Dude, I may have to get into PIC programming for work.That you're getting into it because you have too much energy :-)is great.
I am currently wrestling with a 100 Mhz 486 motherboardtrying to do obscence things with NT and SCSI and video, etc.But the small engineering firm I'm now working for is gettingpaid to maintain this.
And develop a medical AM radio that can cut, or coagulate, during(laparoscopic) surgery, and you cut & stop bleeding with the sametool. Its the same as an RF burn, deep heating. We usethe "bipolar" method, running 400 V 100 W through tweezers tovaporize the bad meat between the tweezer jaws. The monopolarmethod uses the body (via a big metal plate) as ground.