" who mostly lurked in the logs pinged me out of blue, asked for my address, and sent me his old 5-port router from Germany. This felt incredibly significant because even people who had interacted with him online for over a decade knew nothing beyond his screen name, yet here I was, holding a box with his full name and address.

This gesture, combined with the philosophy and work ethic of him and other greybeards that I deeply admired, literally changed the course of my life. By the time I reached high school, I already had an impressive portfolio of hardware and software projects, spoke fluent English, and was freelancing for amounts that exceeded my father's salary. IRC turned out to be an incredible ROI for me :p