> cracking the vacuum seal on the CRT was just so satisfying.

I've totally felt this before! As a teenager we were offered an old CRT for free if we would pick it up. We spent several days trying to fix it but ended up breaking it much worse than it already was, to the point where my friend's dad (who was a programmer but also did a lot of electronics repair) basically told us to take it to the dump. We did, but not until we took it deep into the mountains and shot the vacuum tube with a .22 long rifle :-D (we did get our asses reamed because we didn't know there was mercury in there, but even after that the consensus was still "it was worth it" though we never had the guts to tell parents that). We did at least have the foresight to put it on a big drop cloth so cleanup was pretty easy, though I later became mortified at our recklessness. The only thing better than shooting that was being able to shoot an old church bell that somebody dumped in the woods.