justifying hosting costs for hobby sites
lsc: you need more SysAdmin friends.seriously, almost every real SysAdmin has a server in a datacenter somewhere, roaring away and burning through power, often doing little more than personal email, spamfiltering, and personal website/filesharing.  Usually they love giving friends free hosting for little personal projects, as that justifies the existence of that co-located box that allows the SysAdmin to keep his or her skills up to date.    You know how open source programmers are proud when other people use code they provide?  SysAdmins feel similarly when we get to host/support something cool.I mean, if you were employed, I'd say to go buy a VPS (unless your idea involves streaming movies or, ah, 'adult content,' there is no reason why your hosting bill needs to be more than $20/month.  Less if you are willing to deal with a underpowered server, or one of the 'up and coming' providers.)